Chapter 4
Teeth and Territory
Krilly
The jungle gets meaner as we push northeast.
Not gradually, not politely. The undergrowth thickens in the space of fifty metres from manageable to combative, barbed plants catching on my jumpsuit, vines pulsing when we pass like they're tasting the air.
The canopy knits together overhead until the light turns dim and amber-green, and the sounds change.
Less chittering. More silence, the kind that means something large has cleared the smaller things out.
"Territorial boundary," Horgox says, holding a branch so it doesn't snap back into my face. "Lowland pack hunters give way to canyon dwellers here."
"Please tell me canyon dwellers are friendlier."
"They're solitary. Ambush predators. Larger, more aggressive, but they don't coordinate." He scans the canopy, gold eyes tracking movement I can't detect. "The trade-off is that you only face one at a time."
"So we're upgrading from organised murder to freelance murder. Comforting."
His jaw tightens against something that might be amusement.
He doesn't let it through. Two days of partnership and I'm learning the geography of his restraint: what almost makes it past his defences, what doesn't, the precise muscle movements that mean he's suppressing a reaction rather than not having one.
We've been moving for over an hour, Bebo's core warm against my chest in its makeshift harness, when Horgox stops mid-stride.
Not the casual pause of route assessment. The absolute stillness of a predator who's identified a threat. Every line of his body changes, weight shifting forward, hands open at his sides where the claws can extend.
My mouth stays shut. My feet stop. Two days isn't long, but it's long enough to learn that when Horgox goes still, you go still.
His hand finds the small of my back. Warm through my jumpsuit. Steadying.
"Scavenger pack." Against my ear, barely a vibration. "Six, maybe seven. Following our trail for the last two hundred metres."
Two hundred metres. They've been tracking us for two hundred metres and I didn't hear a thing.
"Testing whether we're easy prey," he continues. "They haven't committed. If we demonstrate we're more dangerous than we're worth, they'll disengage."
"How do we demonstrate that?"
"Stop hiding. Make ourselves visible." He straightens from stealth posture into something else entirely. Taller. Broader. Presence expanding to fill the space between the trees. "Stay close. Let them see us as a unit."
My side presses against his, and his arm settles around me. Not gentle. Possessive, deliberate, a display aimed at the shadows between the trees. The message isn't for me; it's for whatever is watching. This one is mine. The cost of taking her is more than you can pay.
We move through the undergrowth like that, his body shielding mine, his gaze tracking shapes I can only catch in peripheral glimpses. Scale-flash between ferns. The scrape of claws on bark. Heavy breathing from multiple directions.
"They're still following," he says after a few minutes.
"Persistent."
"Hungry. That clearing ahead. Fallen trees creating natural barriers, good sightlines. If they won't disengage, we make them regret committing."
"We fight."
"We make a point." He guides me into the space, positions me with the same tactical precision he uses for everything. "When they come, right flank is yours. Drive them back hard. They need to see you as a threat, not a target."
My molecular torch comes off my belt. The weight of it is familiar in my hand. Not a weapon by design, but I've cut through hull plating with this thing; scales shouldn't be much harder.
"Together?" My pulse is hammering, but my hands are steady. Mining station hands. The kind that don't shake when the equipment is failing and the vacuum is on the other side of the bulkhead.
"Together."
The first scavenger breaks from the treeline before I'm ready. Five feet of low-slung predator, scales shimmering sickly green, mouth open to show serrated teeth. The sound it makes splits the difference between a hiss and a scream.
Three more emerge behind it. Then two flanking.
Six total. Circling.
"Hold." Horgox's voice is flat, calm, the voice of someone who has faced worse and survived it. "Let them commit first."
The largest lunges. Straight at me, not him, because I'm the smaller target, the weaker link, the obvious prey.
The torch arcs across its snout. Molecular edge meets scale and flesh, and the scavenger shrieks, smoking, stumbling back. The others hesitate.
"Again. Show them."
A second comes from my left. Horgox is already there, intercepting with a speed that doesn't match his size, redirecting the thing's momentum into a tree trunk with a crack that echoes through the clearing. It doesn't get up.
"Back to back."
My spine finds his. Solid, hot, vibrating with a low frequency I feel in my teeth. Our breathing syncs without discussion, and the part of my brain that isn't terrified notes how naturally my body reads his, how my movements adjust to his rhythm the way circuits align when the wiring's right.
A third darts for the gap between us. My torch cuts low while Horgox strikes high. The combination drops it.
Three down. Three circling, reassessing.
The pack leader, scarred and calculating, takes a step forward. Testing.
Horgox makes a sound.
Not a word, not a growl. Something deeper, something that bypasses my ears and lands directly in my bones.
Low, resonant, harmonic, carrying frequencies that make my vision blur and my hindbrain flood with the pure animal conviction that I am standing next to the most dangerous thing in this jungle and nothing, nothing should challenge it.
The scavenger freezes. Scales flatten. Belly drops.
Then Horgox speaks. Not English, not any language I recognise. Guttural, commanding, layered with those same bone-deep harmonics. The words don't need translation. The meaning is in the frequency: territory claimed, threat absolute, leave or die.
The pack leader backs away. Slowly, deliberately, belly to the ground. The other two follow.
Silence settles over the clearing. My pulse is pounding so hard I can taste it.
"What—" My voice comes out scraped. "What was that?"
"Varkaani." He's scanning the treeline, making sure they're gone. "Predator dialect. Infrasonic frequencies that most species recognise as a dominant threat display." A pause. "One of the reasons ApexCorp found my species useful. Intimidation was part of the… entertainment value."
The way he says entertainment. Like the word has a taste, and the taste is blood.
"It's terrifying," I say. Then, because my mouth has never once consulted my brain before speaking: "And unfairly attractive. For the record."
The silence that follows is a different kind of charged.
"We should keep—" I start, stepping back, needing distance before I say something worse.
My boot catches on a root hidden under the scavenger's body. The ankle that was already protesting the four-hour hike turns under my full weight, and the ground comes up fast.
Horgox catches me. One arm around my waist, the other bracing my shoulder, but my momentum carries us both off balance. He twists as we fall, taking the impact across his back so I land on his chest instead of the stone-scattered ground.
"Your ankle." Already assessing, hands finding the joint through my boot. Professional, clinical, the same efficient evaluation he applies to every tactical problem. "You've strained it. Weight off. Now."
"It's fine—"
"It's not fine. Injuries compound. Push through this and by the canyon you won't be able to walk." He's unlacing my boot before I've agreed to anything, fingers precise and careful despite their size. When he probes the swelling, I hiss. "Tender. Not a full sprain. You need to rest it."
"We don't have time to—"
"Twenty minutes." He's already moving into the jungle, returning in three with broad leaves and water purification moss.
His hands work the compress with the practised efficiency of someone who has done this many times before, on many injuries.
"Cold water moss. It neutralises the acid in the rain and filters the groundwater. The compression reduces swelling."
The cold against my heated ankle is sharp, then merciful. My shoulders drop. The fight drains out of me, replaced by the dull throb of an injury I can't afford and a growing awareness that I'm sitting in a clearing with a male who speaks predator language and wraps ankles with the same hands.
"Where did you learn field medicine?"
"Arena surgeons." The words come out flat. Controlled. The voice he uses when he's giving information without giving feeling. "They maintained their assets between matches. I learned to do it myself after I became… inconvenient."
"Inconvenient how?"
He finishes securing the compress. Sits back on his heels. The clearing is quiet around us, the scavengers gone, the jungle holding its breath the way it does after violence.
"They put a child in the arena."
My hands go still.
"Twelve years old. Human." He's looking at the compress, not at me. Checking his work, or avoiding my eyes. "A political prisoner's offspring. The crowd wanted blood. I was supposed to provide the entertainment."
The words land in the clearing like stones dropped into still water. No dramatic delivery. No emotional framing. Facts, laid out with the same precision he uses for everything.
"I refused."
Two words. The hinge on which everything turns. His captivity, his escape, his three months in a murder jungle, the moment in a root cave where he chose to catch a panicking courier instead of staying hidden.