Above them, he could still feel the vibrations of GenCon’s search teams—tramping through his cavern, contaminating the sacred space with their machines and their greed. Part of him burned with rage at the violation, wanted to rise up through the stone and show them what happened to those who desecrated the last remnant of his world.
But a larger part—the part that held Alina close, that breathed her scent and felt her warmth and knew with absolute certainty that she was more important than any vengeance—that part remained still.
Let them search, he thought. Let them take their samples and run their scans and congratulate themselves on their discovery.
They will never find what truly matters.
She is safe. She is mine. And I will burn down worlds before I let anyone take her from me.
The thought should have alarmed him—its ferocity, its possessiveness, the implicit violence lurking beneath the surface. But it didn’t. It felt right. Natural. As fundamental as the stone beneath his palm and the air in his lungs.
He was a warrior. A protector. A mate.
And whatever came next, he would face it with golden scales and blue fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rhyx’s hand tightened around hers—a sudden compression that made Alina’s breath catch.
“They’re here.”
The words were calm, almost conversational, but she felt the tension coiling through his body like a spring being wound too tight. Above them, filtering down through countless tons of Martian rock, came a sound she wouldn’t have been able to hear on her own—but she could see it in Rhyx’s stillness, in the way his head tilted slightly as he tracked vibrations she couldn’t perceive.
“How many?”
“Five vehicles. Perhaps twenty people.” His blue eyes, luminous even in the dim light of the small chamber where they’d been resting, met hers. “They’ve reached the main cavern.”
Twenty people. Her stomach dropped. This wasn’t a casual survey team or a scientific expedition. This was a full search party. Military precision, GenCon resources, and Martin’sobsessive determination all wrapped together in a package specifically designed to find her.
No, she corrected herself. To find what she was hiding.
“We need to move.”
Rhyx was already rising, pulling her up with the same effortless strength that still caught her off guard even after all this time. His movements were fluid, economical, betraying none of the urgency she knew he must be feeling. Where she was trembling, heart racing, palms slick with fear-sweat inside her gloves, he was perfectly controlled.
A warrior, she reminded herself. He said he was a warrior.
In that moment, she believed it absolutely.
“Stay close.” He led her deeper into the tunnel system, away from the chamber that had served as their temporary refuge. “There’s another way to the surface—older, less direct, but it opens far from the main entrance.”
“How do you know?”
“I feel it.” He pressed his free hand against the tunnel wall as they walked, his golden scales scraping lightly against the rough stone. “The air moves differently here. There’s an opening ahead, perhaps two kilometers. We can reach it before they finish searching the cavern above.”
Alina wanted to ask how he could possibly know that, how he could navigate these lightless passages with such confidence when she could barely see her own feet. But the questions died on her lips. She’d learned to trust his instincts over the past weeks—learned that whatever alien senses he possessed, they were as reliable as any scientific instrument she’d ever operated.
More reliable, perhaps. Instruments could be fooled. Rhyx couldn’t.
They moved quickly through the darkness, Rhyx guiding her around obstacles she couldn’t see, warning her of sudden drops and uneven footing before she could stumble. The tunnel twisted and branched, rose and fell, but he navigated it with the same casual certainty that she might walk through her own laboratory.
What if they catch us?
The thought kept circling back, no matter how hard she tried to push it away. She knew what would happen if GenCon got their hands on Rhyx. He would become a specimen—a subject to be studied, dissected, analyzed for whatever secrets his impossible biology might yield. They would strip away everything that made him unique, reduce him to data points and tissue samples and classified research files.
But it wasn’t just GenCon she feared.
Be honest with yourself, Alina.
