Page 15 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)

SILENCE FOLLOWED Locus like a shadow that refused to lift. The ground behind was a wrecked arena of twisted limbs and torn hide, the last heat of life bleeding into trampledsoil.

Ash clung to the air and the scent of acid still bit the back of his throat. Hannah kept pace beside him, shoulders stiff, mouth set in a line that told him she would rather break than show how close she had come toit.

He wouldn’t let her break. Not here. Not with everyone watching.

Above them, adrone whirred into position.

The headman’s voice crackled through its speaker, harsh and mocking, carrying over the field of corpses.

“You have earned a respite, alien. Fresh water flows at a nearby stream. For this night, no more predators will be loosed. You fought well enough to deserve both. Enjoy it while you can. Tomorrow, the game changes.” The drone hovered a moment longer, then veered away, its hum fading back into the preserve.

Hannah exhaled cautiously, watching the machine disappear. “Do we trust him?” she asked, doubt thick in hertone.

Locus shook his head once. “Not trust. Calculation. He would not poison the water. He earns nothing if we die outside the trial.”

She considered that, lips pressing together. “So he needs us alive long enough for the wagers. For the real show.”

“Affirmative,” Locus said. His gaze swept the tree line before returning to her. “Therefore, the water we find is safe tonight. His profit lies in seeing us bleed when the crowd can watch and place bets.”

Hannah’s laugh came short and humorless. “Wonderful. Our lives are worth more to him if he drags it out. That’s the only reason we’re breathing.”

“It is enough,” he answered. “Enough to drink. Enough to live one more night.”

Locus crouched by one of the Skarrin, the only beast whose flesh wouldn’t poison her.

The bone knife he’d just finished fit his palm like a remembered oath.

He cut with efficiency born of training and need.

Hide parted. Steam lifted in tight curls.

Muscle reluctantly gave beneath the blade.

He separated clean strips and wrapped them in broad leaves, tying each with sinew he braided without thinking.

He didn’t rush. He didn’t waste. He didn’t allow his hands to pause.

“You’re really doing that?” Hannah asked. Her voice was uneven from too little water and too much shouting during their battles.

“I am.” He lifted the next parcel and set it with the others. “You will eat.”

She tried for humor and hit tired instead. “Romantic.”

“It is survival.” He rose. When her knees went loose for a breath, his hand found the curve of her waist. She startled and then steadied into the pressure. He liked the heat of her there more than he should have. He removed his hand and kept it hovering, ready to brace if she faltered again.

They left the corpses in an arc that took them away from trampled ground and churned mud. Every few strides Locus scanned behind them, then above, then forward again. No shapes moved in the periphery. No rustle betrayed a late threat. He still watched. Habit saved warriors. Complacency fed pyres.

Hannah kept her gaze forward. The copper tang of blood had sunk into her skin and hair.

He wanted the scent off her. He wanted clean water and a clean place where she could put her cheek to his chest and breathe something other than death.

He didn’t let the want distract him. Want didn’t change distance. Stepsdid.

The earth softened. Air shifted from scorched to damp. Apale sheen opened through the trees, water holding light like a hiddeneye.

The stream formed a small pool cupped in rock, before tumbling onward, edged with short reeds and pale stones rubbed smooth by centuries of patient flow. No slick of oil marred the surface. No algae bloomed with the wrong shade.

“So the headman didn’t lie,” Hannah whispered, crouching beside him, her fingers trailing the surface of the pool. Her voice carried both relief and suspicion, as if she didn’t fully trust the clean water.

“He did not,” Locus answered. His tone was flat, but his gaze remained sharp as he studied the still surface. “But I do not rely on promises. Itest. Always.” Locus still approached like a soldier entering a room that might hold a knife.

He crouched and dipped fingers, then palm. Cool. Clean. No bite of metal or sourness of rot. He filled Hannah’s canteen first and held it out. “Drink.”

She studied him as if she would find the trap in his face. “And if it isn’t safe?”

“Then we die together.” He wasn’t being cruel. He was being honest.

Something in her eyes broke and softened at once, like ice cracking beneath sun.

She lifted the canteen and tipped her head back.

Her throat worked. He watched the long swallow as if it were a miracle given shape.

Color climbed her cheeks as the water hit her gut.

She lowered the vessel and pressed her lips together against a shaky breath she didn’t want him to hear. He heard it anyway.

He drank next. Cold slid down his throat and spread across his chest like a stone cooling under rain.

He refilled both canteens, then set them on the flat rock at his knee.

The pool reflected him in erratic shards.

Cropped white hair gone darker with grime and sweat, amethyst eyes too bright against bronze skin, the faint, fine ridges along his temples that betrayed what he was to anyone who knew the marks.

He didn’t look away. He’d already seen Hannah’s fear and she hadn’t turned from him.

That was enough. The reflection staring back at him in the pool might’ve unsettled another, but to him it meant only one thing—that he was still here, still alive to guard her.

What he couldn’t face was the thought of absence, of nothing at all where his image and his purpose shouldbe.

Hannah knelt, cupped water in both hands, and brought it to her mouth.

Then she began to scrub, arms first, hard enough to redden skin, then neck and collarbone.

She hissed at the sting where shallow cuts crisscrossed her flesh.

He moved before she asked, his hand bracing her forearm so she didn’t slip.

She didn’t thank him. She didn’t need to.

The thanks lived in the way she leaned into his support instead of away fromit.

She scooped more water, and he joined her, both of them stepping carefully into the pool until the chill reached their thighs.

At first they washed in silence, each focused on rinsing blood and filth away.

Then her gaze lifted. He saw it, the flicker of hesitation, before she reached to trail her hand across his shoulder.

“Turn,” she said softly. “I’ll wash your back and rinse away the blood.”

He obeyed. Her palms smoothed water over him, cleaning grime from ridges of muscle, her touch tentative at first and then firmer, as if the act steadied her as much as it steadied him. Heat stirred beneath his skin even though the water wascold.

When he turned back, he caught her wrists and returned the favor, sliding his hands across her shoulders, down her arms. Water poured from his palms in clean sheets, carrying away brown and red in ribbons that flowed downstream.

Her skin was warm and sleek under his touch, fine muscle shifting when she breathed.

A tremor ran through her, and he paused. “Cold?”

“Not cold,” she whispered, breathless, “Just… you.”

Their eyes locked. He cupped her chin, thumb grazing the corner of her mouth, and bent.

Their lips brushed, testing, then deepened, water lapping against their bodies as they pressed closer.

Her hands flattened against his chest, fingers curling into his damp skin.

Heat coiled hard and fast, every nerve alive.

Then she broke the kiss with a gasp, stepping back, water rippling around her. “Not here,” she said, glancing skyward for any stray drones, her voice shaking with both want and restraint.

He stilled, every muscle taut, and nodded once. “I will wait.”

They finished rinsing in silence, slower now, aware of the tension that still shimmered between them.

When they climbed back onto the bank, droplets trailing down their skin, the air around them charged.

He could’ve pretended not to notice her gaze lingering on him.

He didn’t. He allowed himself the briefest quiet satisfaction and then stored it away. Warmth could be banked like coals.

“Do you miss it?” she asked, gaze on his. “Your home.”

He didn’t answer at once. Past and present slid against each other in the water’s reflection until neither held more truth than the other. “No,” he said finally. “I miss nothing that is behind me.” He let the space hang and then added, “I want what is in front of me.”

She looked at him. “And what is that?”

“You. Alive.” His voice didn’t rise. He didn’t turn the words into a vow. He didn’t need to. His hands had already sworn it for him a dozen times tonight.

Together they gathered deadfall and stripped it.

Locus split thicker branches over his thigh with a wet crack before collecting the Ashmaw’s acid gland, carrying it in a cup of tree bark like a small, vicious heart.

He cut it carefully and let the liquid thread across the kindling.

It smoked where it fell. Asingle hard strike of stone to stone gave spark.

Flame found vapor and roared to life. Heat pushed against his face. Grease would add to itsoon.

Hannah flinched at the flash. “You’re sure that won’t blow us up?”

“Affirmative.” He set a larger branch, then another. “If it does, Iwill stand between you and the fire.”

She blinked. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am.”

“Of course you are.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Why am I arguing with a man who thinks like a machine?”