Chapter 20
Chloe
The clearing became a maelstrom of violence.
Ahrick was a force of nature, his massive frame cutting through three guards like they were made of paper, but even gods bleed.
Even titans fall. Nansar moved beside him with lethal precision, but I caught the flicker in his eyes—that cold, calculating look that told me he was running the numbers.
We were outmatched. Outgunned. Out of time.
The Trogvyk ship kept vomiting reinforcements in an endless tide. How many of these bastards could fit in there? I squeezed off shots, dropping three before their boots even hit the ramp, but for every one that fell, two more took their place.
They advanced like a wall of death, weapons raised, faces grim with purpose. My heart hammered against my ribs. Of all the ways I’d thought I’d die, fighting alongside the man I loved on an alien planet hadn’t even ranked. Yet now, it seemed the perfect way to go.
And then the heavens tore open.
The Alliance ship didn't just appear—it manifested, dropping out of nowhere like divine intervention made metal and fury. Massive. Sleek. Bristling with enough firepower to level a city. It hung suspended above us, blotting out the sun, casting the entire battlefield into shadow.
Every Trogvyk head snapped upward. I watched their expressions morph from bloodlust to terror.
The Alliance didn't bother with warnings.
The first plasma volley hammered into the Trogvyk vessel. Shields flared brilliant blue, crackling with energy—then shattered like a wine glass hitting concrete. The second volley punched clean through the hull, and the third—
The world became fire and thunder.
The explosion ripped through the ship with apocalyptic force, a mushroom cloud of flame and debris that sent shrapnel screaming in every direction.
I hit the dirt behind my rock as twisted metal became deadly rain.
The heat wave that followed was like opening an oven door to hell itself, scorching the air from my lungs.
When I dared to look, the Trogvyk ship was a gutted carcass, flames licking at its skeleton while black smoke poured into the alien sky like a funeral pyre.
The guards scattered like roaches when the lights come on—some diving for cover, others frozen in shock, staring at the cremated remains of their ride.
The Alliance ship rotated with deadly grace, weapon arrays tracking new prey. Another cascade of plasma fire painted the clearing in strobing blue-white death.
Through the smoke and carnage, Nansar and Ahrick fought on, back-to-back against the Trogvyk and Romvesians too stubborn to quit or too stupid to run.
The Alliance ship became an angel of death, methodical and merciless.
Each plasma blast carved through the chaos like divine judgment.
The Trogvyk and Romvesians weren't soldiers anymore—they were prey, their formation shattered, their courage evaporating.
Some fired desperately at the ship overhead, their weapons sparking uselessly against its shields.
I pressed myself low, weapon steady despite my racing heart, scanning for any threat to Nansar and Ahrick. A Romvesian guard broke from cover, sprinting toward them with murder in his eyes. I squeezed the trigger. He dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
Movement flickered at the edge of my vision—near the rocks where we'd first taken cover.
Declan.
Of fucking course. Of course that coward had been cowering while everyone else bled.
He slithered out from between the boulders like the snake he was, head whipping back and forth as he searched for an escape route. The instant his eyes locked on the tree line, he ran.
"No!" The word tore from my throat as I launched after him, my legs already pumping.
"Chloe!" Nansar's shout was distant thunder, barely registering through the roar of blood in my ears.
Declan was fast, but fear made him sloppy. He kept glancing back, checking if I was gaining ground. I was. My entire life—every drill, every brutal training session, every hour of conditioning—it all crystallized into this moment. This was what I'd been forged for.
Each stride felt like shedding skin. The frightened woman who'd woken in a cage. The victim who'd flinched at shadows. The broken doll Declan had tried to create.
Fuck. That.
I was Chloe fucking Blackwood. Daughter of Admiral Cullen Blackwood. Naval intelligence officer. FBI agent. I'd proven my way into one of the most elite law enforcement agencies on Earth. And now? Now I was Nansar's woman.
I wasn't running in fear anymore. I was running toward justice.
Declan's head whipped around again, and I saw the exact moment recognition hit him—the moment he realized I wasn't the same woman he'd caged and drugged and violated.
The moment he understood that every needle he'd stuck in my arm, every humiliation he'd forced me to endure, every piece of my dignity he'd tried to steal had only tempered me into something harder. Something deadlier.
Something he should have killed when he had the chance.
My body was mine again. My choices were mine. My power was mine.
And I was taking every fucking bit of it back—with interest.
He was ten feet from the trees when I launched myself at him.
We collided in an explosion of momentum.
Declan's eyes went wide—that delicious flash of prey realizing it's been caught—before we hit the ground hard enough to rattle teeth.
He swung wild, desperate. Amateur hour. I deflected his fist like swatting away a gnat and drove my elbow into his ribs. The crack was music.
He bucked beneath me, all panic and flailing limbs. Pathetic. I shifted my weight, pinned him with my knee crushing down on his sternum, and introduced my knuckles to his face. Once. Twice. The third time split his lip wide open, painting his teeth red.
"You bastard!" Each word punctuated with another strike. His blood was warm on my hands. Satisfying.
He managed to land a hit across my jaw—a glancing blow that sent stars dancing through my vision. But I'd taken worse from sparring partners who actually knew what they were doing. This? This was nothing.
I caught his wrist mid-swing, twisted it at an angle that made tendons scream, and used his own momentum to flip him face-first into the dirt. My knee found his spine. His arm wrenched back at a position arms weren't meant to go.
"Chloe, please—" The word came out strangled, broken.
"Please?" I leaned down, my lips nearly brushing his ear, my voice dropping to something cold and sharp as a blade.
"You want to talk about please? Tell me, Declan—did you listen when I begged you to stop?
When I pleaded for mercy while you pumped me full of drugs and passing me around like a sex toy? "
He thrashed like a fish on a hook, but years of combat training versus his desperate squirming? No contest. Not even close.
Then he went still. Too still. The instinct that had kept me alive screamed a warning half a second too late.
Impact from my blind side—a freight train. The world spun as I flew off Declan, my back slamming into the ground with enough force to punch the air from my lungs. A Trogvyk guard, all hairless muscle and gleaming fangs, had me pinned. His claws punctured my shoulders, hot points of agony.
Training took over. Thought became action became survival.
Knee to gut—hard enough to feel something give. His weight shifted. I twisted my hips, broke his grip, rolled. My hands found purchase in the dirt as I surged to my feet, blood streaming down my arms from where his claws had torn through fabric and flesh.
The guard recovered faster than I expected, launching himself at me with a snarl that showed every one of those needle-sharp teeth. I sidestepped, planted my back foot, and channeled every ounce of rage and training into a roundhouse kick that connected with his jaw like a hammer meeting glass.
The crack echoed. His head snapped sideways at an angle that made my stomach flip, dropping like a puppet with cut strings, unconscious before he hit the ground.
I spun, chest heaving, searching.
Declan stood fifteen feet away. No longer running. His face was a mess of blood and swelling from my fists, but his expression had shifted into something worse than fear. Something that mixed terror with the kind of rage that came from a wounded ego.
And he had a blaster pointed directly at my heart.
The sounds of battle faded to white noise. My pulse thundered in my ears. We stared at each other across that small stretch of alien ground—predator and prey, though neither of us was quite sure anymore which was which.
I didn't move. Didn't flinch. Didn't give him one goddamn inch of satisfaction.
"You know what, Chloe?" His voice came out wet and rough, distorted through his ruined lip. Blood dripped from his chin in fat drops. "I've changed my mind."
I held his gaze. Steady. Let him see exactly what he'd created.
"I thought I'd enjoy fucking you again. Reminding you who you belonged to." His smile was a grotesque thing, all cruelty and impotent rage wrapped in split skin. "But on second thought? I think I'll enjoy watching you die a whole lot more."
His finger found the trigger.
Time crystallized into something sharp and fragile. I watched his finger tighten, saw the micro-adjustment in his stance as he prepared to fire. Every instinct I'd honed over years of training screamed at me to move—dodge, dive, do something—but my feet might as well have been welded to the ground.
After everything. After surviving the cage, the drugs, the violation. After clawing my way back to myself. After finding something worth fighting for in the arms of an alien warrior who saw me as more than broken pieces.
It would end here. At the hands of the man who'd already killed me once.
Then the world tilted sideways.