Chapter 19 #3
The conflict that raged across his face was almost painful to witness—duty warring with something deeper, something that made my breath catch. Then he cursed, a guttural word in his native tongue that sounded like "belzork," and yanked Ahrick's blaster from his belt.
"Tell me you know how to use this."
I took the weapon, checking the charge with hands that were steadier than they had any right to be. "I'm a good shot." The Navy had seen to that. The FBI had made sure of it.
"You'd better be the best shot on the planet." His hand came up to cup my face, thumb tracing my cheekbone. "Because if anything happens to you, I'll burn this entire planet to ash."
"Nothing's going to happen to me," I promised, though my heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest. "We're going to save Ahrick, and then you're going to keep your promise."
"What promise?"
I looked back toward the clearing, where Declan stood like a king surveying his conquest. "You're going to kill him."
Nansar's smile was a beautiful, terrible thing—all sharp edges and dark promises. "With pleasure."
I took a breath that felt like it might be my last, tucked the blaster against my spine where my tunic would hide it, and pulled Nansar down into a kiss that tasted like desperation and defiance and goodbye. When we broke apart, we were both breathless.
Then I stepped out from behind the trees.
My footsteps crunched deliberately through the undergrowth, each snap of a twig a calculated announcement.
I kept my shoulders hunched, my gaze lowered—the picture of someone trying desperately to be stealthy and failing spectacularly.
When I finally lifted my eyes and saw Declan standing there surrounded by his mercenaries, I let shock bloom across my face.
"No," I whispered, stumbling backward with all the grace of genuine terror. My hand flew to my mouth. "No, no, no—"
Declan's laugh sliced through the clearing like a blade.
"Well, well, well. Look what we have here.
" He opened his arms in a gesture of mock welcome, his smile all teeth and triumph.
"My spy was right on the money. I knew the Alliance was sending a ship to rescue you, little Chloe, and exactly where you'd be. I just had to get here first."
The sight of him—that smug, self-satisfied expression, those eyes gleaming with ownership—sent revulsion crawling across my skin like insects. My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat a war drum.
"Stay away from me." The tremor in my voice required no acting.
"Oh, come now." He advanced with slow confidence, his tone dripped honey laced with poison. "Don't be like that." Another measured step. "Now that your father is working with the Alliance Prime, you're my most precious asset. Come on now, pet. We need to leave before that Alliance ship gets here."
That word—pet—ignited something molten in my chest. The fear burned away, replaced by pure, crystalline rage.
I straightened, my hands curling into fists so tight my nails carved crescents into my palms.
"No."
His smile flickered like a candle in wind. "What?"
"I said no." Steel threaded through my voice now, unshakeable. "You are never going to touch me again."
The mask cracked. His expression twisted into something ugly, all wounded pride and cold fury. "You stupid little bitch," he snarled, his hand darting to his hip.
I registered the movement as the dart gun appeared, heard the soft pfft of compressed air, felt the sharp kiss of the dart embedding itself in my shoulder.
The physical pain was nothing compared to the wave of rage that crashed over me.
I couldn't see Nansar, couldn't hear him, but I felt him—his fury a living thing that made the air shimmer with barely restrained violence.
For one heart-stopping moment, I worried he might abandon the plan, might charge forward in a storm of protective wrath.
But beneath that volcanic anger, I sensed iron control. He was waiting. Trusting me.
I looked down at the dart, then back at Declan's confident, cruel smile.
Slowly, deliberately, I wrapped my fingers around the dart and pulled it free. Then I started to laugh—a sound that began as a low chuckle and built into something wild and unrestrained.
The drug didn't work. Thanks to the vaccination, my body rejected it completely. No fog descending over my thoughts, no compulsion slithering through my veins, no helpless surrender.
And with that realization came something even more powerful.
The fear that had lived in my bones since the first time he'd drugged me—the terror that had colonized my nightmares and haunted my waking hours—simply... evaporated. Like morning mist under a merciless sun.
I wasn't his. I never would be again.
The power was mine. The choice was mine. My body, my mind, my future—mine.
And Declan? He was nothing but a man with a dart gun and delusions of godhood, standing before someone who had finally remembered she was free.
Declan's smile died on his lips. "What—"
"Did you really think," I said, my laughter sharp as broken glass as I flicked the dart at his feet, "that I wouldn't get vaccinated against your poison?
" I stepped toward him, drinking in the way his eyes widened with dawning realization.
"Your tricks don't work on me anymore, Declan. None of them ever will again."
His face contorted, rage mottling his skin as his jaw clenched hard enough to crack teeth. "Fine," he snarled, snapping his fingers at the Trogvyk guards. "Take her. Take them both. We're done here."
The guards surged forward, weapons gleaming—but they'd barely closed half the distance when all hell broke loose.
Nansar exploded from the treeline like a god of war given flesh, his battle cry splitting the air—a sound so raw, so utterly savage that it turned my blood to lightning.
He was a weapon in motion, all lethal grace and controlled fury, his fist crushing into the nearest guard's jaw before the Trogvyk even registered the threat.
The guard dropped like a stone, out cold before gravity claimed him.
Ahrick's laugh rang out—wild and fierce—as he swept his captor's legs and drove an elbow into an alien skull with devastating precision.
"Ahrick!" Nansar's hand flew to his back, unhooking the axe and sending it spinning through the air in a perfect arc.
Ahrick snatched it mid-flight, his grin turning predatory as he tested its weight with a practiced spin. "Finally."
Steel sang as Nansar drew his sword, the blade catching the light like a promise of violence.
Then the clearing became chaos.
I threw myself behind the nearest rock, pulse thundering in my ears.
The blaster felt solid in my grip as I forced my breathing to steady, years of training overriding the adrenaline screaming through my veins.
Shooting targets with my Dad. Navy drills.
FBI range time. Muscle memory carved into bone.
I leaned out. Aimed. Fired.
The first bolt caught a Romvesian guard center mass, spinning him like a top. The second put him down for good. I tracked left, found another Trogvyk trying to flank Nansar. Squeezed the trigger. He dropped hard, armor smoking.
In the heart of the clearing, Nansar and Ahrick fought like they shared one mind—a brutal ballet of synchronized destruction.
Ahrick's raw savagery melded seamlessly with Nansar's surgical precision, creating something beautiful and terrible.
An electrified baton swung at Nansar's head; he caught the wielder's wrist, twisted, and used the guard's own weight to slam him into the earth hard enough to crack ribs.
Ahrick carved through two more with his axe, each strike flowing into the next like water, like death given rhythm.
I dropped a guard lining up a shot on Ahrick. Then another creeping toward Nansar's blind side.
My hands didn't shake. My aim didn't waver. Every shot found its mark.
Minutes later, the Trogvyk guards littered the ground—unconscious, groaning, or simply done.
But our victory was short-lived.
The ship's loading ramp descended with a hydraulic hiss that made my blood run cold. Twenty more guards poured out like a swarm of hornets from a kicked nest—heavily armed, heavily armored, and moving with the kind of military precision that suggested we were royally screwed.
"Shit!" I squeezed off another shot, then another, my finger working the trigger like my life depended on it.
Because it did. The blaster's charge indicator flashed angry orange, each bolt weaker than the last, like the weapon itself was giving up.
I dropped two guards, wounded another, but they kept coming. An endless tide of armor and weapons.
God, what I wouldn't give for my Glock right now. Fifteen rounds, maybe two spare mags. At least then I'd know exactly how many bullets stood between me and death.
The blaster whined pathetically, its power cell gasping its last breath. I fired again—the bolt barely kissed my target's armor, leaving nothing but a scorch mark. Another squeeze of the trigger produced a fizzle and a puff of smoke.
Dead. The damn thing was dead.
"Chloe, run!" Nansar's voice cut through the chaos, raw with desperation.
Run where? We were pinned down, outnumbered three to one, with our backs against a literal wall of trees. Running meant dying tired.
But more than that—run? Leave him here to face this nightmare alone?
The thought should have made perfect sense. I was human. Fragile. Breakable. The weakest link in this chain, the one they'd been protecting since this whole mess started. Running would be the smart play. The logical play.
My feet stayed rooted to the ground.
I looked at Nansar—really looked at him.
His platinum hair whipped wild in the wind, catching the light like spun silver.
His face was set with the kind of stubborn determination that could move mountains, his jaw tight as he fought off two guards at once.
The way he moved was poetry written in violence, fluid and deadly, protecting Ahrick's flank even as he carved through his own opponents.
Every ripple of muscle beneath his skin spoke of power barely contained, of strength tempered with surgical precision.
And in that moment, with perfect, terrifying clarity, I understood.
I wasn't leaving him. Not now. Not ever.
Because somewhere between when he'd found me in the forest and now—between his quiet strength and unexpected gentleness, between the way he looked at me like I actually mattered and the way he'd risked everything to keep me safe—I'd gone and done the stupidest, most wonderful thing possible.
I'd fallen in love with him.
The realization bloomed in my chest like a supernova going critical.
I loved him. I loved the way he saw me as more than just some fragile human to be rescued.
I loved the gentleness of his touch, so careful despite the violence he was capable of.
I loved his protectiveness, the way his eyes softened when they found mine across a room.
I loved him with a ferocity that scared me, and I'd be damned—literally damned—if I was going to run away and leave him to die.
"Not a chance!" I shouted back, my voice ferocious with newfound determination. I left the cover of the rock, snatching up a fallen Trogvyk's weapon, my fingers flying over the controls to check its charge. Still half full. Thank God for small mercies. "We fight together or not at all!"
Nansar's eyes found mine across the clearing, and something passed between us—a current of understanding.
A connection that ran deeper than words, deeper than species, deeper than the chaos raging around us.
His expression shifted, just for a heartbeat—surprise, maybe, or something warmer—before he turned back to the advancing guards with renewed intensity, fighting like a man who suddenly had everything to lose.
If we were going down, we were going down together.