The Scout
The path from the armory to the fortress’s primary throne room was a silent march through the nerve center of our new, bloody reality.
The warlord’s boots hammered a heavy, relentless rhythm on the grated floors.
My own lighter steps fell in perfect sync with his movements.
No guard escorted us. No sentries flanked the doors.
The army’s absolute submission on the plaza had made all protocol unnecessary. We were the law.
The five-meter-high armored doors of the throne room slid apart with a deep, mechanical rumble.
The space beyond swallowed the flickering neon light of the corridors.
Walls of pure, matte-black obsidian rose into the darkness above.
At the center, elevated on a stone pedestal, stood not a classical throne but a massive tactical control seat of titanium and dark leather, surrounded by deactivated holographic emitters.
The air here smelled different from the rest of the mining city.
No sulfur. No smog. Only the cold, sterile chill of the rock and the omnipresent, heavy musk of the apex predator at my side.
The moment the magnetic bolts of the doors locked into the frame behind us, the atmosphere shifted. The strategic coldness I’d worn like a shield on the balcony collided with the raw, animal heat radiating from him.
He didn’t walk to the control seat. He stopped in the middle of the room, turned on his heel, and waited.
I stepped toward him. The distance between us melted. I raised my head and stared into his amber eyes. The gold in his pupils burned, a steady, demanding blaze that set my pulse racing.
“You broke them,” he rumbled quietly. His gravelly voice filled the enormous room effortlessly. “You forced a battalion of veterans into the dust with words and algorithms.”
“I dismantled their minds,” I corrected without breaking eye contact. “You showed them what happens if they stand back up.”
His massive left hand rose. The pitch-black claws didn’t stroke gently over my skin. He grabbed my jaw. A hard, dominant grip that locked my head at the exact angle he wanted. His thumb pressed against the throbbing vein in my neck, directly beneath the crust of his fresh bite mark.
“The jungle isn’t an army of gray soldiers, little strategist,” he murmured as he leaned forward. His hot breath washed over my lips. “Out there, there are no cameras for you to hack. The air is toxic. The ground devours flesh. Every damn plant is designed to isolate and destroy weakness.”
The thick, violet muscle of his tail shot silently across the obsidian floor. It wrapped around my left thigh, contracted hard, and yanked my leg upward.
I lost my balance, but he caught my weight immediately. He dragged my hips brutally against his. The hard, scalding bulge of his arousal pressed unmistakably against my center. My breath caught. The friction ignited an immediate, electrifying fire low in my belly.
“I know myself,” I forced out. My right hand clawed at the military leather strap across his bare, broad chest. “I won’t get in your way. Once we cross the tree line, I’ll follow your physical commands.”
“You will,” he growled darkly. His grip on my jaw tightened fractionally—an absolute confirmation of his physical dominance.
“You deliver the frequencies. You locate your partner. But the moment something breathing gets in our way, you stay behind me. If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to hit the ground, you do it. No analysis. No argument. Understood?”
“Understood, Raze.” The word slipped dark and rough over my lips. No mockery. A naked, tactical pact.
He stared at my mouth. The tail around my thigh contracted in a slow, massaging rhythm. The muscles in his face tensed. He wanted to seal the pact, wanted to drive the raw, violent energy of the morning into another physical escalation.
A shrill, deafening hum tore through the silence.
The primary communication panel at the armored doors blinked an aggressive, warning red.
He froze mid-motion. His nostrils flared. The gold in his eyes darkened instantly, narrowing to dangerous, annoyed slits.
He released my jaw. The tail slid reluctantly from my thigh. The sudden absence of heat was a physical blow. I stepped back, straightened my functional shirt, and squared my shoulders. The boss was back.
Raze slammed his palm on a sensor embedded in the control seat’s armrest. The magnetic bolts of the doors hissed open.
A scout burst into the throne room.
He wore no heavy armor, just the light, agile camouflage gear of the border troops. He was a gray-skinned mutant, but his build was wiry—built for speed. He wasn’t simply in a hurry. He reeked of naked panic, damp earth, and rotting flesh.
His condition was disastrous. The camouflage armor hung in tatters from his body. Deep, parallel scratches ran across his left arm and chest. The flesh was torn down to the bone. Black, greasy blood seeped from the wounds and dripped audibly onto the polished obsidian floor of the throne room.
He didn’t stop to salute. His knees gave out. He crashed onto the stone three meters in front of us, braced himself with a trembling hand, and coughed bloody mucus onto the floor.
“Lord,” the scout croaked. His lungs rattled.
The warlord stepped past me. Each step was controlled, but the tension in his broad back betrayed absolute alertness. He loomed like a monolith over the trembling scout.
“Report,” he rumbled. No questions about the man’s condition. Just a hard demand for facts.
The scout raised his free hand. His fingers trembled so violently that his joints popped. He clutched an object.
With a feeble motion, he threw the object at Raze’s black boots.
The clatter of splintering hard plastic and metal echoed through the room.
My pulse skipped for one damned, endless beat.
I ran. I didn’t wait for the warlord’s clearance. I threw myself onto my knees beside the scout, my hands reaching for the object on the cold stone. Adrenaline burned like acid in my throat.
It was an imperial radio transmitter. Modified. My own design. I’d resoldered the circuits of this device four years ago in the cargo hold of our ship.
It was Jules' radio.
The black casing was completely destroyed. Five thick, deep furrows gouged through the hard plastic and the circuit boards inside. No plasma damage. No blaster hits. The grooves were organic. Lethal. They came from claws thick and strong enough to scratch titanium.
But that wasn't what ripped the air from my lungs.
The device was sticky. My fingers were red.
Fresh, tacky blood coated the remains of the transmitter. It wasn't the black or gray blood of the mutineers. It wasn't Raze's violet blood. It was bright crimson and reeked of human iron.
“No,” I whispered. My voice was a hollow, broken breath in the vast room. I stared at my bloody fingertips. The variables in my head collided, crashed, and tore open a deep, black abyss.
Raze stood motionless above me. His gaze bored into the bloody device in my hands. The tendons in his neck stood out so sharply they nearly cut through the deep violet skin. His massive jaw ground relentlessly.
“Where?” he thundered. A single word that made the air vibrate.
The scout flinched, pressing his forehead to the obsidian.
“Found at the perimeter,” the mutant croaked, the words bubbling through the blood in his throat. “Sector Four. The transition zone. We tried to pick up the trail, sir. But the Jungle King's territory is sealed off. The entire canopy is occupied by his hunters. We couldn't get through.”
The scout coughed hard, his body convulsing. He raised his head, raw terror in his eyes directed straight at the warlord.
“He has her, sir. The King of the Forests. He... he has the other female.”
My fingers closed around the splintered plastic. The sharp, jagged edges cut deep into my skin, but I didn't feel the pain. The crimson blood on the casing was still wet. It smelled of iron, of raw violence, of Jules.
A cold, black abyss tore open in my mind. For a millisecond, raw human despair threatened to swallow my calculations.
Then the steel vault in my head slammed shut.
If he wanted her dead, he would have sent a corpse. Not a radio.
I exhaled hard. The trembling in my hands died instantly. The blood on the plastic wasn't a death sentence. It was a message. Bait designed to force me into irrational action.
“Out,” he growled above me. The word was a thunderclap.
The scout didn't hesitate. He pulled himself up, slipped on his own blood, and dragged himself through the thick armored doors. The magnetic bolts hissed shut behind him, sealing the throne room completely. We were alone.
Raze bent down. His massive hands closed around my upper arms. He pulled me up from the floor, an effortless, hydraulic movement that slammed me directly against his hard, broad chest. The heat of his body hit me, searing and crushing, a brutal contrast to the ice in my veins.
He didn't rip the radio from my hands. His gaze bored into my face. He searched for the break. For tears. For last night's sub-drop.
He found only a smooth, impenetrable mask of hostile calculation.
“The Jungle King isn't just an animal,” Raze rumbled. His gravelly voice vibrated against my collarbone. The tendons in his thick neck stood out sharply. “He's my direct competitor. My greatest rival for dominance on this planet.”
I stared into his amber eyes. The narrow pupils pulsed in time with his heavy heartbeat.
His thick, violet tail lashed behind him across the stone, an aggressive, restless scraping. It shot forward and wrapped tight and possessive around my thigh, anchoring me physically to his hip.
“His territories border my mines,” he continued, his black claws digging slightly into my shoulders. “He scented my weakness when Kael triggered the perimeter alarm. If he has her, he's using her as leverage against me.”
The words fell heavy on the polished obsidian floor.
Leverage.
I lowered my gaze to the splintered casing in my hands.
The red blood stuck to my fingers. It was my best friend's blood.
For four years we'd survived in the dark, cold belly of our freighter.
We'd shared rations, stitched wounds, and watched each other's backs.
Jules wasn't a warrior. She was a technician.
And now she hung in the claws of an apex-predator rival, surrounded by toxic spores and carnivorous flora, used as a mere pawn in a planetary territorial war.
I opened my hands.
The radio fell to the floor. The plastic shattered into a dozen sharp-edged splinters.
I raised my blood-smeared fingers and wiped them ruthlessly on the matte black combat pants. The red smear disappeared into the fabric. The time for mercy was over.
He watched my every movement. The sheer, compressed violence in his body waited only for my signal. He knew the parameters had just shifted radically. This was no longer about defending his mines. This was about annihilation in enemy territory.
I raised my right hand.
I shoved my fingers between his chest muscles and clawed them directly into the thick leather of his military belt.
With a hard jerk, I pulled him down to me.
The tail around my thigh contracted immediately, pressing my pelvis relentlessly against his rock-hard hip.
The friction was an electric spark in a room full of explosives.
The sexual tension between us collided with naked bloodlust.
My face was a rigid mask of strategic calculation. No brat. No prisoner. A lethal force of nature claiming absolute command over the demon at her side.
“Then we'll find his weaknesses,” I said. My voice was dark, deathly still, and cut like a blade through the sterile air of the throne room.
I stared directly into the blazing gold of his eyes. The alliance was forged in blood, and now we were claiming the tribute.
“Get your army ready, Boss. We're going to war.”