Chapter 4
MAUG
The tunnels groan around me like an old animal, restless and aching.
I drag my weight through the tightest bend, stone scraping my back plates, until I reach the hollow deep enough to silence the world.
It isn’t a true cave—more like the ribcage of something ancient.
A collapsed transit channel, maybe. From when Purgonis had cities and laughter and more than bones to offer.
Before lava roots webbed through everything like arteries.
Before the pressure blooms pulsed and spat caustic vapor from cracks in the walls.
I sit. Let my bulk settle into the jagged floor. The air is wet here, heavy with sulfur and ash. But at least it doesn’t reek of humans. At least I can think.
I should’ve never gone that close.
I know better.
And still—still—I see her.
The red-haired one. Small. Daring. Too open. Too alive.
When the shots rang out and the lasers screamed past me, I could’ve vanished without looking back.
But something in me twisted. Froze. Her face, tipped up toward the cliffline, caught in the artificial glow of floodlights.
No helmet. No shield. Just skin and confusion and a mouth half open, not in terror—but in thought.
She was thinking.
About me.
I touch my forearm. The skin’s already closing over the scorch. Numb from the stim-blood cycling beneath, regenerating too fast to scar.
I bare my teeth and slam my fist into the ground, the impact ringing down the tunnel like a warning. The planet answers with a low creak, as if even it has grown tired of my brooding.
She shouldn’t have seen me.
That’s the rule. The first one I made when I chose exile. No contact. No involvement. Purgonis is a graveyard for guilt, and I came here to be buried slowly.
And yet—I let myself linger.
I knew the marines would shoot first. I counted on it. Their panic is predictable. Their violence… reflexive. But I stood too long. Watched too closely.
And she saw.
Why didn’t I run sooner?
A growl builds low in my chest. I reach for the nearest stalagmite—already brittle from heat fractures—and wrench it free with one hand. The rock sings as it arcs through the air and slams into the wall with a crack that rattles the tunnel ceiling. Shards rain down. Dust follows.
Still not enough.
The moment clings like ash in my throat. Her eyes—green, vibrant, unblinking. So damn curious. It wasn't just that she saw me. It was that she looked. Looked through me.
No one’s done that in years.
Not since… before.
My gut tightens. The pressure blooms pulse behind the wall, casting a dull pink glow over the floor like a heartbeat. I squeeze my eyes shut, but she’s still there. Her face, the tilt of her chin, the way she didn’t flinch when others ducked for cover.
And the worst part? The part that makes me feel feral?
A piece of me wanted her to see.
I rest my back against the curved tunnel wall, bones clicking softly as I shift. My breath comes slower now, steadier. The cave listens, like it always does. These halls are the only place where I am not a monster. Just a creature outlasting his penance.
But she presses on that line, pokes at the raw edge of it.
And I don’t know why.
I dig my claws into the rock beneath me. The stone is slick from the last spore mist. I don’t care. I need the anchor. I need to feel it. Because I don’t trust what’s happening inside me.
This isn’t like the others.
I’ve seen humans come through this place before. They all look the same from here—soft outlines and brighter-than-practical uniforms. Excitable. Fragile. Predictable. A few die. The rest leave. None of them matter.
But she.
She doesn’t walk like the others. Doesn’t glance over her shoulder at every shadow. There’s a pulse to her steps. Like she thinks she belongs.
Arrogance. Or madness.
Or maybe just youth.
But I can’t dismiss the coil in my chest. That itch just beneath the surface that says her presence here means something. Not strategy. Not war. Something older. Instinctual.
Jalshagar.
I swallow hard. My throat is dry. My body knows the word even if I refuse to speak it. The bond—my people’s cruel joke. Fated mates, chosen by the stars, by blood, by whatever ancient cruelty wired our souls to someone else’s.
I don’t believe in fate.
I believe in mistakes. In guilt. In punishment. Things I can count. Can bleed for.
But that moment… when our eyes met across smoke and laser fire…
No.
No.
It means nothing. It has to.
I press my hand against the wall, feeling the heartbeat of the planet. A slow, painful throb. Like it understands the weight in my chest.
I didn’t come here to find peace. Or redemption.
I came here to hurt.
To be buried in the silence.
Not to chase shadows of something impossible.
Not to want.
My claws retract with a soft click. I breathe in through my nose. The scent of scorched rock and mineral dust fills me. Sharp. Grounding.
The humans will forget the encounter. They always do. Write it off as a ghost in the dark. Some will think it was nothing. Others will whisper. But they’ll move on.
Except… maybe she won’t.
That’s the danger.
I lean my head back, horns tapping softly against the tunnel’s roof. The stone here remembers things. Every scar. Every echo. It remembers me.
I don’t deserve anything more than this silence.
But her eyes…
They speak of something else.
Not pity.
Not fear.
Curiosity.
And that is the worst thing of all.
Because curiosity leads to questions.
And questions lead to truth.
And if she keeps looking—keeps seeing—she might learn who I am.
What I’ve done.
And if that happens… I’ll have to decide if I’m the monster I keep pretending to be.
Or something worse.
I return to my main lair, for I have many, and put my hands to work. Sometimes physical labor takes the mind off things. And, sometimes not.
The blade doesn’t need sharpening. It could split bone clean from tendon just fine the way it is. But I run the whetstone along its edge anyway, slow and steady, each stroke a meditation. A ritual I don’t remember choosing. Just one I repeat, night after night, like breath.
The fire pit beside me pops softly, throwing orange shadows up against the cavern walls. The scent of seared sting tail still hangs in the air, fatty and acrid, clinging to the pelts strung above. Some still drip, the blood congealing in lazy droplets onto the already stained floor.
It’s quiet here.
The kind of quiet that makes your ears ache.
I don’t mind. Noise asks questions. Silence lets me pretend the answers don’t exist.
My hand flexes on the hilt. The blade hums faintly—Odex steel remembers its forge. I remember the war. The sound of it. The way this blade used to sing for me in battle. Now it just growls. Like it’s hungry for a purpose I won’t give it.
I set it down with a sigh and stretch, vertebrae clicking in protest. Around me, the lair breathes with the same rhythm I do.
The pelts shift gently in the breeze that filters in from the high cracks.
Outside, I hear the wind rise—sharp, poisonous, carrying with it the sting of ash and minerals that would choke human lungs in under a minute.
They have no idea how close they are to death.
I step toward the entryway, ducking slightly under the jagged overhang, and let the moons bathe me in cold silver.
There are two tonight, low in the sky, caught in the haze but glowing enough to give shape to the world.
The air carries that electric tension again.
Like the planet itself is coiling for something.
It’s too warm. Too quiet.
Sting tails are moving.
My gaze drops toward the ravine, and I trace the natural fissures that cut through Purgonis like claw marks. That camp—they don’t even realize it, but they pitched their little prefabs barely three hundred paces from a migration tunnel.
One tremor. One wrong scent. One mistake and the ground could open up and birth teeth.
They’ll die screaming. The ones who get to scream, anyway.
I should let them.
They came here. Ignored the warnings. Think their tech will save them. That their fusion weapons and smug little perimeter drones mean anything to this planet.
They chose this.
My breath curls out in a soft snarl. I can almost taste the sulfur shift beneath the rock.
And yet…
Her face rises unbidden again. That tilt of her chin. That strange calm. Not foolish—something else. Some kind of stubborn awe that cuts through the cynicism all her species seems to marinate in.
I grit my teeth. I shouldn’t be thinking about her. Not now. Not ever. The pull behind my ribs, it tightens again—like muscle memory gone haywire. Like I’ve been here before, in another life I promised I’d forget.
Before the war. Before the shame.
I take a deep breath, chest expanding against the cold. The scent of the storm coming in is familiar—metallic, charged. The kind that fries instruments and makes the sky dance. They’ll hole up in their base, safe behind their generators. Think they’re protected.
They’re not.
The sting tails don’t care about lightning. They move by vibration and heat. And humans radiate both like dying stars.
I should stay here.
I don’t owe them anything. Least of all her.
Especially not her.
I exiled myself for a reason. I chose silence. Chose to live in the dark and eat meat raw when the fire won’t catch. To stitch my own wounds. To forget the names of the ones I failed.
So why am I pacing?
Why won’t my muscles settle?
The wind howls louder. I turn from the cliff and stalk back inside, trying to bury the thought in movement. I toss more dried root into the fire. The flames hiss up again. The shadows deepen.
I force myself to sit.
Hands on knees.
Breathe in.
Hold.
Out.
Again.
But it’s no use. My claws twitch. My horns throb with the storm pressure. I keep seeing her face, over and over, like some fever-loop I can’t wake from.
She didn’t flinch.
That’s what stays with me.
She looked at me like I wasn’t a monster.
No fear. Just… understanding. Or the start of it.
And that’s the trap, isn’t it?
That’s what gets men killed. That moment where you start to hope someone might see you and not what you’ve done.
But it’s not real.
Hope is a blade you press to your own throat and pretend it’s a gift.
I snatch the knife up again, nearly cracking the whetstone in half as I pull it across the edge with too much force.
What the hell am I doing?
If the sting tails come, they come. If the humans die, they die. The galaxy spins on.
But if I don’t go…
And she dies…
I’ll see her face again.
Every night. For the rest of my life.
Just like the others.
Just like the ones I failed before.
I snarl low in my throat and slam the blade back into its sheath. The sound is final, but I’m already moving.
The cave lets me go like it’s been waiting.
I climb out into the night, the moons carving pale paths across the ridgelines. The cliffs are slick, but I know every handhold. Every breath of this broken planet is mapped into my body now. It takes me less than an hour to reach the outcropping above the camp.
And there it is again.
That damn light.
Their towers hum with it. Soft pulses of artificial security. Motion sensors beep. Tiny drones blink red as they scan their zones. Marines mill about, pretending to be warriors, their armor scratched and ill-fitted.
Children playing war on a godless world.
But she’s there too.
Outside again.
Alone.
Leaning against the side of a storage unit, arms wrapped around herself.
Her face turned up to the stars, even if they’re half-blotted by the haze.
She thinks she’s alone.
She never is.
My hands dig into the rock as I crouch. Watching.
Always watching.
I should turn around.
Instead, I breathe her in across the distance, the scent of her cutting through the wind like sunlight through stormclouds.
And I stay.