Rykal closed his eyes, crossed his arms over his chest, and let his body float, allowing himself to drift through the pod as he waited for his brothers to retrieve him.
He tried to calm the savage emotion seething within him, but he couldn’t.
What the fuck are we doing here?
Killing Xargek. That was what they’d been ordered to do.
Eliminate at all costs.
And there was the unspoken. If things got out of hand, they could always retreat. They could have hijacked a human vessel and made their way to Sector Eight, where there were Kordolian-occupied territories.
Retreat.
The word wasn’t in the First Division’s vocabulary.
In the past, they’d been able to subdue entire planets with little more than their reputations and the weight of the Kordolian Empire behind them.
Once people knew what they were about, they generally tended to co-operate.
These delusional humans, on the other hand, still thought they held some power in the Universe.
They had no idea who orwhatthey were messing with; otherwise, they would have capitulated a long time ago.
Rykal exhaled and latched onto the image of Arin that was burned into his mind. She filled his emptiness and made him feel complete. She soothed his wild, reckless heart.
He would have her back at all costs.
She was the last thing he saw in his mind’s eye as a giantboomshook the shell of the pod. He had barely enough time to activate his full armor before his world disintegrated into a raging inferno.
There was another boom.
Then another.
And another.
There was only searing heat, pain, and the fading image of his mate, in all her beautiful human glory.
Whatever they’d hit him with was fierce. His armor could only hold off so much. The blast was starting to burn through.
It was excruciating.
Arin.
He couldn’t lose her now. He’d only just found her.
As Rykal’s body burned, he reached out with one arm, trying to grasp her, but her form was ethereal and elusive, and it was stolen from him as agony took over, thrusting him into the depths of Kaiin’s darkest hells.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Arin stepped warily across the threshold, moving from the mobile airlock into the body of the dull grey cruiser.
The transfer from the pod to the surveillance cruiser had been straightforward; they’d stepped into the mobile airlock and it had sealed up, drifting slowly across to its home vessel.
She removed her helmet as the doors closed behind her, replacing one oxygen source for another.
“Welcome back, Sergeant Varga.” E1 was there, along with her offsider, E2. He stared at her through his datalenses, not saying a word as E1 motioned for her to follow. “Come with us. You will undergo a debriefing session, but before then, I want you to see something.”
“I trust this won’t take long,” Arin said coldly. “I have to get back to my squad.”
