Page 10

I was going stir-crazy. Rhaekar had gone to check the perimeter hours ago, leaving me alone in the bunker with nothing but filtered water, stale rations, and my own increasingly explicit memories of our shared dream to keep me company.

Not ideal for maintaining my already tenuous grip on sanity.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw golden skin and felt phantom hands, heard that gravelly voice whispering “kassari” against my neck.

I’d already tried pacing, but the bunker was too small—five steps this way, six steps that way, bump into a wall, repeat until crazy.

“This is ridiculous,” I announced to the empty room. My voice echoed off the metal walls, bouncing back at me like the universe’s most pathetic conversation partner. “Get it together, Jas.”

I’d already re-inventoried my salvaged gear twice.

My camera was toast—melted beyond repair when I’d first stumbled through the portal.

My satellite phone was equally useless, though I’d managed to save the memory card.

My recorder had survived, surprisingly, though what good audio files would do me on an alien planet was anyone’s guess.

Maybe I could leave my last will and testament.

“Here lies Jasmine Navarro, who died of sexual frustration after dream-banging a cat alien.”

God, I was losing it.

I’d even made a list of possible symptoms of heatstroke, just in case this entire “alien warrior fate-mate” thing was a sunbaked hallucination.

The list included “vivid hallucinations,” “inappropriate sexual attraction to non-humans,” and “believing you’re on another planet.

” Then I deleted the list because it wasn’t helping, especially when the weight of Rhaekar’s body against mine had felt far too real to be a figment of my imagination.

I dragged my hands down my face, groaning. “Focus on something else. Literally anything else.”

So I tried cleaning my boots—what was left of them—and organizing the ration packs by color rather than nutritional value.

I attempted to decipher the alien writing on the equipment panels, which was about as productive as trying to read cat memes in Sanskrit.

I even tried meditating, but every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was Rhaekar’s golden gaze, intense and hungry as he moved above me in that dream.

“Nope!” I shot to my feet, pacing again. “Not going there.”

But my mind went there anyway, replaying the dream in high-definition detail.

The way his claws had lightly scraped my skin without drawing blood.

The raw power in his muscles as he’d held himself above me.

The taste of him—wild and exotic and somehow perfect.

The word he’d called me—kassari. Whatever it meant, he’d said it like a prayer, like something sacred.

And then there was the way we’d fit together, his body filling mine completely, the strange sensation of him swelling inside me, locking us together as we?—

“Okay, that’s it!” I clapped my hands together, trying to shock myself out of the memory. “Inventory. For the third time. Because that’s totally normal and not at all the behavior of someone losing her damn mind.”

By the time the bunker door finally hissed open, I’d graduated from stir-crazy to possibly unhinged. I spun toward the sound, relief warring with irritation as Rhaekar ducked through the entrance.

He looked...incredible. Sweat glistened on his copper skin, making the cheetah-like markings seem to move with each breath.

His hair—longer than a human’s would be, almost mane-like—was windblown and wild, framing his sharp features in a way that shouldn’t have been attractive but absolutely was.

Sand clung to his boots and the lower part of his Legion-issue pants, which did nothing to hide the powerful muscles of his thighs.

I mentally slapped myself. Focus, Jas.

“Well, look who finally decided to return to the land of the living,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “Did you get lost, or were you just avoiding me?”

His golden eyes narrowed slightly. “The perimeter needed checking.”

“For six hours?”

He stepped further into the bunker, the door sliding shut behind him with a soft hiss. He smelled like sun-warmed stone and something spicy I couldn’t identify—distinctly him, distinctly alien, and distinctly driving me insane.

“There was damage to assess. Equipment to salvage.” His gaze swept over me, quick but thorough, as if making sure I was still in one piece. “You are well?”

“Well?” I echoed, incredulous. “No. I’m confused. And I’m pissed. And also a little aroused, which is very inconvenient, thank you.”

His tail twitched sharply behind him, the only betrayal of his otherwise calm exterior.

That tail had featured prominently in several of my more creative daydreams during his absence, and seeing it move sent a jolt of heat through my core that was entirely inappropriate for the serious conversation we needed to have.

“The storm has passed,” he said, moving toward the monitoring station without meeting my eyes. “I needed to ensure the perimeter was intact.”

“Oh, sure.” I followed him, refusing to be ignored. “But no time for the ‘why am I dreaming about you wrapping that tail around me like a weighted blanket from a sex dungeon’ conversation, huh?”

That got his attention. He froze, one clawed hand hovering over the control panel. I saw his back muscles tense beneath his thin shirt, his shoulders going rigid. When he finally turned to face me, his expression was carefully neutral.

“Dreams are not always literal,” he said, each word measured and controlled.

“I think these are,” I countered, stepping closer. I jabbed a finger at his broad chest, feeling the solid heat of him even through that small point of contact. “You’ve been avoiding me. And don’t think I didn’t notice how you won’t even sleep near me anymore.”

Rhaekar remained silent, his jaw clenched tight, those alien eyes giving away nothing. But I could see the thoughts wrestling behind them, calculations and considerations that he wasn’t sharing. It was infuriating.

“The comms are down,” he finally said, turning back to the control panel. “I’ll need to repair the long-range uplink to contact Command.”

“Oh, that’s what we’re doing? Swapping topics now?” I narrowed my eyes, planting myself between him and the console. “Because I’m not a threat, Rhaekar. I’m a grown-ass woman who just wants the truth. What was that dream? Why did it feel so real? Why did you call me... what was it... kassari?”

The word hung between us, charged with significance I didn’t fully understand. His eyes widened fractionally, pupils contracting to slits before expanding again.

“I am protecting you,” he growled, the words rumbling up from his chest.

“From what? Your feelings?”

That earned me a deep, gravelly sigh and a glower aimed at the sand-crusted floor. For a moment, I thought he might actually answer me. His tail swished behind him, betraying his agitation even as his face remained impassive.

But then he stepped around me, careful not to touch me, and began checking the diagnostics on the monitoring station.

“The extraction team will come when communications are restored,” he said, as if we’d been discussing the weather. “They will take you back to Earth.”

“And that’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?” I threw my hands up in exasperation. “What about the dream? What about the fact that we both experienced it? What about?—”

“Enough.” The word cracked like a whip in the confined space. His shoulders heaved with a deep breath before he continued more quietly. “I need to check the auxiliary systems in the equipment shed. There may be parts I can salvage for the communications array.”

With that, he strode toward the door, his long legs carrying him away before I could formulate a suitably scathing response. The door hissed shut behind him, leaving me alone again with my frustration and confusion.

“Fine,” I muttered to the empty bunker. “Be that way. See if I care.”

But I did care. And if he wasn’t going to give me answers, I’d find them myself.

I waited fifteen minutes, making sure he was well and truly occupied with whatever he was doing in the equipment shed.

Then I moved to the monitoring station he’d been so eager to access.

After three days in this bunker, I’d picked up on the basic operational patterns of Legion tech.

It wasn’t so different from the systems I’d hacked for investigative pieces back on Earth—just more advanced.

My fingers hovered over the control panel. What I was about to do definitely crossed a line. But Rhaekar had already vaulted over that line, leaving me in the dark about something that clearly involved me.

“Screw it,” I whispered, pulling my salvaged tablet from my pack.

It had taken a beating in the desert, but the core systems still worked.

More importantly, I’d managed to retrofit it with a universal adapter that would connect to almost any system—a necessary tool for a journalist who often found herself extracting data from less-than-cooperative sources.

I plugged it into a port beneath the main console and waited for the connection.

The tablet screen flickered, then stabilized as it interfaced with the alien tech.

Lines of unfamiliar code scrolled past, but I’d anticipated that.

I activated the translation program I’d been developing for the past two days—a crude thing, but it had already helped me decipher some of the bunker’s basic functions.

“Come on, come on,” I murmured, watching as the program began converting the alien symbols into something I could understand. Not perfect translations, but enough to navigate.

I started with the most recent logs, figuring that’s where I’d find whatever had Rhaekar so on edge. Personnel reports, environmental scans, radiation readings—all routine. But then I found a subfolder labeled with a symbol my program translated roughly as “anomaly” or “threat.”

Bingo.

I tapped the folder, and it opened to reveal a series of sensor readings and video captures. Most were corrupted or incomplete, but one file was intact—a short video clip from what appeared to be a perimeter sensor.

Heart pounding, I opened it.

The footage was grainy, distorted by heat waves and radiation interference.

At first, it showed nothing but the endless dunes of The Burn, rippling under the twin suns.

Then, movement. A shimmer beneath the sand, like something burrowing just under the surface.

The image zoomed in automatically, enhancing.

My breath caught in my throat.

It wasn’t a natural formation. The shape was too deliberate, too structured—like liquid metal flowing in precise patterns. Spidery appendages extended and retracted as it moved, sensing, searching. And it was headed directly toward the bunker.

Toward me.

A data file was attached to the video. I opened it, scanning through the information as my translation program struggled to keep up.

Species D-7-alpha. Recovered designation: The Swarm.

There was more—technical specifications, threat assessments, historical data—but one passage caught my eye:

Known trigger: Unclassified biosignatures. Responds aggressively to non-Legion organic patterns. Appears drawn to new genetic material. Countermeasures required.

My fingers trembled as I continued searching, pulling up older files. The history of The Burn. The war that had scorched this planet. The technology that had nearly consumed an entire civilization before the Legion had contained it.

And then I saw it—a reference to “naturally occurring transdimensional gateways.” Portals. Just like the one I’d fallen through in the Sahara.

The pieces locked together with sickening clarity. The shimmer I’d seen just before touching the strange metal in the desert. The way the sand had moved beneath my feet when I’d first arrived here. The reason Rhaekar had been patrolling this specific area.

The Swarm wasn’t just a relic. It was still alive. Still dangerous.

And somehow, I’d gotten its attention.

I leaned back, my heart hammering against my ribs. Rhaekar hadn’t been avoiding me just because of our shared dream. He’d been trying to protect me from something far worse—something he knew was coming for me specifically.

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered, staring at the screen.

The video played again, showing that sinister shimmer moving inexorably closer to the bunker. According to the timestamp, this footage was from less than an hour ago.

I unplugged my tablet, my mind racing. No more lies. No more deflection. No more hiding behind Legion protocol or whatever passed for professional ethics among alien cat warriors.

He wanted to protect me? Then he better start with the truth.

I marched toward the door, tablet clutched in my hand like a weapon. It was time for Rhaekar Onca to explain exactly what was hunting me—and why he thought keeping me in the dark was any kind of protection at all.