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Prologue

THE NIGHT concealed him, just as it alwayshad.

Riv’En stood in the shadows near the engineering wing of the nearly deserted Berkeley campus, body coiled, breath silent. He was motionless, aghost etched in darkness, eyes locked onto the human female below.

Target: acquired.

She moved quickly, unaware—blonde hair spilling down her back, catching the faint amber glow of a flickering walkway light.

Her steps echoed softly against the pavement, one hand gripping the strap of her backpack.

Wide blue eyes flicked left, then right, scanning, but not seeing. Petite. Fragile-looking. Predictable.

But a flicker of something broke the pattern.

She hesitated—barely—glancing behind her with a crease between her brows. Not suspicion. Not certainty. Just a whisper of unease she couldn’t place. Atension she clearly didn’t understand. Her fingers tightened on the strap.

The odds of a clean extraction: 94.2 percent.

Riv’En’s fingers twitched once, calibrating timing.

Five steps. She adjusted her grip on the backpack, aslight hitch in her pace—fatigue, maybe. He tracked the shift, recalculated.

Four. Abreeze stirred her hair. She turned her head slightly, but then kept walking. No awareness. No suspicion.

He inhaled slowly.

Three steps until her life was forever changed. The echo of her next footfall cracked the quiet, sharp and singular. Still steady. Still vulnerable.

Two.

His heart rate slowed as his muscles tightened in anticipation, every fiber of his body aligning with perfect lethal intent. She was inches from the edge of everything she’d ever known.

One.

Just one step until she never made it home again.

He moved.

Silent. Meticulous. Inevitable.

He was Alpha Unit, assassin-class—engineered for exactness, bred for elimination, trained to leave no witnesses.Which meant the girl would not see him coming, not with his ability to camouflage himself. If he had been ordered to kill her, she would not survive the moment he struck.

But he had not been sent tokill.

He stared down at her, breath tight in his chest, the power of unspoken orders from Alpha Unit’s Third still echoing in his mind. One twitch of his wrist, one shift in intention, and she would begone.

She sensed him a split-second toolate.

Her body jerked, spine stiffening as her head whipped back—

He struck.

An arm locked around her waist with ruthless intent, the other snapping forward to pin her arms. She bucked, twisted, fought back like a wild thing. Elbows drove, feet lashed, nails raked. She snarled a half-formed scream, intense and guttural—

He clamped a hand over her mouth, but toolate.

The sound sliced through the air, sharp and bright—aragged, panicked cry that shattered the stillness like glass dropped on stone.

It pierced straight through the darkness, lancing down his spine and igniting a primal urgency in his chest. Not a warning.

Not a call for help. Aflare, fraught, unfiltered, and impossible to ignore.

It echoed off the surrounding buildings, far louder than it should havebeen.

Vexx .

Every projection shifted.

He’d misjudged, let familiarity dull his edge. He’d grown complacent because she was human.He’d expected soft and compliant. Predictable. Defenseless. But she wasn’t any of those things. That single scream had shattered the illusion, cracked the quiet veneer of the night wideopen.

And reminded him that underestimating any target, especially one chosen by his unit, was a mistake. Amistake he wouldn’t make twice.

Now it was no longer about a clean extraction. It was about speed. Containment. Escape. There was no margin. No time to assess. No room for delay.

Because of her scream,the hunt would begin.

He had to move. Now .

She fought with the ferocity of desperation, slamming her heel into his shin, trying to bite down through his glove.

Every part of her flared with violent resistance.

He adjusted his grip, asubtle shift of force and leverage—containing her, minimizing damage.

She was compact, but explosive. Her heart thundered against his chest, her breath frantic andfast.

She twisted her mouth free of his hold just enough to scream again, louder thistime.

No time.

He slammed her up against the wall of the closest building, just long enough to inject the temporary stunner at the base of her neck. Asharp click. Asofthiss.

She collapsed.

Her body sagged in his arms, unconscious, dead weight, but still warm, her breath brushing faintly against his wrist. The pulse at her throat fluttered, rapid but strong.

Alive. For now.

He caught her easily, cradling her now instead of restraining her. No time to admire the fight. No time to consider the fire she carried in her blood.

He slipped into motion, fluid and quiet, his steps a blur through shadow.

Across the quad, where distant voices were already echoing in response to her scream. Through the access shadows, ducking low behind shrub cover as lights flickered on in upper dorm windows. Past the forgotten maintenance corridor, where he paused just long enough to scan for movement.

Two campus security personnel rounded the far edge of the commons. Not close enough to see him, but too close to risk transportation.

He adjusted her weight in his arms and bolted, feet whispering over pavement, shadows swallowing his form like water over stone.

Once clear of all potential risks, he transported to the ship—silent, sealed, unseen.

Extraction: complete.

But not clean.

She had screamed.

And someone would come looking.

But by the time security arrived, she would already be gone, cut off from everything she knew, carried into the stars by something she could not begin to understand.

And Riv’En, Alpha Unit assassin, would finally know why she had been chosen.

The possibilities unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

Not because she posed a threat, though she unexpectedly had, but because the look in her eyes, fierce and unyielding even through fear, mirrored something buried deep in his own past. Something he had been trained to erase.

It was not longing. Not intuition. Not yet. But it was the first edge of awareness, the whisper of a connection he could not afford, but might not be able to escape.

And if the order came to eliminateher?

He would obey. He always obeyed.

But for the first time in his long, programmed existence, the thought left a mark. Subtle, but deep, apressure he could not quite shake, as if her fate had already threaded itself into his. Not a scar. Not yet. But the warning of one to come.