The probe’s holographic column was still spinning, ghostly ruins flickering in the air, when the grounderupted.
Multiple sections of the plateau split open with a low, seismic rumble, camouflaged hatches and tunnel mouths that had been hidden for who knew how long appeared on the surface. Dust billowed upward like smoke. Dozens of humans poured out, ragged and fierce, faces painted with dirt and old war markings. They carried a chaotic mix of scavenged blasters, jagged blades, and what looked like repurposed mining tools. Their shouts cut through the chaos.
“Pandraxians off our world!”
“No more slave masters!”
“Earth belongs to us!”
Xandros barked orders. Pandraxian soldiers snapped into formation. Ashley was already moving, blaster up, dropping into a perfect combat stance. “Contact! Multiple hostiles from below!”
I didn’t hesitate. The Pandraxians had armed my crew right before we left the shuttle, a concession I’d fought for. My fingers closed around the sleek grip of the compact blaster at my hip. It felt good. Familiar. Deadly.
A surge of Prime Luminae energy crackled through my veins. I moved. The first attacker lunged at me with a jagged blade. I sidestepped and drove the heel of my palm into his solar plexus. He folded with a grunt. I spun, sweeping his legs out from under him, and fired a single shot into his chest as he hit the dirt. He went limp.
“Naeris!” Thyros was suddenlyright there, at my shoulder, and his crimson-gold aura flared as he slashed a glowing blade through the air to drop another attacker who’d tried to flank me. Too close. Always too close.
“Back the fuck off!” I snarled, ducking under a wild blaster bolt and returning fire. The shot caught a tunnel-emerging attacker in the leg. He dropped, clutching the limb with a yell.
Thyros didn’t move an inch. “You are not fighting alone.”
Another wave poured from a fresh tunnel mouth. I vaulted forward, using the momentum to slam my shoulder into one man’s chest and twist his arm behind his back in the same motion. The blaster in my other hand cracked, two precise shots that dropped two more before they could aim at Xandros.
Ashley was a whirlwind nearby, with a soldier's efficiency: she rolled behind a low boulder, popped up, and took down three in rapid succession with tight, controlled bursts.
“Keep them pinned at the tunnels!” she shouted. “Don’t let them spread!”
I felt the golden thread yank hard as Thyros stepped in again, his big body shielding my back while he disarmed a charging attacker with a brutal elbow strike. The contact sent another unwanted pulse of heat through me, that same treacherous slickness from the shuttle still lingering low in my belly, mixing with the adrenaline, until I couldn’t tell where the fight ended and the bond began.
“Getoutof my way, Thyros!” I snapped, shoving past him to meet two more head-on. I dropped low, kicked one’s knees out, and stunned the second point-blank. “I don’t need your damn protection!”
He ignored me completely, spinning to block a blade aimed at my side. His voice was a rough growl over the chaos. “Too bad.”
The fight was everywhere now, blaster fire cracked, fists and boots connected, shouts echoed across the plateau. Dust choked the air. I moved like liquid lightning, Prime Luminae gifts turning every strike into something graceful and lethal. One of the attackers grabbed for me; he was so close I could smell the foul odor coming off him. I used his momentum against him, flipping him over my hip and firing once as he landed.
Then I saw it, another attacker rising from a hidden tunnel directly behind Thyros, blaster already leveled at the back of his head. No time to warn him with words.
I raised my own blaster, pointing it straight at Thyros’ chest. “Duck!”
He dropped instantly, and his trust in me in at that split second meant more than I wanted to admit. My shot screamed over his shoulder and slammed into the attacker’s center mass. The man flew backward into the tunnel mouth with a cry, probably dead before he hit the ground.
Thyros straightened, his eyes blazing as they locked on mine through the swirling dust. The golden thread between us was a live wire, pulsing with the shared adrenaline, the heat, the rawwantneither of us could escape even in the middle of a firefight.
“Stay the hell out of my space,” I panted, sounding fierce even as my thighs clenched against the lingering ache his nearness had stirred.
His slow, dark smile said he knew exactly what I was feeling.
The tunnels were still spitting out attackers, but the momentum had shifted. Ashley and the Pandraxians were pushing them back. Ella and Nadine had taken cover near the probe, still scanning even in the chaos.
But the real war—the one between me and the infuriating, magnetic male who refused to leave my side—was only just beginning.
The battlefield was chaos,but all I could see washer. Naeris moved like living starlight. Every strike was precise, every pivot fluid, every shot from the blaster in her hand a clean, controlled burst of light. She was a fighter through and through, utterly graceful and terrifyingly aware of everything around her. An attacker lunged from her blind side; she sensed him before he finished the step. She dropped low, swept his legs, and shot him mid-fall without breaking stride. Another tried to grab her from behind, and she twisted, used his momentum, and slammed him into the dirt like he weighed nothing.
Power crackled around her in faint golden arcs that only I could see through the bond. She was magnificent. She definitely had Arkhevari blood in her veins.
And Ihatedit.
Hated that my Aelyth was in the middle of this filthy little skirmish, boots kicking up dust, hair whipping across her face, breathing hard while these tunnel rats tried to put holes in her. The golden thread between us burned like molten wire, feeding me every spike of her adrenaline, every flash of her defiance. It made my blood sing and my chest tighten at the same time. She didn’t need me.
