Chapter 14
Ethan, Silver Scion Base, Well Past Midnight
Warlord Bahre hunched over in the back of the van like a tank with a pulse, arms crossed, jaw tight as titanium.
“No survivors,” he growled, his gaze darting to me.
“Scion. Coalition. Human. I don’t give a fuck.
If they’re inside and not in a prison cell, they’re dead.
” He paused to make sure no one had anything to say before putting his helmet on.
The rest of his rah-rah, lets-go-kill-some-stuff speech came through the volume adjusted comm unit in the Coalition helmet on my head.
“We move fast. We run our scans. We take their DNA and we turn this place into ash. Any questions?”
No. There were no fucking questions. We’d all been over the plan at least fifty times.
Jenkins and I were probably both idiots for being here, but we both believed the bad guys inside this building were the same ones we’d been tracking the last couple years.
The assholes who’d killed people we loved.
We both needed to be here for very personal reasons.
The hum of the van’s air conditioning systems was low but constant, like a coiled predator purring just before it struck.
The aliens had launched ReCon drones and then split into two teams. Jenkins and I were with the three Atlan Warlords, Bahre, Egon and Kovo.
The Prillons and Everian Hunters had taken a second vehicle to breech the rear loading docks.
The Prillon Commander, Helion, had offered to call in more Coalition forces from the Processing Center to assist with the infiltration.
Warlord Bahre had scoffed at the offer. The big guys were going in the front door, full armor, full beast mode, weapons blazing.
The dead cyborg’s memories indicated there were less than a dozen of the Silver Scions at this location.
Warlord Egon assured me that what they couldn’t shoot, they would tear apart with their bare hands.
Me and Jenkins—we small, weak humans—had been ordered to stay behind the Warlords and shut the fuck up.
They’d given us Coalition armor and our own ion blasters, but as far as I could tell, the only reason we’d been allowed to come along at all was because Kovo refused to leave me back at Bahre’s compound where I’d have a chance to be alone with Lyra.
She was still unconscious in their fucking ReGen pod.
Hadn’t moved in two days, when she should have been completely healed after just one.
She wasn’t healing. The copper-skinned Prillon doctor promised me they were doing everything in their power to save her.
They were trying to reverse whatever they had done to fuck her up.
Didn’t take skilled detective work to figure out the alien doctors had played god with her DNA and she was paying the price.
Their healing treatment wasn’t working. Apparently, her body was fighting the change back to whatever she’d been before. An Atlan. Kovo’s sister. The Lady Lyra. An alien I couldn’t stop thinking about.
She’d lied to me. About everything.
My dick didn’t care. My heart didn’t fucking care. All I needed was for her to wake up and explain herself. I would listen. Then I’d forgive her and fuck her until neither one of us could remember what planet we were on.
Right after I hunted down the motherfucker who’d killed Eddie. He was inside that building somewhere. I could feel it.
Jenkins’ mission was the same. We didn’t much care what the aliens did as long as we got the one we came for. The big Atlan they’d turned into a mindless cyborg.
I sat in the corner seat, flanked by black composite walls lit only by the faint glow of a streetlight coming through the windshield from half a block away.
If I wasn’t so tense, I would have laughed at the absurdity of three Atlan Warlords and two human cops glaring at each other as we waited for the go signal from the other team.
Out of nowhere, my comm’s activated. “This is Bravo. We’re in position. Go. Go. Go.”
Warlord Bahre responded. “Alpha team is a go. Moving now.”
I rolled my head around on my shoulders to fight off the remains of a brutal headache.
I hadn’t completely adjusted to hearing both the Atlan language being spoken, and the English coming through the NPU they’d implanted in my skull.
Jenkins shook his head like he was trying to clear his head as well.
Blessing and a curse, the NPUs. One of the Prillons at Bahre’s compound had shoved the needlelike device into our heads and attached the NPU to the bone just below our ears. Now I understood everything every one of these bastards was saying.
That was the curse. I understood every word Commander Helion, Doctor Mersan, Warlord Kovo and the others had spoken regarding Lyra. Her past. Her mission for the I.C. All of it.
They’d hurt her. Repeatedly. Every cell in my body wanted to make them pay even as I admired her more.
None of us would be here if not for her courage.
Her intelligence. Her determination to avenge two brothers she’d loved and believed dead.
She’d traveled through the universe hunting evil, risking her life to feed the I.C.
intelligence on every aspect of the Silver Scions’ operation she could. If they had caught her….
I shuddered, my mind refusing to go down that rabbit hole. We filed out of the van and I fell in next to Jenkins in a fast jog behind the Atlans. They were transforming into their beasts as they ran.
From a block away, the warehouse looked like every other rotting structure in the district—rusted metal siding, busted windows, and graffiti tagging the lower walls in layers of decay.
The outer fence was chain-link with barbed wire so old it sagged like tired bones.
It had the feel of a place no one gave a damn about.
But even from this distance, I could see things that didn’t belong.
The gravel perimeter was too clean. The gate didn’t creak when the wind moved it.
There were no rats, no broken glass, no signs of squatters.
No stench from rotting trash inside rusting dumpsters.
The silence wasn’t just abandonment—it was curated. Maintained. An illusion.
The scans running inside my Coalition helmet displayed a different reality.
Beneath the rust and shadows was a fortified stronghold.
Reinforced walls. Subsurface defense grids.
Two levels below the ground, the Coalition thermal sensors revealed two low level heat signatures.
Bahre said they were likely full cyborgs or mechanized weapons in a charge port or stasis pod.
Not activated. An energy generator pulsed in the central chamber, hidden under a constantly shifting frequency shield that scrambled the Coalition ReCon drones’ data.
Their scans did manage to pick up motion detectors embedded in the walls.
Nothing too outrageous for an alien base, until Commander Helion reported on Lyra’s warnings from a few months ago.
Rumors that the Scions were using forbidden technology, banned by the Coalition for being too dangerous, a nanite infused fog that was both self-repairing and lethal to organic tissue not connected to their frequency networks.
This wasn’t just an alien base. It was a trap in the shape of a ruin. And we were walking right into it.
The Warlords, over eight feet tall in their combat gear, tore a hole in the perimeter fence as an unexpected voice came through the comms.
“Overwatch in position. All clear.” Lyra’s voice was crisp. In control.
My entire body responded like she’d lit fireworks in my blood. Suddenly I was awake. Alive. Terrified she was going to get hurt.
Kovo cursed.
Bahre responded but kept moving. “Position?”
The team had marked out three possible positions for a sniper during the planning stage. Three rooftops.
“Two.” One word and the entire team knew exactly where she was. Which rooftop. What she’d be able to see and what she wouldn’t.
Her voice through the comm hit me like an ambush—fast, surgical, and straight to the heart. Two.
One word detonated something inside me. I’d spent two days being angry. Angry at her for lying. Angry at Helion. Angry at her brother for causing her pain. Angry at myself for being such a closed-minded asshole about her people that she didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.
Angry at Eddie for dying. Angry at Jenkins for being just like me. We were two men consumed by grief and the need for revenge, completely blind to everything else.
As if she could read my mind, she spoke directly to me.
“Ethan. I’ll talk to you after. Don’t get yourself killed.”
I pressed a hand against my chest because the sound of my name on her lips hurt and my body didn’t seem to know what else to do with itself.
My breathing went shallow. Too fast. I’d seen men freeze before combat—good men, smart men—but this was different.
This was something primal. Something that made my bones ache.
Because she was up there, alone. Exposed.
Ready to fight while I stood here with my feet in the dirt and my heart in my throat, knowing I couldn’t protect her.
Couldn’t reach her. Couldn’t even hold her hand.
All I could do was listen to her voice in my ear, cracking open the floodgates I’d kept sealed the last two days, and pray the universe didn’t take her from me before I could tell her—before I could show her—that I wasn’t afraid of her beast.
I was afraid of the monster I’d become without her. Consumed by hatred. Vengeance. Grief. Always alone. Always hunting killers. Seeing the worst of humanity.
Expecting the worst of everyone and everything.
Without hope.
Lyra
He did not respond. My beast was not happy. Mate angry.
He’s busy, I insisted.
She scoffed as I scanned the building, reporting positions of the Scions to the two teams. Their Coalition issued battle helmets were good.
Their drones were good. I.C. tech was better.
I could see through walls. My gear analyzed and decrypted their frequency shifting energy fields faster than they adjusted.
Nothing could hide from me. I didn’t just see through the entire compound like it was made of glass, I could shoot through the walls, if I needed to.
Through several feet of concrete or metal.
Protect. Mate. Go!
What do you think I’m doing?
She hated being stuck up here, alone, away from the fight. But we weren’t just protecting Ethan. The others were down there. Our brother was down there. Bahre, Krag and Rohn had mates who would mourn their loss. They were loved.
My beast would have to deal with reality. She was strong, but we could do more damage to the Silver Scions from here. A lot more.
The rooftop stank of rust, wet tar, and pigeon shit baked into concrete under decades of Miami sun. The old ventilation unit I was nestled behind groaned every time I shifted my weight, like it resented being touched.
My prone position was awkward—elbows bruised against gravel, cheek pressed to the rifle stock, the scope slicing lines of ghostly blue, red and yellow figures through reinforced walls.
A curl of hair stuck to my sweat-slicked jaw and I didn’t dare move to fix it.
I was overwatch and support. I also considered myself Ethan’s personal guardian.
I was determined to do everything I could to protect him from the scariest assholes I’d ever encountered. I’d stay here all night if I had to.
The night air clung to my skin like static, thick with the smell of the ocean and an approaching storm. My rifle’s scope was already synced to my helmet’s targeting program. All I had to do was breathe and squeeze.
I watched the two teams move. The Scions respond. Their heat signatures blinked on and off like ghosts as my gear adapted to their frequency shields and our team took them out. “Five more. Third floor. Two still in stasis, sublevel one.”
A beat of silence followed. “Five on three. Two below.” Warlord Bahre’s voice was easily recognizable.
They’d already eliminated half the Silver Scions in the building. This would be over soon. Then I could talk to Ethan, beg him to listen, to give us a chance. Explain myself.
Tell him what he was to me.
Mine! Mate! My beast was frustrated and angry with me for lying to him. For not putting mating cuffs on his wrists.
For letting him out of her sight. Which, technically, wasn’t my fault.
Mine!
I know. Trust me. We will tell him. And pray to the gods he wouldn’t take one look at us and run.
Mate! I track him down. Keep. Mine.
I reassured her that was exactly what we would do, although the truth was more complicated. If he refused our claim, we could only have one option left open to us.
I couldn’t separate myself from the beast and she wouldn’t survive without him. Gods help us. I didn’t need a mirror to know what I looked like now.
My clawed fingers flexed around the rifle—not hands anymore, weapons.
The claws slid out on command, thin as blades and tough enough to shred steel.
I’d tested them, sliced the front of a stainless steel refrigerator before taking Adrian’s car.
I’d kept my nature hidden for so long, let him believe I was human. Never showed him my beast.
I’d been a coward, afraid he would look at me with hate for merely being an Atlan female. Now that I was such a freak? Maybe he’d look at me and feel nothing but pity.
I’d rather be shot through the heart than see pity or disgust on his face. An Atlan female could pass for human. What I was now, in my beast form, could not.
None of that mattered now. Not the truth. Not the pain. Not even the heartbreak bleeding like acid through my ribs.
He was in that warehouse. In danger.
My heart pounded so loudly it felt like a warning drum inside my chest. I didn’t care what I looked like. I didn’t care if he screamed in horror when he saw me. Right now, I would kill for him. I would die for him. And I would do it looking like a monster because my beast made me strong.
There would be no more hiding. No more lies.
I knew when I spoke to the teams, my voice sounded steady. Controlled. Lethal. But inside? I was chaos. Fear. Hunger. Longing. Rage. Not at him—never at him—but at myself, for being too weak to be honest.
I’d stared down cyborgs and killers without fear. Traveled alone through smuggler’s bases and black markets all over the universe. Yet I’d lacked the courage to be my true self with the only male in the universe I’d ever desired.
Mate! My beast confirmed the thought. He was the only one we wanted.
Underneath the declaration, one terrifying, soul-deep truth pulsed through both me and my beast like blood and electricity; if he died tonight—we would break.