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The first shot from the drone sizzled past my ear like a cosmic mosquito with anger management issues, close enough that I felt the heat ripple through my hair.

I dropped to my knees behind the half-buried Legion turret, swearing in every language I knew—which, admittedly, was just English plus the three Rodinian curse words Rhaekar had taught me.

Sand cascaded into my boots as I frantically pried open the control panel.

The wiring inside looked like a technological spaghetti nightmare, all corroded connections and fried circuits that had been baking in alien desert heat for who knows how long.

I was not trained for this.

I mean, sure, I could dig into ancient internet forums about skinwalkers and rogue AI sightings in the Nevada desert like nobody’s business. But rigging up a half-dead Legion defense turret in the middle of a sandstorm while an alien death Roomba chased us? Yeah. That was new.

“Okay, old turret,” I whispered, crouched behind the partially buried control panel with wires like angry noodles and more sand in my bra than should be legally allowed, “it’s just you, me, and whatever leftover tech magic the galaxy forgot to unplug.”

Somewhere behind me, a plasma blast scorched the sand.

The thing—the ancient alien drone that had apparently decided I was today’s main character—hovered closer.

Its skeletal frame gleamed under the twin suns, sensor array glowing that sickly green that screamed “I’m going to dissect you for science and not in the fun way. ”

We’d spotted the half-buried Legion outpost just twenty minutes after leaving our previous position.

Rhaekar had recognized it immediately—an emergency bunker from the original Swarm containment campaign, mostly buried by decades of shifting sands.

He’d decided it might offer temporary shelter and potentially useful equipment for our journey to the extraction point.

What we hadn’t counted on was being followed so quickly.

The drone had appeared just as we’d cleared enough sand to access the bunker’s entrance. Bigger than the one we’d destroyed earlier, this unit moved with more purpose, its targeting systems locking onto me with deadly precision the moment it crested the dune.

Rhaekar had shoved me toward the half-exposed defense turret with a growled instruction to “make it work” while he drew the drone’s fire. Which, in Rhaekar-speak, meant “I’m going to play tag with a murder machine while you figure out billion-year-old technology, no pressure.”

And Rhaekar? Of course he was busy playing meat shield.

He leapt over a dune like some post-apocalyptic gladiator, deflecting a shot with the shield rigged to his arm and snarling something probably heroic in his deep gravel-voice. Sexy as hell. Infuriating.

“Stop trying to die in slow motion!” I shouted, fingers untangling what I hoped was the turret’s main power coupling.

“I am distracting it!” he barked back, rolling behind a rock formation as another blast superheated the air where he’d been standing.

“By bleeding on everything?!”

And he was bleeding—a thin trail of darkish blood streaking down his arm where a previous shot had grazed him.

Not enough to slow him down, but enough to make my heart clench with protective fury.

Through our bond, I could feel his determination, his focus, and beneath it all, a steady current of fear—not for himself, but for me.

Another spark jumped from the wiring I was finessing like a very hot, very annoyed MacGyver. My fingers were shaking. The heatwave had turned the control panel into a toaster oven. My thighs were on fire. My temper? Already fried.

I connected what looked like a power conduit to the main relay, mentally thanking whatever cosmic entity was responsible for making alien tech work on roughly the same principles as Earth electronics. Red to red, blue to blue, don’t touch the glowy bit that’s probably radioactive. Simple.

“Come on, you beautiful piece of junk,” I muttered, forcing my trembling hands to steady. “Wake up and show me what you’re made of.”

The drone fired again, this time hitting close enough to shower me with sand. I yelped, ducking lower behind the turret’s base. Through the bond, I felt Rhaekar’s spike of panic, followed by the cold fury that meant he was about to do something stupidly heroic.

“Don’t you dare!” I shouted, knowing exactly what he was thinking. “Stay behind cover!”

Too late. He was already moving, drawing the drone’s attention with a display of Rodinian agility that under different circumstances would have been breathtaking to watch. He rolled, sprang upward, and flung a piece of debris at the drone’s sensor array with deadly accuracy.

It connected with a satisfying clang, knocking the drone off-balance for a precious few seconds.

But the victory was short-lived. The drone recovered quickly, recalibrating its targeting systems with mechanical efficiency.

Its next shot caught Rhaekar as he was mid-dodge, searing across his side in a flash of green energy.

I felt the pain through our bond—sharp, hot, then deliberately muted as he shielded me from the worst of it. That selfless gesture made me want to kiss him and kick his ass in equal measure.

“I swear to god, Rhaekar, if you die before I get to show you Netflix and actual Earth tacos, I will personally drag you back from whatever alien afterlife you have just to yell at you!”

His response was a grunt of pain followed by a rumbling chuckle that, despite everything, made my stomach do that stupid little flip it always did when he laughed.

“I look forward to these... tacos,” he called back, the words strained but determined.

“Then stop getting shot!” I wedged my hand deeper into the control panel, feeling for the activation switch I was certain had to exist. Legion tech was nothing if not practical—there had to be a manual override, a backup system, something I could...

My fingers brushed against a recessed panel. Bingo.

“I swear, if this turret doesn’t fire?—”

The panel lit up beneath my palm, ancient systems humming to life with a sound like an old refrigerator contemplating retirement.

“Oh thank god.” I slammed my palm on the activation plate, and the turret groaned to life like a pissed-off dinosaur coming out of retirement. It rotated, sensors scanning, mechanisms whirring as it oriented itself.

For one horrible moment, I thought it might target Rhaekar instead of the drone. But the Legion programming held—it recognized the drone as a threat, locked on with a series of staccato beeps, and fired.

Direct hit.

The drone staggered mid-air, green light pulsing erratically as the turret’s energy beam tore through its central processing core. It popped, sparked, made a sound like a dial-up modem having an existential crisis—and collapsed in a gloriously dramatic heap of twitching metal limbs.

I jumped up, triumphant. “Who’s the boss now, huh? Me! That’s who!”

Pride surged through me, amplified by the relief flowing through our bond from Rhaekar. I’d done it. I’d taken down one of these nightmare machines with nothing but some wire-crossing and determination. Not bad for a human journalist who’d never even changed the oil in her own car.

But the victory dance was short-lived because Rhaekar collapsed two seconds later, his tall frame crumpling to the sand like a marionette with cut strings.

“Rhaekar!” Terror seized my chest as I scrambled over the dunes toward him. Through our bond, I felt his pain—no longer muted but sharp and pulsing, his consciousness flickering like a faltering light. “No, no, no...”

“Hey! No dying!” I dropped to my knees beside him, catching his massive frame before he face-planted in the sand.

The wound along his side was worse than I’d thought—a deep, scorched furrow that had burned through his combat suit and into the flesh beneath.

Blood seeped slowly from the edges, dark against his copper-toned skin.

“You are not allowed to die after that stunt. Or ever. That’s the deal. ”

His lip curled in a weak smirk, those golden eyes finding mine with effort. “Would’ve died happy.”

“Not on my watch, desert daddy,” I growled, heaving him up with all the strength I could muster and dragging him back toward the shelter like a warrior with zero upper body strength and one giant alien boyfriend.

My arms screamed in protest, but adrenaline and sheer stubborn determination kept me moving.

The bunker entrance gaped ahead, partially cleared of sand during our earlier efforts. Just twenty more feet. Fifteen. Ten.

He stumbled, barely keeping upright, his weight threatening to take us both down. “My mate,” he murmured, voice slurred with pain. “Fierce little human...”

“Damn straight,” I puffed, nearly collapsing under his weight. “You try to bleed out on me again and I’ll staple your wounds shut myself.”

We finally made it to the bunker. I got him inside, grateful for the relative coolness compared to the scorching desert heat. The space was small but functional—a standard Legion emergency outpost with basic survival equipment, a communications array, and most importantly, a medical station.

I dumped him onto the nearest med mat, wincing at his grunt of pain, and immediately activated every healing protocol I could find.

The systems were old but operational, humming to life with the same reluctant energy as the turret outside.

A holographic display flickered above Rhaekar’s prone form, showing a schematic of his body with the damaged areas highlighted in angry red.

“Multiple thermal lacerations to the torso,” the automated system announced in a voice that sounded like it had been gargling sand for a decade. “Moderate blood loss. Administering cellular regeneration protocol.”

I hovered anxiously as the med station deployed a series of slender arms tipped with instruments I didn’t recognize. They moved with precision over Rhaekar’s wound, applying something that looked like liquid silver, sealing the damaged tissue with methodical efficiency.

Through our bond, I felt his pain begin to ease, replaced by a floating sensation that suggested the system had administered some form of painkiller. His thoughts brushed against mine—jumbled but tender, filled with relief that I was safe and a fierce pride in what I’d accomplished.

Rhaekar blinked up at me, dazed. “You saved me.”

I brushed damp hair off his forehead, marveling at how soft it was despite its wild appearance. “That’s what mates do, right?”

He smiled, slow and reverent. “Mine.”

And despite the aching muscles, the scorched boots, and the mild concussion I was probably rocking—I grinned back.

“Yours.”

For now.

And forever.

I settled beside him on the med mat, careful not to disturb the healing systems still working on his wound. My fingers intertwined with his, our bond humming with contentment despite the chaos surrounding us.

“So much for making good time to the extraction point,” I said, glancing at the bunker’s chronometer. We’d lost at least an hour to this detour, and Rhaekar would need time to recover before we could travel safely.

“We will make it,” he assured me, his thumb tracing circles on my palm. “This bunker has transport capabilities. Once the systems are fully activated.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Transport capabilities? You mean like a vehicle?”

“Of sorts.” His eyes drifted closed, fatigue evident in every line of his body. “Short-range teleportation grid. Can get us... closer to Delta-Nine-Seven.”

Hope flared in my chest. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“Most outposts... systems dead. Didn’t expect this one... functional.” His words slurred as the medication pulled him toward sleep. “You... remarkable. Making things work.”

I smiled softly, leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead. “Rest. I’ll check out this teleportation grid while the med station does its thing.”

He nodded, already drifting off, his hand still clutching mine as if afraid I might vanish if he let go.

I waited until his breathing deepened, then gently extracted my hand and moved to the bunker’s main console.

Like everything else in this forgotten outpost, it was covered in a fine layer of sand and showed signs of long disuse.

But if I’d learned anything in the past few hours, it was that Legion tech was built to last.

The console responded to my touch with a reluctant flicker of lights. Systems that had been dormant for decades sluggishly came online, one by one. Environmental controls. Communication arrays. Defense protocols.

And there, at the bottom of the list: Transport Grid.

I tapped the option, holding my breath as the system processed the request. A schematic appeared, showing the bunker’s location relative to a network of similar outposts scattered across the desert.

Most were marked in gray—offline or destroyed.

But three glowed with a faint blue light, indicating operational status.

And one of them—Outpost Delta-Eight-Four—was just two miles from our extraction coordinates.

“Jackpot,” I whispered, hope rising in my chest like a bubble.

If I could get the teleportation grid working, we could bypass the expanding Swarm network altogether.

Jump directly to Delta-Eight-Four and make our way to the extraction point from there.

We’d arrive with time to spare, and Rhaekar wouldn’t have to push his injured body through miles of hostile desert.

I glanced back at his sleeping form, his face relaxed in a way I rarely saw when he was awake. Always vigilant, always protective. Always putting himself between me and danger without a second thought.

Well, this time I’d be the one doing the protecting.

I rolled up my sleeves, cracked my knuckles, and set to work. The teleportation grid needed power—more than the bunker’s aging systems could currently provide. But with a little creative rewiring and maybe some energy siphoned from that defense turret outside...

I smiled to myself, already planning the next impossible task. Because that’s what mates did—they saved each other, over and over again, finding ways through problems that seemed insurmountable.

And I’d be damned if I was going to let a little thing like ancient alien technology stop me from getting my mate to safety.

“Hang tight, big guy,” I murmured, fingers already busy with the console’s innards. “Your fierce little human’s got this one covered.”