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CHAPTER TWO

T he Xenobeast crouched motionless amongst the tangled branches high in the canopy, his body perfectly still despite the precarious height.

He tracked the female’s halting progress through the undergrowth, noting every stumble, every pained hesitation.

His sensory tendrils unfurled fully, tasting the air currents that carried her scent—foreign yet strangely compelling, awakening something dormant within him.

He could scent blood, fear, determination, and beneath it all, a clean, warm signature unlike anything else on this world—a scent that made his pupils dilate and his breathing quicken imperceptibly.

He had never seen anyone like her before—small and soft with smooth golden skin unmarked by xxx.

She was not Zarkari. Not Tal’Shai. She was something.

.. new. Something his body recognized before his mind could process it.

A low growl vibrated in his chest, unbidden and primal, and he silenced it instantly, his jaw clenching with the effort of control.

In the hills to the north, the bioluminescent patterns of the Tal’Shai village pulsed their rhythmic warning—outsider detected, remain vigilant.

Their light signals had drawn him here, but he knew they would not venture out.

The scaled natives kept to their territory with rigid discipline and expected others to do the same.

They tolerated his presence because he respected their boundaries, a silent agreement forged over years of cautious coexistence.

He’d had a few brief interactions with them over the years about territorial lines or environmental threats.

They communicated with him using the same neck-band translators they used with all off-worlders, but amongst themselves they communicated mostly through the shifting colors in their scales—a language he had learned to interpret from a distance.

This female clearly knew nothing of boundaries or survival.

She stumbled forward, favoring her right side, blood seeping through a jagged tear in her strange coverings.

Her exposed skin—so much of it—looked impossibly vulnerable, utterly unprepared for this world’s hostilities.

She was small, fragile against the backdrop of a world evolved to kill everything not born to its savage rhythms. Her dark curls caught the crimson light filtering through the canopy, creating an effect that made his tendrils twitch with unwelcome fascination.

He should leave her. She wasn’t his concern. Outsiders didn’t survive here. The planet consumed them—as it was meant to. As it had tried to consume him.

He shifted position, preparing to retreat into the shadows, but then she stopped, her head tilted towards a sound his enhanced hearing had detected moments earlier—the distinctive, high-pitched distress calls of Graxlin pups.

Orphaned Graxlin pups if they had been left alone long enough to cry out.

The sound triggered a cascade of unwanted memories—of labs, of tests involving vulnerable creatures, of his own refusal to participate in certain “experiments.”

He tensed as she changed direction, intentionally following the cries. Foolish. Predators would be drawn to those sounds as well. She could be walking into death, unaware.

He shadowed her silently through the canopy, his massive body slipping through the foliage without disturbing a single leaf, telling himself he merely wanted to observe—to understand why a lone female had appeared on a quarantined death-world.

Intelligence gathering. This was a threat assessment, nothing more.

He refused to acknowledge the strange pull he felt towards her, the compulsion to remain close enough to intervene if necessary.

The female disappeared beneath a curtain of fronds surrounding the base of a tree and he dropped lower, moving with liquid grace from branch to branch, his claws leaving barely perceptible marks in the bark.

When she reappeared, something had changed.

She cradled a bundle against her chest with protective care, and even from this distance, he caught the faint silver glow of the Graxlin markings—three distinct patterns, each pulsing with their unique life signatures. Three orphaned pups.

The sight struck something in him—a memory fragment from before. Before the labs. Before they stripped everything away but the weapon. A flash of small creatures he had once protected, long ago, before they broke him and remade him into what he was now.

She tucked the pups more tightly into her outer covering, wincing as the movement pulled at her injuries, a small sound of pain escaping her lips.

Yet she’d burdened herself with three helpless lives when she could barely sustain her own.

The action defied tactical logic, but it awakened feelings he had long suppressed.

He clenched his jaw as his instincts warred with his training. The cold calculation of survival against... something else. Something they had tried to burn out of him with pain and reconditioning.

The pups’ silver markings pulsed in a pattern he recognized—contentment, safety, bonding.

The Graxlins were energy-sensitive creatures, forming deep bonds only with their own kind or with those possessing compatible energy signatures.

Yet these three had immediately attached themselves to the alien female in a way he had never witnessed before.

She stumbled again, nearly falling, catching herself against a twisted trunk with a gasp. Her blood scent grew stronger, metallic and rich. His nostrils flared, analyzing the composition—critical, but not immediately fatal.

Without conscious decision, he found himself moving parallel to her path, tracking her labored progress through territory he knew intimately.

She wouldn’t survive the night cycle alone.

This forest harbored predators that would detect her blood trail, her unfamiliar scent, her weakness.

Most of the creatures on this world were built for maximum predatory efficiency, just as he had been engineered for maximum lethality.

The female stopped beneath a massive fungal bloom, its spores gently drifting down around her like luminous snow.

Her breathing was ragged, her chest heaving with effort.

One of the pups chirped anxiously, and she whispered something to it—words his translation implant couldn’t fully process, language patterns it hadn’t encountered before.

The tone registered though: soothing, protective, intimate.

His tendrils swirled through the air, sampling her emotional signatures with heightened sensitivity.

There was no indication of deception or predatory intent, no hidden agenda that might threaten his territory.

Just exhaustion, pain, and a fierce determination that reminded him of something he had once possessed—before they broke him.

His claws dug deeper into the bark until sap oozed around his fingers, its acrid scent mixing with the female’s blood trail.

Foolish to leave such an evident sign of his passing but even more foolish that he cared what happened to this female.

He wasn’t supposed to care. Caring was weakness, and weakness meant death.

His creators had programmed that lesson into every cell, reinforced it with pain beyond imagining.

Yet he couldn’t look away, couldn’t retreat, and couldn’t maintain the cold distance that had kept him alive in exile.

She pushed forward again, heading unknowingly toward a ridge that overlooked the acid pools.

It was the wrong direction—a fatal direction.

The pools would dissolve organic matter within seconds, leaving nothing but bone fragments behind.

He had seen it happen to creatures far more adapted to this world than she was.

A low rumble built in his chest, unbidden and unwelcome. He should let her continue and eliminate the possibility of a complication in his carefully constructed isolation. The strategic choice was clear.

The pups’ markings flashed brighter, responding to her voice as she murmured to them, telling them stories perhaps, or making promises she couldn’t possibly keep.

Their tiny paws kneaded at her covering, seeking the comfort of connection.

The largest of the three nuzzled into her chest, its markings pulsing in time with her heartbeat.

Something twisted inside him—a sensation so long buried he barely recognized it. A feeling they had tried to burn out of him with punishment and reconditioning—protectiveness.

He moved.

Silently, he circled ahead, deliberately disturbing a flock of spined avians that scattered with warning cries, their razor-edged wings slicing through leaves as they took flight.

The female froze instantly, looking up with wide brown eyes that caught the crimson light filtering through the canopy.

Intelligence shone in those eyes—she recognized the warning for what it was.

She changed direction, away from the acid pools, towards the relative safety of the stone formations that rose like ancient sentinels at the forest’s edge, but her gaze swept the canopy, searching.

For a moment, he thought she looked directly at him, though he knew his camouflage made that impossible.

Good. She could read basic environmental cues. She possessed survival instinct, if not survival knowledge.

Night was approaching, the largest moon beginning to set.

The forest’s bioluminescence intensified in response—beauty masking deadly intent.

The night predators would emerge soon—hunters that made the Zarkari’s bioweapons division look primitive by comparison, creatures evolved over millennia to kill with perfect efficiency.

The female’s pace slowed noticeably, each step becoming a battle of will against the physical limitations of blood loss and exhaustion. Her determination couldn’t overcome her physical limits, no matter how strong her spirit.

His implants analyzed her condition automatically: elevated heart rate, dropping body temperature, impaired coordination, respiratory distress.

Her survival probability decreased with each passing minute.

His military training calculated the exact percentage, but something deeper in him rejected the cold assessment.

He found himself calculating shelter options, water sources, defensible positions. Tactical assessments only, he told himself. Nothing more. He ignored the way his tendrils reached towards her, seeking more information.

She stumbled into a small clearing where ancient stone pillars rose like the ribcage of some long-dead titan, half-consumed by red vines heavy with fruit pods. The pups squeaked excitedly, their markings pulsing in recognition. They knew these fruits were safe, nutritious.

The female hesitated, examining the unfamiliar vegetation with appropriate caution.

Then she plucked one of the pods, its skin yielding with a soft popping sound.

Smart—she tested it against her skin first, waiting for any reaction before proceeding.

When nothing happened, she carefully offered small pieces to the pups, who devoured them eagerly, their tiny mouths working furiously.

He settled onto a nearby branch, watching with growing fascination.

She hadn’t eaten herself, although her hunger was evident both in her scent and in the way she swallowed repeatedly as she watched the pups eat.

Caution or sacrifice? Either option showed a level of intelligence beyond what he expected from an off-worlder.

Either suggested she might be... different.

As darkness fell, she worked quickly, despite her injuries, to weave more vines between the pillars and create a crude shelter.

Inadequate protection, but better than nothing.

The structure would hide her from casual predators, at least. She retreated inside, sitting with her back against one of the pillars as she stared out into the night.

The pups curled in her lap, their markings dimming as they drifted to sleep, tiny bodies rising and falling with synchronized breaths.

He should leave. Return to his territory. The female had shelter for the night, and the pups would keep her warm. He had no further reason to stay.

Instead, he moved closer, drawn by something he couldn’t name.