Chapter 6 Rhea
RHEA
The world feels like it's holding its breath, and I’m right there with it.
We’re stuffed in the belly of a rust-riddled civilian transport, wedged shoulder to shoulder with drifters and traders, miners and old-timers with stories soaked in whiskey and regret.
Valtron’s hunched awkwardly beside me, trying to make his seven-and-a-half-foot frame disappear, which is like asking a solar flare to dim.
Every inch of him radiates heat and tension and the kind of suppressed power that makes people glance twice before pretending they didn’t see him at all.
The hum of the engines thrums low in my bones.
I smell rust, sweat, cheap engine oil, and over-worn filter masks.
Somewhere up front, a kid coughs, hacking like she’s inhaled half a desert.
Valtron shifts beside me and the entire bench groans in protest. A nearby merchant flinches but says nothing.
He doesn’t want trouble. He definitely doesn’t want this kind of trouble.
I glance at Valtron. His hood is low, his posture compact, but I see the slow flex of his jaw, the flicker in his golden eyes. His fingers curl around his ID chip like it might bite him. Not a good sign.
Border patrol drones drift by the outside of the hull—silver glints through the viewport, smooth and silent and watching. They pass, one by one. Then a smaller one drifts close. Too close. It halts near our window, hovers with a curious whine.
The drone’s scanner pulses. Blue. Blue. Pause.
Blue. Red—no, wait, it flickers back to blue.
I feel sweat bead at the back of my neck, itching under my collar. The woman next to me mutters a prayer. The man behind us shifts something under his coat—weapon? Contraband? Don’t know, don’t care. The drone zips away, finally satisfied.
My lungs inflate for the first time in what feels like a full minute. I exhale slow.
“Valtron…” I murmur.
“I know.”
The transport jolts forward again, lurching over uneven grav-plates. The woman’s kid coughs harder. I wrap my jacket tighter around myself, pretending it’s warmth, pretending everything isn’t fraying at the edges. The transport's lights flicker, and everyone pretends not to notice.
When we finally dock, the air that hits me smells like metal and ionized dust. Like something burnt and abandoned. Vorthys Orbit—the edge of Alliance territory. Not technically off-limits, but only the desperate and the dirty come here.
Valtron steers me through the exit ramp without a word. His hand is firm against the small of my back, and I pretend I don’t feel the electric jolt it sends up my spine. It’s not the time. It’s never the time.
The outpost we walk into is a graveyard of secrets. Rust-eaten walls. Flickering lights. A main corridor so narrow even Valtron has to duck. “Black motel,” they call it. Temporary beds for fugitives and fixers and people who need to disappear.
We’re shown to a room that smells like coolant leaks and mold. No windows. One door. A single bulb sways overhead, flickering with every breath.
Commander Thanek’s waiting.
Half-Alzhon, half-machine, and all bastard, he lounges in a dented chair like he owns the air in the room. His left eye glows cobalt. The right one is sharper—red, metallic, cruel.
“Well, well,” he drawls. “Valtron. Still dragging strays behind you like bad habits?”
Valtron steps between us so fast I almost don’t see it.
“She’s not a stray.”
Thanek grins, flashing a gold tooth. “She’s human. Squishy. Fragile.”
“She’s smarter than anyone you’ve ever worked with.”
“Smarter than you?”
Valtron’s smile is sharp. “Definitely.”
Thanek chuckles, but there’s no warmth in it. “Dowron’s not gonna like this mess. You bringing a civilian into the snake pit?”
“She brought herself.”
“She always talk this much?”
I answer for myself. “Only when I’m around idiots.”
Thanek raises a brow. “Feisty.”
Valtron’s body shifts, the slightest twitch. Thanek catches it. Grins wider. “Ohhh. That kind of situation.”
Valtron doesn’t deny it.
After Thanek disappears behind a bulkhead, probably to trade classified info for booze or stim injectors, I round on Valtron.
“You want to tell me what that was about?”
He sighs, rakes a hand through his hair. “He’s a contact. Nothing more.”
“You used me as leverage.”
“No. I used your intelligence as leverage.”
“Bullshit.”
He steps back. “Rhea—”
“No!” My voice cracks, but I let it. “Every time I ask for answers, you clam up like it’s for my own good.
You keep saying it’s to protect me, but you don’t get to make that call.
I’m not your pet. I’m not your damsel. I’ve been running, bleeding, scared, and furious for days—and I’m still standing.
So stop acting like your pain is more important than mine! ”
His jaw locks.
“I know what you’ve lost,” I say, quieter now. “I know what they took from you. But they took from me too. Don’t you dare look at me like I’m breakable just because I don’t have scales and military clearance.”
The silence after that is suffocating.
Valtron moves like he’s going to argue—but then he stops. And instead, he reaches into his coat and pulls out a chip. Thin, black, no markings.
“What’s that?” I ask warily.
“Decryption key.”
I blink. “You had this the whole time?”
“No. I got it off a vault on Auron Prime. Stole it six weeks ago. Took months to get the right access signal.”
“And you’re just giving it to me now?”
“Because I trust you.”
I stare at him. His face is carved from stone, but I see it—the strain behind his eyes, the weight in his shoulders. Trust doesn’t come easy for him. Never has.
But this? This costs him something. And that makes it real.
“Thanks,” I say softly.
He nods, then hesitates. “You’re not a damsel, Rhea.”
“I know.”
“I never said my pain was more important.”
“You didn’t have to.”
And that’s when he finally looks away.
And I know he heard every word.
The hum of the server is the only constant in the room now.
It vibrates through the metal floor beneath my feet, like a pulse—artificial, steady, unlike mine.
Mine is erratic. Racing. Because the more I dig into the encrypted code with the key Valtron gave me, the more my world bends around me like glass under heat.
The file opens like a wound. What I thought was damning enough—proof of internal corruption, of misappropriated funds and blacklisted operations—is just the tip. The Combine wasn't just laundering money or setting up shell companies to skim Alliance contracts.
They were experimenting.
On soldiers.
On civilians.
I scroll through grim lines of data—sparse but haunting. Neural compliance systems. Behavioral override implants. Something about waveform programming using high-frequency pulses designed to manipulate adrenaline response. I don’t understand it all, but what I do understand makes my stomach flip.
This isn’t just war profiteering. It’s puppeteering.
They weren’t just trying to control enemy forces.
They were testing on civilians—Alliance civilians.
Disguised as disaster relief drones, food aid modules.
The Combine infiltrated entire systems under the guise of humanitarian support.
Some of these logs mention a failed experiment on Trenar-4.
I remember Trenar-4—it made the news cycle for a few weeks.
Spontaneous riots, strange illnesses, unexplained deaths. Then it vanished from public record.
But it didn’t vanish from here.
“Son of a bitch,” I whisper.
My palms are sweating. I wipe them on my pants and push deeper, the decryption algorithms unraveling like torn cloth under my fingers.
Every click is a cut. Every scroll, another slice of truth I wasn’t ready for.
And Valtron’s gone.
Said he had to “verify a source.”
What the hell does that even mean? It's been three hours. I haven’t heard a word. I told myself I wouldn’t worry. That he’s capable. That he’s a walking tank made of scales and fury. But I keep glancing at the door like it’s a portal to bad news.
I’m halfway through cross-referencing coordinates with public station maps when the door slams open.
I leap to my feet, heart thudding—
“Valtron?”
He’s there. Bleeding.
One side of his face is bruised, scales cracked and tinged darker around the ridges. His arm’s half-wrapped in what looks like a scorched utility cloth, and he’s limping. His jacket’s torn open, revealing more crimson skin and the edge of a wound I don’t even want to know how deep.
“You’re—what the hell happened?”
He steps in, calm like he didn’t just walk through hell. “Had to confirm something.”
“With your face?!”
He opens his mouth to speak, and I see red on his teeth. I nearly slap him. I almost do.
But instead—I kiss him.
It’s not slow. Not sweet. It’s a surge. A release of everything pent up—anger, fear, frustration, relief. My fingers tangle in his jacket as I pull him down to me, tasting heat and blood and the residue of fire on his lips. He kisses back like a man drowning.
His hands cup my face, rough and shaking. We don’t speak.
His mouth finds my throat. I gasp. My knees go weak.
The metal wall behind me is cold but not enough to douse the heat building between us.
We’re tearing at zippers and buttons and belts.
Somewhere deep in my brain, a rational voice protests.
It’s too fast. Too messy. But that voice is lost in the rush of sensation—his hands on my hips, the rough sound of his breath in my ear, the heat of his body pressing against mine.
We don’t make it to the bed.
We don’t need to.
The wall is strong enough.
His claws don’t nick my skin. They could, but they don’t. He moves with precision, practiced restraint, like he’s memorized how to hold back even when everything in him screams to take.
But it’s me who breaks first. I push his jacket off his shoulders, revealing the ridged red scales beneath, hard and gleaming under the flickering light.
My hands trace the curve of his arms, the muscles bunching beneath the skin.
He’s heat and tension and raw power, barely contained.
His golden eyes burn like twin suns, locked on my face as if he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he looks away.
“Tell me to stop,” he grits, voice deep, vibrating through my bones.
“I’ll break you if you do,” I whisper.
A snarl curls his lips, but not in anger. Lust. Need. A desperation that mirrors mine.
He spins me and presses me harder against the wall, one hand holding my hip, the other tugging my pants down with far too much ease. The air is cool on my skin, but I burn everywhere he touches.
He drops to one knee behind me, and before I can speak, I feel his mouth against my pussy. Hot. Wet. Open.
“Oh my god—” I cry out, palms flat against the wall as his tongue slides over my folds, licking deep, then slow and shallow. He groans like I taste better than anything he’s ever known, and fuck, the vibration of it makes my knees buckle.
“Don’t fall,” he murmurs, lips slick. “Not yet.”
“I c-can’t—” I choke on my own breath as he grips my thighs and holds me still, feasting on me like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. His tongue is wide, textured, almost rough, and somehow perfect. It strokes over my clit, circles it, then sucks it into his mouth. I scream.
That’s when he pulls away, just enough to growl, “You don’t know how long I’ve needed this. Needed you.”
He stands, lifts me effortlessly with one arm, pants hanging from one ankle, shirt half off. I scramble to pull his belt free, my fingers desperate. I need to feel him. All of him.
And when I do—when his cock springs free, thick and ridged and flushed with a deeper red at the tip—I pause.
He’s… massive.
Like the rest of him. Alien. Gorgeous. Intimidating.
“Shit,” I murmur, biting my lip.
His brow furrows. “Rhea—”
“I didn’t say stop.”
His nostrils flare. “I’ll go slow.”
I nod. “Not too slow.”
He chuckles, dark and low, and kisses me again, this time guiding the head of his cock to my entrance.
I feel him push in.
Every. Inch.
The stretch is unreal—pain and pleasure and overwhelming fullness. I cry out, nails digging into his shoulders as he sinks deeper, and deeper still.
“Fuck, you’re tight,” he groans, hips trembling from restraint.
“You’re huge,” I gasp.
He stills, buried to the hilt, letting me adjust. I wrap my arms around his neck, burying my face in his skin. His scent is everywhere—spice and ash and male.
“I’m okay,” I whisper. “Move.”
And when he does, it’s like a dam breaks.
He thrusts into me, hard and deep, and I swear I see stars. The wall behind me groans, but we don’t stop. Can’t. My pussy clenches around him, greedy and slick, taking everything he gives and begging for more.
He fucks me like he’s trying to etch himself into my body. Like he already lives in my soul, and this is just claiming the rest.
“I thought I lost you,” he growls into my ear, every word a thrust.
“You didn’t,” I pant. “You won’t.”
His lips find mine again, bruising and desperate. His hands roam—down my back, across my ass, gripping me tighter as he picks up the pace. My legs wrap around his waist, locking us together.
I’m close. Too close. The heat coils in my stomach, sharp and hot, and when he slams into me just right—angled up, deeper than should be possible—I come undone.
I scream.
Loud. Guttural. Real.
My whole body shudders, pussy clenching violently around him, and he curses in a language I don’t know as he thrusts once, twice more—then follows.
He buries himself deep, cock twitching as he spills inside me, groaning like it tears him apart. His whole body goes rigid, then softens against me.
When we finally collapse, tangled on the cot in the corner, my body aches in a way that makes me feel alive.
Valtron’s arm is heavy across my waist. I don’t move it.
For once, the room is silent. Not even the server hum remains. Just breath. Just skin.
Just us.
He doesn’t ask what it meant.
I don’t tell him to stay.
Because I don’t trust the world to let this last—and I don’t know if I trust myself to hope that it will.