The first feral hit the main entrance.
I couldn't see it from my position, but I heard it. The crash of a massive body against bone, the scraping of claws seeking purchase. Then another impact. Another. They were throwing themselves at the entrance we'd made to look weak, exactly as I'd predicted.
"They're through," Bruk said. His voice was tight. Controlled. "Three inside. Four. Five."
More impacts from outside. The ferals were flooding toward the main entrance, drawn by the apparent weakness, too broken to recognize the trap.
"Six," Bruk counted. "Seven."
"Now."
He struck the resonance point.
The sound that followed was like nothing I'd ever heard. A deep, grinding roar as the storage chamber ceiling gave way. Tons of ancient bone collapsing onto the ferals below, burying them under debris that had stood for millennia.
The screams lasted only seconds. Then silence.
"Seven down," Bruk said. "Maybe eight. The dust..."
A crash from the secondary entrance. The ferals who'd been circling had found another way in.
"Go," I said. "I'll stay here."
He was already moving. Eight feet of calcified armor launching himself toward the breach. I heard the impact of bodies, the crack of bone against bone, the wet sounds of claws finding flesh.
I couldn't see the fight. Could only listen, my pulse racing, my hand pressed against my belly. Every scream might be Bruk. Every crash might be the end of everything we'd built.
Then I heard the pit trap trigger. A howl of agony as another feral impaled itself on the sharpened spars. One more down.
The sounds of combat continued. I counted impacts, tried to track how many ferals remained. Five? Six? Too many for one hunter, even one as skilled as Bruk.
A feral appeared in the archway.
It was smaller than Bruk, its armor cracked and flaking, its movements jerky with the degradation that came from years without a mate. But it was still massive. Still deadly. And it was between me and the only exit.
"Pretty female," it rasped. Its voice was wrong, broken, like gravel scraping against itself. "Fertile female. Mine now."
I backed away. My hand found a piece of debris on the floor. A bone shard from the ceiling collapse, sharp enough to cut. Not much of a weapon against a creature three times my size.
But I was an engineer. And engineers understood leverage.
"The ceiling in this section is unstable," I said. My voice was steady. Calmer than I felt. "One more impact and it comes down."
The feral paused. Some fragment of intelligence still flickered behind its broken eyes.
"You're lying."
"Am I?" I pointed to the cracks I'd identified during our defensive preparations. Real cracks, though not quite as dangerous as I was implying. "Look at the stress fractures. The load distribution is compromised. You attack me here, you bring it all down on both of us."
It hesitated. I could see it trying to calculate, trying to think past the need that had driven it here. The degradation made it slow. Made it stupid.
I just needed to keep it talking until Bruk finished with the others.
"You came here for a fertile female," I said. "But I'm already bred. Already carrying offspring. Even if you take me, the offspring won't be yours."
"Kill offspring. Breed again."
My whole body went cold. My hand tightened on the bone shard.
