“Goraath. Hold!”
The familiar voice cut through the red haze with a sharp command.
Kaalden stood at the entrance to the alley. The colonists were clustered behind him. Their eyes were wide, their faces pale.
They’d heard. Krin hunter.
“We need him alive.” Kaalden’s voice was steady. “We need to know who else is involved.”
Goraath’s fist trembled in the air. The male beneath his grip was barely conscious, blood bubbling from his lips, one eye already swelling shut.
Not enough. Not nearly enough.
But Kaalden was right. They needed answers. They needed to tear out this rot at the root before it spread further.
He let the male drop and stepped back. His hands shook—not from exertion but from the effort of stopping. Of pulling himself back from the edge.
The male crumpled to the ground, moaning.
He turned.
Juni was pressed against the alley wall where she’d fallen. Her face was white and blood still trickled from the cut on her throat. Her eyes were huge, locked on him with an expression he couldn’t read.
Horror. That’s what it was. Had to be.
She’d seen him. All of him. The monster he’d spent years hiding. She’d watched him crush a male’s throat with his bare hand. Snap another’s neck like kindling. Beat the third one bloody while promising torture and slow death.
She’d heard him say what he was. Krin hunter. She was human, so she didn’t know what that meant. But she’d seen what it looked like.
“Juni.” Her name came out rough.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stared at him with those wide, terrified eyes.
His chest cracked open as he took a step toward her. Just one.
She flinched.
The silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating. He waited for her to move. To say something. To reach for him the way she had last night when she’d pulled him down into her warmth and whispered his name like it meant something.
She didn’t and his heart broke.
Chapter 12
The cut on her throat was gone. There wasn’t even a scar.
Juni sat still while the colony healer’s assistant, Fenriil, ran the device over her skin one final time. Blue light pulsed across her throat. It was gruesome as hell, watching flesh knit together beneath the glow in the mirror the assistant healer had given her.
“You should rest,” Fenriil said, switching off the device. “You’ve had a shock.”
She didn’t want rest. She wanted Goraath.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d been standing in that alley with blood on his hands. He’d stepped toward her and she’d flinched. Not from fear, but from everything crashing over her at once... the knife, the blood, the violence. Adrenaline still screaming through her veins with nowhere to go.
But he didn’t know that. He’d seen her flinch and his expression had shuttered closed. Just... gone.
She slid off the bed before Fenriil could stop her. “Where is Goraath?”
“Healer Thayn is treating him in room three. But you really should?—”
