My dick didn’t care. My heart didn’t fucking care. All I needed was for her to wake up and explain herself. I wouldlisten. Then I’d forgive her and fuck her until neither one of us could remember what planet we were on.
Right after I hunted down the motherfucker who’d killed Eddie. He was inside that building somewhere. I could feel it.
Jenkins’ mission was the same. We didn’t much care what the aliens did as long as we got the one we came for. The big Atlan they’d turned into a mindless cyborg.
I sat in the corner seat, flanked by black composite walls lit only by the faint glow of a streetlight coming through the windshield from half a block away. If I wasn’t so tense, I would have laughed at the absurdity of three Atlan Warlords and two human cops glaring at each other as we waited for the go signal from the other team.
Out of nowhere, my comm’s activated. “This is Bravo. We’re in position. Go. Go. Go.”
Warlord Bahre responded. “Alpha team is a go. Moving now.”
I rolled my head around on my shoulders to fight off the remains of a brutal headache. I hadn’t completely adjusted to hearing both the Atlan language being spoken, and the English coming through the NPU they’d implanted in my skull. Jenkins shook his head like he was trying to clear his head as well.
Blessing and a curse, the NPUs. One of the Prillons at Bahre’s compound had shoved the needlelike device into our heads and attached the NPU to the bone just below our ears. Now I understood everything every one of these bastards was saying.
That was the curse. I understood every word Commander Helion, Doctor Mersan, Warlord Kovo and the others had spoken regarding Lyra. Her past. Her mission for the I.C. All of it.
They’d hurt her. Repeatedly. Every cell in my body wanted to make them pay even as I admired her more. None of us would be here if not for her courage. Her intelligence. Her determinationto avenge two brothers she’d loved and believed dead. She’d traveled through the universe hunting evil, risking her life to feed the I.C. intelligence on every aspect of the Silver Scions’ operation she could. If they had caught her….
I shuddered, my mind refusing to go down that rabbit hole. We filed out of the van and I fell in next to Jenkins in a fast jog behind the Atlans. They were transforminginto their beasts as they ran.
From a block away, the warehouse looked like every other rotting structure in the district—rusted metal siding, busted windows, and graffiti tagging the lower walls in layers of decay. The outer fence was chain-link with barbed wire so old it sagged like tired bones. It had the feel of a place no one gave a damn about. But even from this distance, I could see things that didn’t belong. The gravel perimeter was too clean. The gate didn’t creak when the wind moved it. There were no rats, no broken glass, no signs of squatters. No stench from rotting trash inside rusting dumpsters. The silence wasn’t just abandonment—it was curated. Maintained. An illusion.
The scans running inside my Coalition helmet displayed a different reality. Beneath the rust and shadows was a fortified stronghold. Reinforced walls. Subsurface defense grids. Two levels below the ground, the Coalition thermal sensors revealed two low level heat signatures. Bahre said they were likely full cyborgs or mechanized weapons in a charge port or stasis pod. Not activated. An energy generator pulsed in the central chamber, hidden under a constantly shifting frequency shield that scrambled the Coalition ReCon drones’ data. Their scans did manage to pick up motion detectors embedded in the walls.
Nothing too outrageous for an alien base, until Commander Helion reported on Lyra’s warnings from a few months ago. Rumors that the Scions were using forbidden technology, banned by the Coalition for being too dangerous, a naniteinfused fog that was both self-repairing and lethal to organic tissue not connected to their frequency networks.
This wasn’t just an alien base. It was a trap in the shape of a ruin. And we were walking right into it.
The Warlords, over eight feet tall in their combat gear, tore a hole in the perimeter fence as an unexpected voice came through the comms.
“Overwatch in position. All clear.” Lyra’s voice was crisp. In control.
My entire body responded like she’d lit fireworks in my blood. Suddenly I was awake. Alive. Terrified she was going to get hurt.
Kovo cursed.
Bahre responded but kept moving. “Position?”
The team had marked out three possible positions for a sniper during the planning stage. Three rooftops.
“Two.” One word and the entire team knew exactly where she was. Which rooftop. What she’d be able to see and what she wouldn’t.
Her voice through the comm hit me like an ambush—fast, surgical, and straight to the heart.Two.
One word detonated something inside me. I’d spent two days being angry. Angry at her for lying. Angry at Helion. Angry at her brother for causing her pain. Angry at myself for being such a closed-minded asshole about her people that she didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.
Angry at Eddie for dying. Angry at Jenkins for being just like me. We were two men consumed by grief and the need for revenge, completely blind to everything else.
As if she could read my mind, she spoke directly to me.
“Ethan. I’ll talk to you after. Don’t get yourself killed.”
I pressed a hand against my chest because the sound of my name on her lips hurt and my body didn’t seem to know whatelse to do with itself. My breathing went shallow. Too fast. I’d seen men freeze before combat—good men, smart men—but this was different. This was something primal. Something that made my bones ache. Because she was up there, alone. Exposed. Ready to fight while I stood here with my feet in the dirt and my heart in my throat, knowing I couldn’t protect her. Couldn’t reach her. Couldn’t even hold her hand. All I could do was listen to her voice in my ear, cracking open the floodgates I’d kept sealed the last two days, and pray the universe didn’t take her from me before I could tell her—before I could show her—that I wasn’t afraid of her beast.
I was afraid of the monster I’d become without her. Consumed by hatred. Vengeance. Grief. Always alone. Always hunting killers. Seeing the worst of humanity.
Expecting the worst of everyone and everything.
