Chapter 26
KRAJ
The night tastes of iron. Sharp, metallic, electric. The kind of night when storms split planets in two.
I crouch on the cliff ledge, muscles coiled, every sense stretched to breaking. The canyon below lies in shadow, but I don’t need light—I can feel them. Hear them. Smell them.
Targen has arrived.
Five shadows move at his side, deliberate, precise.
Not scouts, not fodder. Assassins. Their bodies gleam with augments—chromed arms with subdermal plating, eyes that glow faint red as they scan the dark.
I can hear the faint hum of their enhancements, the synthetic pulse of organ replacements beating alongside what scraps of flesh they still carry.
But they’re not hunting a man tonight.
They’re stepping into the lair of something else.
I flex my claws, digging grooves into the stone. My pulse slows, controlled, every beat a drum of war. I’ve been many things—spy, soldier, traitor. Tonight I strip all of that away. Tonight, I am only what the blood in my veins has always promised.
Predator.
The first assassin moves ahead, a scout cloaked in adaptive camo, his outline warping against the canyon wall. He thinks he’s invisible. He’s not. His scent reeks of polymer oil and fear.
I drop from above.
My claws pierce his throat before he can scream. Hot blood sprays across my tongue, metallic and burning. His body jerks once, twice, then falls limp in my grip. I let him slide silently into the dust, already turning for the next.
“Contact!” one of them shouts, voice distorted by a throat modulator.
Too late.
I roar, the sound ripping through the canyon like thunder.
Two assassins fire in response—blaster rounds slamming into the stone around me, scorching heat washing my skin.
One bolt grazes my shoulder, searing flesh, but pain is fuel now.
I surge forward, crossing the gap before their targeting systems can recalibrate.
The first gets a claw through the chest, ribs cracking like brittle wood. He gasps, eyes wide, and I slam his skull against the canyon wall until it shatters.
The second raises his rifle, but I wrench it free, turning it on him. Two blasts. Center mass. The smell of burning meat fills the air. He collapses, smoke curling from the holes in his chest.
“Fall back!” another assassin shouts. But the canyon betrays them.
The explosives I planted scream to life—small charges buried beneath loose rock. The detonations crack like thunder, hurling dust clouds into the air, the shockwave rattling my teeth. The canyon becomes chaos—alarms from their HUDs screeching, their targeting useless in the haze.
Perfect.
I move through the storm, unseen, unheard except for the death I carry. My claws find another throat, hot arterial spray painting my scales gold in the firelight. He gurgles, claws at me, but I twist until vertebrae snap like dry twigs.
“Show yourself, Kraj!”
Targen’s voice cuts through the chaos—steady, calm, dripping venom. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t panic. He never does.
I snarl back, low and guttural, words scraping from my chest. “You came for blood. You’ll drown in it.”
His laugh echoes, cold and sharp. “That’s the spirit I always liked. You never belonged in shadows, boy. You belonged in slaughter.”
The dust begins to settle, and the last assassin steps into view. Bigger than the others, a brute with arms like steel beams, plated with alloy. His face is half-mask, half scar, a predator’s snarl locked in place. He grips a shock-axe, its blade humming with lethal energy.
I bare my teeth, my own claws dripping.
The canyon narrows to just us. Him. Me. And the war we were born to fight.
I lunge first.
The brute with the shock-axe is nothing but meat now—his skull still steaming against the canyon wall. My chest heaves, lungs raw from dust and smoke. Four bodies litter the rocks. The fifth assassin twitches in the rubble, his spine broken. Only one voice remains, steady as a razor’s edge.
Targen.
He steps through the haze like he’s walking into a tavern, not a battlefield.
The dust clings to his coat, the one I remember from half a dozen warzones—black leather, reinforced plates at the shoulders, the collar high enough to hide the scar I left him years ago.
His eyes, cold as a blade fresh from cryo, cut straight through me.
“Efficient as ever,” he drawls, voice carrying that old smugness, that handler’s confidence that always made me want to tear his throat out. “But sloppy. Letting me watch you bleed your rage out on the help before you face me? Amateur.”
I bare my fangs. “You wanted a show. You got one.”
His lips curl into something between a grin and a snarl. Then his hands go to his belt, pulling free the twin plasma knives. They hum to life with that high-pitched whine, violet light washing across his face. He twirls them once, just to remind me he’s fast. Too fast. Always was.
“You’re wasting your life,” he says, tone sharp now. “On a woman. On a brat. That’s what you broke from me for? You think she’ll keep you fed when the nightmares come? You think the kid will love you when she sees the blood under your claws?”
I feel my vision narrow, the canyon itself shrinking until it’s just him and me, predator against predator. My claws extend with a wet snap, catching the lamplight of the knives. My voice rumbles out, deep and low.
“They don’t make me weak. They make me whole.”
Targen laughs, but there’s no humor in it. Just scorn. “Whole? You’re a butcher. That’s all you’ve ever been. That’s all you’ll ever be. And when I’m finished, I’ll show your little family exactly what kind of monster you are.”
That tears it.
I charge.
The clash is thunder—my claws meeting his plasma blades in a spray of sparks and heat.
The knives sear against my scales, leaving scorched lines that smoke in the cool canyon air.
He moves like water, flowing around my strikes, cutting shallow but constant.
My blood hisses where it splashes the rocks.
“Slower than I remember,” he taunts, ducking under a swing and slashing across my ribs. The stink of burnt flesh fills my nose. “Domestic life doesn’t suit you.”
I roar and slam my shoulder into him, the impact sending us both crashing into the cliff wall.
Stone cracks. He grunts but doesn’t falter, driving one knife toward my throat.
I catch his wrist, claws digging deep into muscle, and wrench it aside.
The blade slices into the rock, molten shards spraying.
We’re nose to nose now, his breath hot, his grin feral. “Still mine,” he hisses. “You’ll never cut the leash.”
“Watch me,” I growl, and rake my free claws across his chest. Armor plates shear away. Flesh splits. He stumbles, snarling, but his other blade whirls up and carves a burning line across my face.
The pain is white fire, blinding, but I don’t fall.
I slam a knee into his gut, hear the air leave him, and drive him back.
We grapple like beasts, rolling in the dust, claws and knives flashing in strobing bursts of violet light.
There’s no finesse left. No tactics. Just fury, raw and unrestrained.
“Always wanted to kill you with my own hands,” he spits, knife grazing my jaw.
“You should’ve tried harder,” I snarl, smashing my forehead into his. Bone cracks. He reels.
I seize the moment. Slam him against the canyon wall, claws pinning his wrists wide, one knife clattering to the ground. His remaining blade jerks, scoring my shoulder, but I twist his arm until I hear the snap of tendon tearing. The knife falls uselessly.
Targen gasps, blood at his lips, but he still laughs. “Go on then. Do it. Prove me right. Prove to her what you are.”
For a heartbeat, my claws hover at his throat, dripping with his blood. I could end it. End him. One strike, and the ghost haunting me for years is gone.
But Luna’s face flashes in my mind. Solie’s laugh. The way they both looked at me, not with fear, but with something I never deserved—trust.
I lean in, fangs bared, voice shaking the stone. “You come after my family again…” I drag the claws just enough to make him flinch, blood running hot down his neck, “…and you’ll pray for death.”
Then I pull back, but not before I drive a knee into his leg. Bone splinters, snapping like brittle glass. He screams, the sound ripping through the canyon.
“You’ll crawl,” I snarl, “and you’ll remember who let you live.”
With one last swipe, I burn out his comm chip, the acrid stench of fried circuitry filling the air. Sparks rain down his collar. He slumps, half-conscious, pinned between agony and rage.
I let him drop.
Behind me, smoke rises from the detonations still smoldering in the canyon, curling into the night sky like a funeral pyre. My blood drips onto the stones, mixing with his. My chest heaves, every nerve screaming, but my heart pounds steady.
Not a soldier. Not a spy.
A mate. A father. A protector.
I leave him broken in the dust and walk back toward the only life I’ve ever chosen for myself.