His Wife, His Wingman, His Regret

Ethan Hale was the name every pilot at North Ridge Air Base looked up to.

I was Ava Morgan, his wife and his only flight partner.

To earn my ace qualification, I had to complete three final evaluation missions within the review period.

I failed all three.

I refused to accept it as coincidence, so I followed the access logs, flight records, and maintenance files until every abnormal detail pointed to one person.

Chloe Bennett.

When I took the evidence to Ethan, I heard him arguing with his deputy, Liam Reed, behind the office door.

"You are putting Chloe forward for the ace-track recommendation? She can barely hold steady in a back seat," Liam said, his anger barely restrained.

"Ava is my wife and my flight partner. Chloe is different. She has nothing."

Standing outside the door, I suddenly laughed.

Then I turned around and accepted the return offer from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Before I left, I gave Ethan three things.

And he would regret them for the rest of his life.

Before flight school, I had passed polar survival training, open-water ejection recovery, and high-altitude decompression drills. Later, I graduated first in my class and entered North Ridge Air Base as the youngest lead pilot under Ethan Hale's command.

One more round of final evaluations, and I would qualify as an ace pilot.

All three missions went wrong.

The first was a nighttime low-altitude recovery through a storm front. I was ordered to retrieve an encrypted navigation core from a prototype drone that had gone off course. I brought the core back intact, but the aircraft took heavy damage in the thunderstorm, and the mission was marked as a failure.

The second was air support for a border hostage rescue. I had the target zone locked and the ground team was seconds from closing in when the enemy suddenly changed position. I dropped altitude to buy the team time to evacuate. The hostages survived, but the planned capture failed, and I lost the evaluation again.

The third was an escort mission for a battlefield medical convoy. At the worst possible moment, our identification beacon failed, and an enemy defense system locked onto my aircraft. I drew the fire away from the medical helicopters and forced a landing on an abandoned service road. The convoy made it through, but I was grounded for review.

By the end of the evaluation period, I was facing removal from Ethan's direct flight team.

I did not believe in coincidences that precise, so I pulled flight logs, visitor clearances, beacon records, and maintenance footage. Every trail led to the same name.

Chloe Bennett.

A junior flight candidate assigned to the command center after failing out of cockpit rotation.

I carried the evidence to Ethan's office, but before I could knock, I heard Liam Reed's voice from inside.

"You are putting Chloe forward for the ace-track recommendation? She has never completed a real flight mission." Liam gave a bitter laugh. "Do you