Page 6

KAIRON

P ain pulses through my skull, sharp and rhythmic, like a war drum beating behind my eyes.

I groan, dragging in a breath that tastes like smoke and hot metal.

The pod is a goddamn ruin—its walls crumpled in on themselves, the floor twisted under the weight of impact.

Wires dangle from the ceiling like vines, spitting sparks every few seconds, painting the interior in jittery bursts of orange light.

“Augh…” I groan, pushing off the ground slightly. “Fucking hell.”

Acrid smoke curls in the air, burned plastic and scorched wiring stinging my nostrils.

I shove a shattered panel off my chest and sit up, gritting my teeth against the groan of stiff joints.

Outside, through the half-shattered viewport, a sea of green looms. Jungle—thick, humid, choking with vines and leaves as big as my chest. The sky beyond it is a violent smear of violet clouds and twin suns bleeding light into the horizon.

This isn't any planet I’ve seen logged. And there’s no comm ping.

No locator tone. Just the high whine of heat settling into the metal.

I squint upward through the broken pod roof.

Nothing but sky. No ships. No crew. No damn answer.

My comm’s dead, fried in the crash or something worse.

I wonder if Nyra and Renn got clear. Wonder if they got the data.

If they’re even still breathing. If they even give a shit that I’m not.

I slam a fist against the metal floor, the sound dull and final.

That’s when I see her.

The human officer—the one who charged me like she had any chance in hell of stopping this.

She’s sprawled across the far side of the pod, half-buried in bent bulkhead plating.

Her uniform’s torn open across her side and leg, blood staining the fabric dark.

Her braid's come undone, brown waves matted with soot and sweat. She’s still breathing—barely—but unconscious.

Instinct moves before thought. I reach for my blade, fingers closing around the hilt with familiar ease. Ending her now would be cleaner. Smarter. She’s a threat, a liability, and a constant reminder of how sideways this mission went.

But when I lunge forward, intending to finish it, pain detonates in my chest. White-hot. All-consuming.

It drops me to my knees with a snarl torn from my throat, like I’ve been impaled from the inside.

I clutch at my side, fingers pressing against unbroken skin as if that could stop the agony.

My breath shortens, turns ragged. Dropping to my knees, I grit my teeth against the agony. Must be an injury from the crash.

She stirs with a ragged groan, her body twitching like her instincts are already bracing for a fight.

Dirt smudges her cheek, and her lips are cracked, blood dried at the corner of her mouth.

Then her eyes snap open—hazel, flecked with gold, wild and burning.

They lock onto mine, and in that split second, every ounce of pain and confusion in her gaze hardens into fury.

"You." Her voice is raw, scraped thin from smoke and dehydration. Venom laces the single word like it’s a curse she’s been waiting to spit. "What the hell did you do?"

I don’t blink. “Saved your life, apparently,” I growl back, though the fire pulsing in my chest twists the words into a harsher bite than I meant. Not that I give a shit how she takes it.

"Saved my life?" she hisses, propping herself up on an elbow. Her face contorts as pain shoots through her side, and she sucks in a sharp breath, teeth clenched. “We’re stranded. On a goddamn alien planet.”

“Better than being a smear on the inside of a bulkhead,” I mutter, brushing grit off my thigh. “Or spaced out a breach door.”

“You’re the fucking reason we’re here, Reaper.” She stares at me like she wants to hit me. And hell, part of me wants her to try. Her hand twitches toward her hip, probably expecting a weapon that’s long gone. “I should kill you.”

“You can try,” I smirk, slow and mean, even as a tremor of pain claws up my side. “But you already did your best, sweetheart, and look where that got us.”

Her nostrils flare. “Don’t call me that.”

“What, sweetheart?” I say it again, deliberately drawling the word, letting it curl with mockery. “You don’t like pet names? I’ll make a note.”

We lapse into silence, but it’s not peaceful.

The air in the pod feels thicker now, oppressive, like the jungle’s already creeping in to choke what little hope we’ve got.

Outside, the sounds are distant but ever-present: sharp trills, rustling leaves, something low and guttural groaning through the underbrush.

The kind of sounds that tell you this planet isn’t just alive—it’s hungry.

She shifts again, her breath catching as she sits fully upright, one hand braced against the pod wall.

Her uniform’s half-shredded, clinging in places, soaked through in others.

Scratches mar her arms, streaked with dried blood and grime.

She looks like hell. But she’s still glaring like she’s ready to bite my face off. Tenacious. I’ll give her that.

She gets up like she’s got something to prove—teeth gritted, jaw locked, legs shaking so bad it’s a miracle she doesn’t collapse right there on the mangled floor.

I lean back, arms crossed over my chest, and watch her limp her way through the wreckage, dragging her weight like her limbs don’t belong to her.

The defiance in her eyes is a joke when her body’s barely holding together.

She’s pathetic.

But she moves with purpose, pawing through scorched panels and torn cables like hope’s buried somewhere under the debris. I should be thinking ahead. Prioritizing. My crew. The mission. Where the hell we are and what the fuck went wrong.

Instead, I’m watching this human struggle like she’s not about to drop dead in front of me.

A flicker of movement—she stumbles, catches herself on a jagged edge of metal with a hiss of pain, then grits her teeth and keeps going. Stubborn little thing.

I run a hand through my hair, already feeling the weight of the jungle pressing in outside.

The pod’s half-buried in foliage, vines creeping in through the split seams. Trees rise like walls around us.

Somewhere above, the sky is a blazing, piss-yellow bruise of heat and light.

My crew is out there—maybe. Or maybe they’re dead. Maybe I’m the last one.

Another sharp pang slams into my chest, dragging a hiss from my throat. I press a hand over the spot, wincing, and glance down. No visible wound. No bruising. But it burns like something’s been carved inside me with fire.

“Fuck,” I mutter.

That’s when she turns.

Her eyes—those damn hazel eyes, golden-green like jungle light—lock onto me again. She clocks the pain instantly.

“What now?” she snaps.

I wave her off. “Nothing. Just a scratch.”

She doesn’t buy it, but she’s too pissed to care. She holds something up—a busted radio unit, charred and cracked. “This was our best shot at communication. It’s fried.”

“No surprise there.”

She mutters a stream of profanity, then throws the useless hunk of metal across the pod. It hits the wall with a hollow clank.

“We need to find some kind of civilization,” she says, voice flat but tight. “A relay post. A beacon. Something.”

“We?” I echo, raising a brow. “There’s no we, soldier. You’re on your own now.”

She rounds on me, fire in her step despite the limp. “You caused this, you selfish bastard, and you’re going to help me fucking fix it.”

I blink, caught off guard by the rage—hot and raw and vibrating off her like heat haze.

“Is that so?” I say, slowly standing. My shadow stretches over her, and I watch her chin lift defiantly even though I’m twice her size and probably the reason she’s not already a smear in orbit.

She doesn’t back down. Doesn’t flinch.

Goddamn idiot.

But her chest’s rising too fast, and she’s holding herself like the only thing keeping her up is spite. She’s not wrong. If I walk now, she dies. And the thought of that—that sharp certainty—hits harder than it should.

The burn in my chest flares again.

“You’re lucky I haven’t snapped your neck,” I mutter.

She steps in closer. “Then do it, Reaper.”

She says the word like a curse. We’re eye to eye now. The jungle groans around us, heat and shadows pressing in.

Yeah.

This is going to be a fucking nightmare.