Cruzmanuelos Stories

Lieutenant Valeria "Val" Reyes has spent her career surviving the things most people never see. When she is pulled into the classified Lioness program, she expects another high-risk assignment. What she finds instead is a team that does not recruit-it selects-and a woman who watches her like she is already calculating the cost of keeping her alive. Cruz does not offer welcome. She offers assessment. Quiet, precise, and unreadable, she is the first person to see past Val's control and recognize the same relentless focus staring back at her. What begins as professional evaluation becomes something sharper: two operators learning each other's rhythms under pressure, in the ring, on the range, and in the silence between missions. As Val is formally brought into the program, the boundaries between duty and something far more dangerous begin to blur. In a world built on deception, disappearance, and the constant possibility of not coming home, the slow pull between them is the one risk neither of them was trained to manage. Because in Lioness, the mission always comes first.
But some connections refuse to stay operational.

Everyone carries something. Cassiana Bennett carries more than most. She's spent years learning how to survive, how to fight, and how to keep the things that haunt her buried. As a Lioness, she's used to being the one who keeps everyone else standing. But what happens when survival is no longer enough? Because everyone carries something. The question is how long you can carry it alone.