Page 6 of Claimed by the Alien Assassin

DAYN

I ’m leaning against the bar when she returns—boot soles tapping out a rhythm that quickens the pulse in my ears. The flicker of neon sends shadows across her face, and I can’t think of a reason not to stand. Not one that holds.

She pushes through the crowd, that scent of burnt ozone and adrenaline chasing her steps toward me. The air changes when she’s close—tight and tense, like the moment just before a lock clicks shut.

I let her sit without a word, but I don’t move. My coat’s still heavy around her body shape, the static whisper of undisclosed things lingering in the fibers. I don’t know how to say it aloud, but I can’t turn away.

“Thought you might not come back,” she says quietly. Her voice is raw now—not angry, not pleading—but honest. Vulnerable. It feels like an injury.

“Here,” I murmur, nodding toward the bar. The droid obliges with a bottle and two chipped glasses. She picks hers up, holds the booze like it’s a lifeline.

I stare at the amber liquid, then at her. “You know, this isn’t what I do.”

Her eyes flick up. Flames smolder behind them—bright, dangerous. “I know. I never said I wanted an assassin, Dayn.”

I raise my gaze, meeting that fire with steel. “But you need one.”

Her eyebrows lift. She takes a long drink, tilting her neck back as if savoring courage. When she sets it down, she had a bruise blooming near her temple. Deep purple.

“How many guys tossed you tonight?” I ask, concern threatening to break the code of silence I live in.

“Three,” she says. “One I saw coming.”

I weigh her words. Pain should slow her, but it didn’t. That’s something else entirely. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

Her defiance doesn’t surprise me. But her naked tenacity—her insistence on not backing down—pinches something unbearably familiar. Something starved.

I pull out a data-chip and push it across the bar. “This has coordinates, frequencies, planetary scans. The location of your shuttle, fuel, transponder health.”

Her fingers hover. She picks it up, opens her palm. “You built this?”

“Fixed it, at least.”

She stares at the chip like it’s a promise.

I clear my throat. “I don’t do rescue missions.”

She meets my gaze. Eyes serious, wet with commitment. “I know.”

But I can feel the conformity of it—the tie that binds. Something primal, deep-rooted, pushing me forward even when the rational part of me screams to walk away.

Jalshagar. The word flares through me like a sigil burning on bone. Ancient. Immovable. Unfathomable.

She shouldn’t have that power over me.

But she does.

I slam my glass down. “Fine. I’ll help.”

She blinks. I see hope flicker, then steel. “We leave tonight.”

Night already falling fast, but the station’s clock delays reckoning. I index my wrist-pad. Fuel levels are stable. Shields are at ninety-three percent. Just enough for a stealth run.

“Ship’s ready,” I say.

Her lips quirk into a half-smile. “You ever lead anything?”

For a heartbeat, I don’t answer. Because I’ve never done more than kill and vanish. “No.”

“Then don’t lead this,” she says quietly. “Just show up when I need a blade.”

My stomach knots. Because she’s not asking me for protection. She’s offering me something more—purpose.

And I swallow hard. “Deal.”

She stands then, voice low. “I’ll get the people.”

I lean in. “You’ll need more than courage.”

She nods, determination carved in her eyes. “I’ve got fire.”

I pause, searching her face. It’s not bravery or defiance I see—it’s home . Something I haven’t felt in decades.

I nod. “We’ll build from that.”

Tonight, I won’t be just a killer in the shadows.

Tonight, I’ll be her steel.

She walks away like she owns the corridor. Like her spine’s made of star-forged alloy and her pride’s more oxygen than blood. I tell myself to let her go.

I don’t.

I tell myself again—this isn’t my war, this isn’t my fight, this isn’t me —and yet, my boots move without permission, treading the filth-stained metal plates where countless others have scurried or died.

The station air clings to everything, thick with carbon exhaust and old fear.

The kind that leaves a taste on the back of your tongue like rust and old regret.

She rounds a corner, and I lag behind just enough to stay unseen. Not that I’d be missed. The mercs part for me like a tide breaking against rock. Not because I’m respected. Fear isn’t reverence.

It’s obedience. Cold and temporary.

Some make the mistake of holding eye contact too long. I hold it longer. Until they remember what I am and look away.

She doesn’t.

She never has.

I find her in the lower docking ring, hunched over a half-dead console that’s projecting a flickering holomap.

It’s just her and a sphere of cold blue light in the middle of chaos—like a star lost in the void.

Her hair’s tied back in a messy knot that keeps falling out of place, and her fingers move across the controls with the mechanical efficiency of someone too angry to slow down.

She’s talking under her breath. Numbers. Vectors. Defensive arrays. Calculating a miracle with the voice of someone too proud to beg for one.

I stand behind her for a full ten seconds before I say anything. I watch her shoulders stiffen when she senses me. I can feel the tension in her spine even before she turns.

“Here to tell me again how this isn’t your war?” she asks without looking. Her voice is tight, but there’s a tremble in it she can’t quite smother.

I take a step closer. Lean down just enough to speak low, right at the shell of her ear.

“Maybe I don’t do wars,” I murmur. “But I do retribution.”

She freezes. The holomap flickers. My words hang in the air between us like plasma smoke, curling and catching.

She turns slowly, and our eyes lock.

Something flickers there—hope, maybe. Or exhaustion. Or both. Her lips part, and for once, she doesn’t know what to say.

So I fill the silence.

“You’ve got a colony full of civilians, limited artillery, one mid-range ship, and a fading orbital relay. The Vortaxians have a capital vessel, ground troops, and a perimeter that’s probably scanning every micron of surface within a thousand-kilometer radius. On paper, you’re already dead.”

“Gee, thanks for the pep talk,” she says.

“But they haven’t broken your spirit yet,” I continue, voice low. “And that’s more dangerous than you think. They want fear. They expect surrender. Give them something they don’t see coming.”

Her eyes narrow. “You offering strategy now, too?”

I shrug. “I’m offering me. ”

The words come out before I can censor them. And that… that is dangerous. That’s not who I am.

But she smiles. Just a little.

“What changed your mind?” she asks.

I don’t answer right away. I let the moment stretch until her smile falters under the weight of it.

“I’ve seen war,” I say, finally. “I’ve made war. Alone. In the dark. Because I had no one left who could look me in the eye and say I matter. But you—you looked at me like I wasn’t a weapon.”

“You caught me like I was more than cargo.”

“Because you are.”

The silence after that is loud. The station hums in the walls. The holomap continues to spin, revealing terrain shifts and defense points on Snowblossom’s surface. None of it matters as much as the heat between us right now—raw and tethered and hungry for something it doesn’t know how to name.

Her voice is quieter when it returns. “What’s the first move?”

I step beside her, reaching across her to tap the eastern ridge projection. “Here. Their radar’s weak. We land at night, mask our thermal signatures.”

“And then?”

“We build an army. One mind at a time.”

She laughs—low and disbelieving. “You sure you’re not just here to look good and kill people?”

I smirk. “That too.”

Then she does something I don’t expect.

She leans against me.

Just a fraction of weight. Just enough to feel real.

And I realize I don’t mind it. Not at all.

Her eyes widen, full of light, raw and staggering. There’s no masking it—not even behind the shield of exhaustion or that stubborn twist in her lips. The hope I see there isn’t tentative.

It’s feral.

And it hits me like a slug to the gut.

Not because I’ve given her something she’s been denied—though that’s true—but because of what I see buried in that gaze.

She’s not looking at a hired gun. Not even a partner.

She’s looking at me like I’m hers . Like the broken, jagged pieces of who I’ve become might still fit into something worth holding.

And that’s dangerous. That’s lethal.

My jaw flexes as I look away, swallowing down the instinct to disappear. I’ve done that before. Slipped into shadows. Made myself smoke. That’s always been the plan: do the job, vanish, rinse, repeat.

But this woman… she makes me stay.

“I’ll help you,” I say, and my voice is quiet, but it doesn’t shake. “I’ll help you get your colony back.”

Josie’s breath catches, lashes fluttering like she’s not sure she heard right. But her body says she did—tense and trembling like she’s bracing for another loss she somehow didn’t suffer.

I keep going, because if I don’t now, I never will.

“Not because it’s right,” I say, and she flinches, just a little.

“Not because you believe in the cause?” she whispers.

I meet her eyes again, and something in me pulls taut. “Because your voice won’t leave my head. Because you looked at me like I wasn’t made for killing. Because when you fell into my lap, it didn’t feel like coincidence. It felt like gravity.”

The words should feel foreign in my mouth, but they don’t. They settle into the space between us, heavy and sharp-edged. I don’t care who hears. I don’t care what it costs.

She takes a step toward me. Not cautious. Not testing.

Sure.

“You’re not a general,” she says, like she’s confirming a fact I never offered. “You’re not a leader.”

“No.”

“You’re not a savior.”

I shake my head slowly. “Not even close.”

“But you’re here. ” Her voice cracks. “You stayed.”

I reach out before I know I’m doing it. Fingers grazing her cheek, down the line of her jaw. Her skin is warm—so warm—like her whole body’s on fire with whatever madness keeps her moving.

She doesn’t pull away.

“You stayed,” she repeats, softer this time, almost reverent.

I lean in, forehead brushing hers for a heartbeat.

“You make it hard to leave.”

A beat.

Then another.

Her breath hits my mouth—sweet and ragged.

And then she exhales. “Okay.”

I blink. “Okay?”

“That’s all I needed,” she says. “Just someone who won’t vanish the second it gets messy.”

I almost laugh. “I don’t vanish. I erase.”

“Well,” she says, stepping back, “I’m asking you to write something this time.”

I stare at her, letting the words settle like gravity dust.

Maybe I’m not the monster I used to be.

Maybe with her, I’m something else.