Page 86 of Alien Assassin's Heir

CHAPTER 26

KRAJ

The night tastes of iron. Sharp, metallic, electric. The kind of night when storms split planets in two.

I crouch on the cliff ledge, muscles coiled, every sense stretched to breaking. The canyon below lies in shadow, but I don’t need light—I can feel them. Hear them. Smell them.

Targen has arrived.

Five shadows move at his side, deliberate, precise. Not scouts, not fodder. Assassins. Their bodies gleam with augments—chromed arms with subdermal plating, eyes that glow faint red as they scan the dark. I can hear the faint hum of their enhancements, the synthetic pulse of organ replacements beating alongside what scraps of flesh they still carry.

But they’re not hunting a man tonight.

They’re stepping into the lair of something else.

I flex my claws, digging grooves into the stone. My pulse slows, controlled, every beat a drum of war. I’ve been many things—spy, soldier, traitor. Tonight I strip all of that away. Tonight, I am only what the blood in my veins has always promised.

Predator.

The first assassin moves ahead, a scout cloaked in adaptive camo, his outline warping against the canyon wall. He thinks he’s invisible. He’s not. His scent reeks of polymer oil and fear.

I drop from above.

My claws pierce his throat before he can scream. Hot blood sprays across my tongue, metallic and burning. His body jerks once, twice, then falls limp in my grip. I let him slide silently into the dust, already turning for the next.

“Contact!” one of them shouts, voice distorted by a throat modulator.

Too late.

I roar, the sound ripping through the canyon like thunder. Two assassins fire in response—blaster rounds slamming into the stone around me, scorching heat washing my skin. One bolt grazes my shoulder, searing flesh, but pain is fuel now. I surge forward, crossing the gap before their targeting systems can recalibrate.

The first gets a claw through the chest, ribs cracking like brittle wood. He gasps, eyes wide, and I slam his skull against the canyon wall until it shatters.

The second raises his rifle, but I wrench it free, turning it on him. Two blasts. Center mass. The smell of burning meat fills the air. He collapses, smoke curling from the holes in his chest.

“Fall back!” another assassin shouts. But the canyon betrays them.

The explosives I planted scream to life—small charges buried beneath loose rock. The detonations crack like thunder, hurling dust clouds into the air, the shockwave rattling my teeth. The canyon becomes chaos—alarms from their HUDs screeching, their targeting useless in the haze.

Perfect.

I move through the storm, unseen, unheard except for the death I carry. My claws find another throat, hot arterial spraypainting my scales gold in the firelight. He gurgles, claws at me, but I twist until vertebrae snap like dry twigs.

“Show yourself, Kraj!”

Targen’s voice cuts through the chaos—steady, calm, dripping venom. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t panic. He never does.

I snarl back, low and guttural, words scraping from my chest. “You came for blood. You’ll drown in it.”

His laugh echoes, cold and sharp. “That’s the spirit I always liked. You never belonged in shadows, boy. You belonged in slaughter.”

The dust begins to settle, and the last assassin steps into view. Bigger than the others, a brute with arms like steel beams, plated with alloy. His face is half-mask, half scar, a predator’s snarl locked in place. He grips a shock-axe, its blade humming with lethal energy.

I bare my teeth, my own claws dripping.

The canyon narrows to just us. Him. Me. And the war we were born to fight.

I lunge first.