Page 17 of Alien Assassin's Heir

Asset.

They don’t even use her name.

Just a label.

A tool.

Rage blooms behind my ribs, sharp and sudden. My claws extend again—uncontrolled—and one of them rakes across the console casing with a screech. I have to consciously will them back.

They want to use her. Again.

First me. Then her. Now maybe Solie too, if the Alliance gets wind of what she is—or who she might become.

I’ve seen this playbook before. I’ve lived it.

Burn the edges, then exploit the center. Gut the life from someone and sell their skeleton to the highest bidder. Doesn’t matter how many lines you cross if the op gets results.

I flex my hands open and closed, muscles twitching with old instinct. I could crush this console. Smash it to scrap. But it wouldn’t matter.

What matters is Luna.

I don’t sleep. Haven’t really since the frontlines. But I sit for a while in the dark, watching her surveillance feed play on loop.

I’m not proud of it.

But it’s not lust or obsession.

It’s something worse. Something deeper.

Regret.

Her laughter—when it happens—is a rare, delicate thing. Like glass in wind. I see her smile once, and I swear my heart actually stutters. She looks down at Solie with something sacred in her face. Something I never had growing up on Grolgar Prime. Something I never saw in the eyes of anyone who raised me.

She protects that child like she’s guarding a universe.

And I realize, sitting there in the flickering shadows of my own self-destruction, that I don’t want her just safe.

I want todeserveher safety.

Even if she spits in my face every time we meet.

Even if Solie isn’t mine.

I want to be the man who stands between them and the next bullet, the next black-bag, the next war machine that rolls through Wildwood looking for a ghost from the past.

Because the real enemy isn’t me anymore.

It’s the system that made me.

I thumb my response into the pad with deliberate, sterile syntax. It’ll make Targen yawn.

Response: Civilian asset shows no signs of Alliance contact.

Localized traffic low. No external pings detected.

Surveillance ongoing. Will remain covert.

Awaiting further orders.