The thought should have terrified her.
Instead, she found herself wondering what it would feel like. His claws closing around her arm. His strength, overwhelming and absolute. The moment when fighting became pointless and all that was left was surrender.
She shook the thought away. Checked the entrance again.
His scent was still in her lungs. That alien musk, thick and warm, clinging to her like smoke. She had been breathing it all afternoon, ever since the clearing, and now it seemed to have settled into her body, her blood, her bones. Every breath brought it back. Every exhale failed to clear it.
She ate rations that tasted like nothing. Drank water that did little to ease the heat building in her chest. Sat with her back against stone and her weapon across her knees, watching the darkness beyond the entrance, and tried not to think about the way he had circled her.
She failed.
The clearing played behind her eyes on an endless loop. The moment she'd felt him arrive, that prickle at the back of her neck. The way the jungle had gone silent around her, every bird and insect holding its breath. The shadow in the bushes, there and gone. The weight of his attention pressing against her skin like heat from an open flame.
And her response.
Show yourself.
Coward.
Come out and play.
What the hell had she been thinking? She had taunted him. Challenged him. Called a Kha'Ruun warrior a coward to his face, or whatever passed for his face behind that featureless helm. Shehad stood in a clearing on an alien island and dared a predator to come and take her.
She had lost her mind.
That was the only explanation. The stress had finally cracked something loose inside her, and now she was operating on instinct and adrenaline and a hunger she refused to name.
She thought about Aria. Her little sister, recovering in a hospital bed, with no idea where Serafina really was or what she was doing. What would Aria say if she could see her now? Huddled in a cave, filthy and exhausted, hunting an alien warrior through the jungle while desire coiled in her belly every time she thought about him.
Aria would think she had gone insane. Aria would be right.
But beneath the fear and the exhaustion and the creeping certainty that she had made a terrible mistake, there was a truth she didn't want to admit, even to herself.
She didn't want to go home.
Not yet. Maybe not ever. The life waiting for her back in Los Angeles felt distant now, faded, like a photograph left too long in the sun. The bills, the job, the endless grinding struggle to keep her head above water while the system tried to drown her. What was there to go back to? More of the same. More years of watching justice fail and good people suffer and her own soul slowly calcifying beyond recognition.
Out here, she felt alive. Terrified and exhausted and completely out of her depth, but alive in a way she hadn't felt in years. Maybe ever.
She couldn't say what that meant. Wasn't sure she wanted to find out.
Sleep crept up on her slowly, pulling her under despite her best efforts to stay alert. Her eyes grew heavy. Her head nodded forward, then jerked back up. The weapon slipped in her grip,and she tightened her fingers around it, forcing herself to focus on the darkness beyond the entrance.
Her body had other plans.
Sleep came in fragments, shallow and restless, and then?—
Deeper. Darker.
She dreamed of him.
He was above her. Around her. Everywhere.
The heat of his body radiated through her like fever, burning away thought, burning away resistance. His weight pressed her down into moss or leaves or the jungle floor itself, and she couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything but feel.
Armor plates scraped against her skin as he shifted, hard edges and smooth curves, alien textures that sent shivers racing down her spine. His hands, massive and clawed, closed around her wrists and pinned them above her head. She was trapped. Helpless. Completely at his mercy.
She had stopped fighting.
