Page 25 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)

“LET ME knock.” Hannah’s voice was steady until the last word. Then it thinned, hope and fear rubbing itraw.

Locus placed his palm against the doorframe and let his weight settle into the wood.

The grain vibrated faintly beneath his skin, the house itself alive with tiny sounds.

Pipes ticked. Floorboards creaked from old nails settling.

Somewhere inside, awoman tried not to cry and failed.

The air smelled like coffee and lemon cleaner and a memory he didn’town.

“Stand behind me,” he said, quiet but absolute. “If there is danger, you will not be seen first.”

“I want them to see me first.”

“I know. Let me see for you.”

He didn’t knock. He pressed his fingertips into the thin seam between door and jamb and felt the simple deadbolt, the human iron bar.

The restraint in him reached for violence and stopped because she wanted this to begin with grace.

He let his hand fall. He breathed slow and even, building a wall inside his chest to keep the roaraway.

Her fingers slid into his, small and damp with nerves.

The touch ran electricity through him. She’d touched him plenty now, skin to skin, mouth to mouth, bruising need in dark showers and in the clean sheets of a room that didn’t belong to them.

This was different. Her hand trembled.A warrior learned to note every tremor in the body he guarded. He knew the shaking wouldn’tlast.

For a fleeting second she glanced at his human guise, the softened features and dulled angles, and whispered, “You look strange like this—too much like someone else’s face wearing you.”

The words landed sharp. He disliked the disguise already, but hearing her say it only confirmed that the mask was wrong. Still, her honesty steadied him. He held himself still, taking her words not as a wound but as a reminder that she saw him clearly through the false mask he would soonshed.

The deadbolt rasped. The door opened a hand’s width. Awoman’s face filled the gap. Pale from weeks of fear and sleeplessness. Eyes red and swollen, lashes clumped. She saw Hannah, gave a choked sound, and tore the door open like muscle could tear grief.

“Hannah.” Her mother stumbled across the threshold, palms open. She didn’t look at Locus at all. She pressed her hands to her daughter’s cheeks as if checking a fever, as if Hannah might burn away in front of her if she didn’t hold tight. Then she seized her and clutched her hard enough to bruise.

Locus let the woman have his mate. He didn’t own Hannah. What he held was purpose, carved so deep into him it might have been bone. He took one step inside because he’d already decided a thousand steps he would take for her without asking.

A man stood back from the embrace, jaw shaved too close, mouth cut into a line to keep it steady.

He had the same blue-gray eyes as Hannah when she stared down the world, only set deeper.

When he saw Locus his spine went rigid. The man didn’t flinch.

He didn’t hide his instinct to shield his own.

He weighed the threat in Locus the way a good soldier would weigh an edged blade.

“Sir,” Locus said. He kept his frame restrained. Hands visible. Shoulders loose. He let the father see the way he positioned his body between the door and the female. The measuring in the man’s eyes shifted, just slightly.

“Come in,” the father said, gruff. The words were filled with something like gratitude, but the emotion held back until proof came. “Both of you. Come in.”

Hannah turned her head and pressed a fast kiss to Locus’s shoulder as she passed him.

It landed like a brand. The small scrape of her teeth against his skin caused his control to tighten.

He dug his fingers into the frame, then advanced deeper into the room ahead of her, keeping his body angled to shield her as they entered.

The house was small and neat, alife compressed into framed photos and clean edges, every surface wiped of dust like prayer.

Ahallway opened into a living room that had been tidied too hard.

Apile of mail sat squared at the edges on a side table.

Aflowered throw had been folded again and again until the corners lined up like amap.

Hannah’s father set his hand on the back of a chair and didn’t sit. He stared at Locus as he reached for his wife’s shoulder and steadied her without looking. “You’re the one who had her. You kept her alive. I’m not sure what kind of thanks I owe for that. Iguess we’ll start with the word.”

“You owe me nothing,” Locus said. “You owe me only the sight of her breathing.”

The man’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. He nodded to Locus as if acknowledging an equal. “Thank you.”

Her mother pulled away enough to study Hannah’s face like she could memorize it again. “You’re not hurt?”

“I’m okay,” Hannah said. “I’m being cared for. Ipromise. We should sit.”

They didn’t sit. They hovered around the small coffee table as if the furniture might bite.

Locus scanned once and surveyed the room.

Window with sheer curtains, thin enough to see motion outside.

Side yard visible through a narrow slice of glass.

He saw a shadow move across the patch of winter grass and knew at once that they weren’t alone.

He didn’t turn toward the window. He didn’t distract Hannah with his gaze. He let his eyes pass softly across the hallway and into the kitchen doorway. The air there carried a smell that didn’t match the lemon-clean. Cigarette smoke, stale. Oil on metal.Men.

“Where are the others?” Hannah asked, her voice too bright, as if covering nerves.

Her eyes flicked toward the kitchen the same way his had, catching the faint wrongness in the air.

“Dad, where are the boys?” Her breath grew ragged.

“Where’s Emmy?” Hope made the last word dangerous. Locus felt the thin rattle ofit.

Her father’s eyes flicked toward the kitchen, the movement so quick it might’ve been a blink. “Boys are safe,” he said. “They’re not here. We were told they’d be safer away from the house until you arrived.”

“Who told you?” Locus asked. He alreadyknew.

Silence fell like a curtain. The air in the room thinned.

His skin tightened from the inside. He shifted a half step so his body covered more of Hannah without looking like a shield.

She sensed the change in him because her breath altered, not faster, just deeper.

She pressed her shoulder into his side, small and defiant.

The voice that came from the kitchen doorway was familiar the way a wound was familiar long after it should’ve closed. Smooth. Amused. Cruel without strain.

“I did,” the headman said. “And you are very welcome.”

Hannah’s mother made a strangled sound. Her father swore, low and blistering, and reached for her arm. Locus pivoted and placed his palm in the air, not toward the headman, toward the father. Stay. Don’t run at a blade you can’tsee.

The headman stepped into the living room as if he were a friend invited for coffee.

He wore an Armani suit that fit his shoulders like stolen cloth.

He smiled as if smiles were weapons. Two men with rifles came behind him, boots soft on the rug.

Athird stayed in the kitchen where the doorway constrained the angle of fire.

Locus didn’t take his eyes off the headman, but he saw itall.

“Guns down,” Hannah’s father said, voice gone iron. “This is my home.”

“It is today,” the headman said with a smile that never reached his eyes. “Tomorrow depends on who pays the most.”

Hannah’s mother lifted her hand as if to strike him and then saw the angles of metal and froze. The threads of her heartbeat tripped and then steadied. He admired that. Courage that learned to choose its moment impressed him more than the kind that charged withoutplan.

“You don’t belong here,” Hannah said. She stepped forward. Locus didn’t stop her because she had to look this man in the face to know she wasn’t small or insignificant.

“I belong wherever the cameras say I belong.” He glanced past her toward the window. The glass caught a glint, small and red, adrone’s lens peering through the sheer. “Audience is down a little for morning reunions. We’ll fix that.”

“Get out,” her father said as if he could push a hurricane away with a single command.

The headman’s eyes warmed. “I like you.”

Locus didn’t move when the headman looked at him. He let the man see the way stillness could be a kind of threat. He didn’t blink. The headman’s smile slid. He didn’t like being treated as unimportant. That was useful.

“Let us begin,” the headman said, clapping his hands lightly as if starting a game. “Your daughter is the reason my books don’t balance. She’s the reason the last Challenge didn’t meet expectations. Iam a practical man. Ibelieve in finishes. We’re going to finish this story. For the buyers.”

“You’re not putting her through anything else,” Hannah’s father said, and now his voice shook because he saw too much metal and not enoughair.

“Hush,” the headman said without looking at him. Then he looked at Locus and smiled again. “Alien. Ithink your human pets don’t quite grasp what you are.”

“He isn’t—” Hannah started.

“No, no. He is whatever you decide later when you’re sobbing on a camera for me. Right now I want your mother to see what’s been in her daughter’s bed. Show her, alien. Drop your little mask. It’s boring.”

Hannah’s mother’s head jerked so fast Locus thought she’d faint. “What mask?” Her voice was rising toward panic. He couldn’t handle panic in a woman who needed to keep breathing steady because rifles waited for any bad sound.

“Don’t listen to him,” Locus said to Hannah’s mother. “He is a man who collects screams and calls that music.”