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I found the tech shard buried beneath three meters of sand, its obsidian surface pulsing with malevolent life.

My claws scraped against it, and the sound that resonated up my arm wasn’t physical—it was mental.

A whisper. A hunger. A recognition. The Swarm knew I was here, and worse, it knew she was here too.

The tech fragment wasn’t just active; it was hunting.

I did not panic. Rodinians did not panic.

I simply quickened my pace to a tactical jog and mentally revised our threat level from minor nuisance to imminent, dumbass-level catastrophe.

Because the sensor array had just pinged something alive.

It wasn’t just an echo of old tech. No, this was active.

Searching. The readings spiked with intent that even our most advanced Legion scanners struggled to categorize.

No biological traces. No footsteps. No scent trail.

Just a shimmer of energy pulsing from below the dunes like a heartbeat.

A cold, mechanical, hostile heartbeat. Swarm-adjacent.

Which meant trouble.

I knelt at the coordinates, brushing away the top layer of scorched sand with one clawed hand until something gleamed beneath—slender, obsidian-black, ridged with etching. It pulsed faintly as I touched it.

And I absolutely did not curse out loud like a startled youth.

“Shit.”

Okay, maybe I did.

It was a shard of alien tech. One of theirs. Swarm residue, still alive with energy after all this time. Even buried, even damaged, it hummed with awareness. Hungry. Intelligent. Not ideal.

I extracted the fragment carefully, using a specialized containment tool from my field kit.

The tech responded instantly—coiling tendrils of liquid metal reaching toward my hand before the containment field activated, freezing it in mid-motion.

The sight sent a cold shiver down my spine, memories of the Burn campaign flashing through my mind.

Legionnaires disappearing into the sand.

Whole battalions lost to tech that seemed to melt into their bodies, rewriting flesh and bone into something neither machine nor organic.

The shard I held—barely the length of my forearm—was a fractional piece of a larger system.

An appendage, perhaps. Or a scout probe.

Hard to tell with Swarm tech; it changed function based on need.

Adapted. Evolved. Which was why the Legion had opted to bomb this planet back to the stone age rather than risk further contamination.

Yet here it was. Active. Aware. And drawn straight to our shelter.

Drawn to Jas.

My tail lashed behind me, expressing agitation my face would never betray.

I scanned the surroundings, extending my senses to their limits.

The desert seemed calm, but the tremors beneath the surface told a different story.

The tech wasn’t isolated. There was more—much more—moving beneath the dunes, awakening from dormancy.

The Legion had briefed us extensively on The Swarm before deployment to The Burn.

I’d memorized the threat assessment, the containment protocols, the recommended countermeasures.

But the briefings couldn’t capture the visceral wrongness of the tech—how it seemed to observe you even as you observed it.

How it learned your patterns, anticipated your strategies. How it hungered.

“It doesn’t just consume,” Commander Vex had explained during our pre-mission briefing, his scarred face grim in the holographic light. “It assimilates. Adapts. Uses what it takes to become stronger. The first wave targeted our tech. The second, our bodies. The third...our minds.”

I recalled asking why Legion forces hadn’t simply purged all remnants from the planet’s surface after containment. Why maintain outposts on a world too dangerous to inhabit?

“Because it’s still valuable,” he’d answered, his eyes cold and calculating. “The tech is unlike anything we’ve encountered. If we can harness it—control it—the tactical advantages would be immeasurable.”

So we’d maintained our watch. Patrolled the perimeters. Monitored for signs of activity. And for years, nothing had happened. The Swarm had remained dormant, buried beneath meters of radiation-soaked sand.

Until now. Until Jas.

I secured the containment unit to my belt and rose, brushing sand from my armor.

My scanner indicated the largest concentration of activity was still several kilometers out—converging on our position but not yet an immediate threat.

I had time. Not much, but enough to formulate a plan that didn’t end with Jas dissected by alien tech with a taste for new genetic material.

I made it back to the bunker with only minimal muttering.

She wasn’t in the main chamber. Probably trying to avoid me as much as I did her after my speech earlier.

The thought brought a twist of something uncomfortable to my chest—regret, perhaps.

Or guilt. Neither emotion had a place in Reaper training, yet here they were, making themselves comfortable in my conscience.

I upgraded the security protocols, rerouted the shielding nodes, and triple-checked the perimeter defense mesh.

To the casual observer, I appeared focused, efficient, controlled.

Inside, I was calculating fourteen different scenarios for evacuation, twelve of which ended with me carrying Jas through a Swarm-infested desert while she complained about my communication skills.

I looked like a male seconds from murder—or mating. Or both.

Perfectly calm.

Absolutely not imagining her soft little human body draped over my bunk again, whispering in her husky voice that she trusted me. That she wanted me.

I grunted and scrubbed a hand down my face.

This was ridiculous. I was a Legion Reaper, one of the most elite soldiers in the known galaxy.

I’d faced down hive queens and come back with nothing but a scratch.

I’d infiltrated hostile territories with nothing but my claws and my wits.

I should not be this affected by one small human female with a penchant for asking questions I couldn’t answer.

And yet.

She would not get marked by the Swarm. Not on my watch. I would burn the desert to glass before I let that happen.

I input the final security override, then moved to the communications array.

The damage from the storm was extensive, but not irreparable.

I could bypass the main circuits, reroute through the secondary relay, and establish a narrow- band transmission.

Enough to alert Command to our situation. Enough to request immediate extraction.

My fingers moved swiftly over the controls, bypassing damaged sectors and implementing field repairs that weren’t exactly regulation but would serve our immediate needs.

All the while, my senses remained attuned to Jas—her heartbeat, her breathing, the subtle shifts in her scent that telegraphed her emotional state more clearly than any words.

She was angry. Frustrated. But beneath that, there was fear. Not of me—never of me, which was both gratifying and infuriating given the circumstances—but of the unknown. Of the situation she found herself in. A situation I had failed to adequately explain.

Because how could I? How could I tell her that she’d stumbled through a portal onto a quarantine world, awakened dormant tech that now seemed fixated on her unique biosignature, and, oh yes, also happened to be my cosmic soulmate according to ancient Rodinian tradition?

That we were bound by fate through dreams that would only grow more intense, more real, until we either completed the bond or rejected it entirely?

She might not understand yet what she was to me. Might not be ready to hear words like kassari or lifebond or please stop doing sexy things with your voice when you’re mad at me, but that didn’t matter.

She was mine.

And I protected what was mine.

Even if that meant shielding her from the truth… and from herself.

The communication array sparked, then hummed to life.

A small victory. I programmed a distress signal, embedding our coordinates and a priority-one extraction request. The message would transmit on a secure Legion frequency, bouncing between relay stations until it reached Command.

Response time would depend on available resources and proximity of extraction teams.

Hours, at minimum. More likely a full rotation. Time we might not have, given the increasing activity beneath the dunes.

I turned back to the monitoring station, checking the perimeter sensors again.

The activity had intensified—multiple signals now, converging from different directions.

The Swarm was coordinating, communicating through whatever network still existed beneath the surface.

Planning. My jaw tightened. We needed to move.

The bunker’s defenses were formidable, but not designed to withstand a concentrated Swarm assault.

I gathered essential supplies—emergency rations, water purifiers, medical kit, weapons.

Only the necessities. Anything that would slow us down stayed behind.

My mind ran through escape routes, calculating risks and variables with cold efficiency.

The old mining tunnels to the east offered the best chance—their reinforced walls might shield us from the Swarm’s sensors long enough to reach the secondary extraction point.

From there, if the communications array had successfully transmitted our distress signal, a Legion shuttle could retrieve us. If not... well, I had contingencies for that too. None particularly pleasant, but survival rarely was.

I checked my weapons—plasma rifle charged and ready, sidearm secured, combat blades sharpened to molecular precision. The weight of them was reassuring, grounding. Whatever came for us, I would be ready.

A sound at the door drew my attention—the soft pad of bare feet on metal. Jas. My body reacted instantly to her proximity, muscles tensing, senses sharpening. I inhaled deeply, taking in her scent—citrus and spice, underlaid with the sharp tang of adrenaline.

She’d been avoiding me, yes, but not idly. She’d been busy. I could smell the distinctive ozone trace of the monitoring station’s interfaces on her skin. She’d been accessing the systems.

Clever, resourceful human. Of course she had.

Which meant she knew. Not everything, perhaps, but enough. Enough to be angry. Enough to demand answers I wasn’t sure how to give.

I sighed, bracing myself for the confrontation that was about to happen.

For the accusations of deception, the demands for truth, the righteous anger that would flash in those dark eyes.

All justified. All deserved. And all spectacularly ill-timed given the mechanical death currently tunneling toward us through the sand.

But I would tell her. Everything. The Swarm.

The danger. Our bond. I’d lay it all bare—once I got her to safety.

Once I knew she could hear the truth without the immediate threat of death or assimilation looming over her head.

Once I could be sure she was choosing with clear eyes and a clear mind, not out of fear or necessity.

At least that’s what I told myself as I heard her approach. That I was waiting for the right moment. The safe moment. That I wasn’t simply a coward afraid of rejection from the one being in the universe fate had chosen for me.

She might not forgive me for the deception. She might laugh in my face at the very concept of fate mates and cosmic bonds. She might walk away once we returned to her world, never looking back, leaving me to an eternity of knowing what I’d found and lost.

But she would be alive to make that choice. And that was what mattered.

I squared my shoulders, turning to face the door as it slid open. My fate mate stood framed in the entrance, tablet clutched in one hand, eyes blazing with determination and betrayal. Beautiful. Fierce. Alive.

Stars help me.

She was going to be the death of me.

And I’d die grinning.