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The Intergalactic Warriors: Book4

By

USA TODAY Bestselling Author writingas

Dare O’Dell

Chapter1

THE NIGHT concealed him, just as it alwayshad.

Riv’En stood in the shadows near the engineering wing of the 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 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 coiled 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. Precise. Inevitable.

He was Alpha Unit, assassin-class—engineered for precision, bred for elimination, trained to leave no witnesses.Which meant the girl would not see him coming. 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 weight 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 precision, 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, raw 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—raw, unfiltered, and impossible to ignore.

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

Fuck .

Every projection shifted.

He’d miscalculated—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 precision. 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.

Notime.

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. Fornow.

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 calculated 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 hesitation.

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

Up the ship’s hidden ramp—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 instinct. 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, calculated 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 tocome.

THE SHIP’S containment chamber lights pulsed in low intervals, calibrating to the new arrival. Cold and sterile, the chamber adjusted to accommodate her biology—air composition, temperature, even ambient noise recalibrated in precise increments. The walls themselves shimmered faintly with containment fields, and above, hidden sensors came alive with whispered hums, feeding data into the ship’score.

She lay unconscious, but the ship had already begun analyzing her—biometrics, neural activity, trace atmospheric residue. She was triggering dormant protocols. Disrupting subsystems calibrated never to falter. Riv’En watched it all unfold with a flicker of unease.

He secured her to the diagnostic table—restraints minimal, just enough to prevent injury during transport—and initiated the ship’s isolation protocols. Magnetic clamps hissed into place beneath the table as the chamber’s internal shielding sealed shut with a hum. Atmospheric systems locked down, and the lights dimmed slightly, signaling full quarantinemode.

He double-checked the restraint calibration, not out of necessity, but to buy himself a second more to process the impossible—the heat in his chest, the flicker of dissonance in his mind. She was secure. She posed no immediate threat.

And yet, he did not moveaway.

His hands hovered longer than they should have, fingertips brushing the edge of the restraint as if the contact might bind him to logic. But logic was slipping—dislodged by her scent, her pulse, the memory of her scream. Something primal stirred beneath the surface of his control. Not longing. Not need. Not yet. But proximity to her did something to him. It bent the silence between them into tension.

He told himself it was nothing more than professional interest—recognition of strength, of anomalous defiance in a species engineered for weakness. He tried to attribute it to curiosity, to the need for understanding an unexpected threat. But the excuses rang hollow.

What unnerved him was not her resistance alone, but the flicker of something else it awakened in him. Amemory not quite formed. Ahesitation he could not afford. He had faced dozens like her. Ended some. Spared others. None had stirred this reaction.

And if the directive required her termination?

He would carry it out. That was what he was builtfor.

But something about the idea lodged hard and sharp behind his sternum—areaction he couldn’t trace, couldn’t justify. It didn’t belong in his programming, and yet it was there all the same. Not hesitation—he would act. Not remorse—he had none. But something else entirely. As if ending her would cost him more than a mission. As if it would sever something he had not realized was already forming.

He observed her carefully, his eyes scanning every twitch, every involuntary shift of her unconscious body. Her breaths were shallow, uneven, and though she remained sedated, her body language hinted at unrest—subtle signs of resistance already surfacing beneath suppression. She wasn’t aware of the isolation yet, but when she woke, it would hit her all at once. And when it did, he needed to be ready.

He remembered the resistance in her — not just physical, but mental. Even in those first few moments, when he had locked his arms around her and pulled her from her world, she had fought with a wildness he had not expected.

Her will to defy ignited instantly, primal and unrelenting. It was not just fear that had powered her movements — it was also fury, raw and instinctive. And something else. Something he had not yet classified. Aspark that lingered even after she collapsed, one that made her an anomaly before she ever opened hereyes.

He had taken dozens. Subdued them all. But none had looked at him like she had — just before she screamed.

Riv’En turned toward the monitor behind the diagnostic table and studied the readout. Vital signs: strong. Neural activity: elevated but within parameters—likely a byproduct of her earlier resistance and the sudden trauma of abduction. Respiratory rate: stabilizing. Muscle tension: high. No visible contamination or tracking devices. Internal scans showed no active implants, no foreign markers.

Still, something in the data felt off. Not incorrect—just incomplete. As if the diagnostics were measuring a system that hadn’t fully activated yet. She read as human. She read as stable.

But nothing about her presence felt thatway.

Still—uncertainty remained. Riv’En couldn’t fully calculate what she might be. The message from Third had identified her as a potential contaminant—anomalous physiology, possibly compromised by Selyr’s experimentation. That alone warranted containment.

But this human—this one —registered differently. His mind, sharp and programmed to assess threats with cold logic, couldn’t seem to find a clear answer. She wasn’t like the others. Beneath her panic, beneath her resistance, something else churned—something that gnawed at him in a way he hadn’t anticipated. Unfamiliar. Disruptive. It stirred his instincts and clouded the sharp lines of protocol he relied on. That uncertainty—it weakened the precision of his control. It was a flaw. Aweakness in his calculations.

This was no standard human.

The genetic scan returned incomplete. Her sequencing fell within known human ranges, but scattered inconsistencies—slight signal drop-offs, weak hybrid markers—were enough to trigger a review flag. It wasn’t dangerous. Likely a systems anomaly. But the scanner couldn’t rule out prior environmental exposure or latent tampering. Riv’En had seen corrupted baselines before. He knew better than to dismiss the possibility. Lockdown remained the only acceptable response.

Still, the question lingered.

Whyher?

Possible variables: contamination, genetic manipulation, Selyr’s experiments, latent carrier factors. It was probably nothing. But if it was something—he would be the one to findit.

Risk assessment: Unacceptable.

Containment: Mandatory.

She stirred, asoft sound escaping her lips, her breath ragged as her eyes flickered open. Her pupils dilated rapidly, instinctively adjusting to the harsh light overhead. He noted the spike in her heart rate, the erratic rhythm of her pulse. It was raw fear—understandable, given her situation. But it wasn’t panic. Notyet.

She was still processing, still fighting to make sense of the reality she had been thrust into. Her body tensed as she tried to move, but her limbs were sluggish, uncooperative, restrained. The fear was there, but so was something else. Aspark. Resistance. It would make this process far more complicated than expected.

He prepared the communication implant—precise placement required. No margin for error.

As her eyes regarded him, wide and panicked, Riv’En moved.

No words.

His hands found the correct angle, the precise nerve cluster. Aswift, sterile insertion behind the ear. She screamed—the sound raw, human.

Necessary.

While the device calibrated, Riv’En stepped back, his expression unreadable, eyes tracking every shift in her vital signs. His gaze lingered for a moment longer than necessary on her flushed face, the rapid rise and fall of her chest. It was a brief moment of hesitation — one that he quickly suppressed, as he had been trained to do. She was still disoriented, still human. Her resistance had only just begun.

For a moment, Riv’En hesitated.

His fingers curled tighter around the edge of the table, tension bleeding into stillness. The space between them pulsed—inexplicably charged—and he couldn’t pull his eyes away. He needed to reset. Refocus. But instead, he stood there, caught in the gravity of her presence, lungs tight, control fraying at the edges. The tension in the air thickened, pulling him in as if something invisible had wrapped itself around his chest.

He couldn’t explain the way his gaze followed the curve of her lips as she panted, her pulse still erratic beneath her pale skin. His eyes traced the delicate line of her jaw, the flush of color in her cheeks, and despite the cold, clinical part of his mind urging him to focus, he couldn’t help but notice how her body responded to the proximity betweenthem.

The air felt warmer, charged. Her scent, fresh and faintly floral, swirled around him, heightening the mystifying sensation that she was pulling at something deep within him. His grip on control tightened, but it was becoming more difficult to ignore the pulse of awareness between them, the magnetic, unwelcome attraction that simmered beneath the surface of his detachment.

She was a prisoner, an anomaly to be contained, and yet, the way she fought him, the way her body writhed under his control, sent a ripple of heat through him that he was not prepared to confront. The tension was undeniable, and it unsettled him in ways he couldn’t afford to acknowledge.

She struggled against the restraints, breathing hard, eyes wild. She shouted something at him—demanding, furious—but he heard only noise until the translator activated.

“Who the hell are you?” she snapped.

He said nothing.

She launched herself at him—predictable—managing to tear through the minimal restraints. He caught her with clinical precision, trapping her arms without violence. Holding her firmly without injury.

She writhed, kicked, fought.

He absorbed every motion, every blow, like stone against storm winds.

Finally, he spoke.

“Riv’En. My name is Riv’En.”

The sound of his name fractured the silence betweenthem.

She froze, only for a heartbeat, then twisted it into something easier on her tongue.

“Riven,” she muttered.

He did not correcther.

Let her humanize the syllables. It meant nothing to him. Should have meant nothing. Just another sound in a long list of species trying to make sense ofhim.

Or—

Something tightened in his chest, asensation unfamiliar, unwanted, and yet undeniably present. The space between them seemed to shrink, pulling him closer despite every logical directive demanding he remain detached.

Her scent, her fight, it triggered something deep within him, something buried under the layers of discipline and control. He was not supposed to feel this, not toward her, not toward any human. Yet, every time she moved, every time her pulse quickened under his touch, he felt the tension crack inside him. Alow, burning awareness he couldn’t ignore, even as he fought to maintain his distance.

He ignored it. Or triedto.

She glared at him, chest heaving with rapid breaths, muscles trembling with the violent mix of exhaustion, adrenaline, and the undeniable pulse of fear she couldn’t suppress. Her gaze, still fierce, locked with his, defiant, despite the overwhelming power of his control over her. He felt the shudder ripple through her, small, involuntary, but unmistakable.

Her body had to ache, every fiber straining against him, but there was something else in her eyes now. Something that gave Riv’En pause, just for the briefest moment. She wasn’t just resisting him. She was fighting him. And it triggered a flicker of heat in his chest, unwelcome and unexplainable. Aresponse he had no protocol for. One he could not afford tofeel.

Containment was complete.

Observation: ongoing.

And yet... Despite every logical directive programmed into him, Riv’En knew with crystalline clarity—this was only the beginning.