Chapter 29 #2
“Stay with me!” she shouts. “You stupid bastard—you took the fucking blade—why would you—”
“You were...” I cough. Blood spills from my lips. “...distracted.”
“I had it—”
“No. You didn’t.”
She rips a strip from her armor and presses it to the wound, her movements frantic, furious.
“You’re not dying,” she mutters. “Not here. Not for me.”
But I can’t stop watching her.
The way her jaw’s tight with fury.
The way her eyes are glassed with panic.
I smile.
“Beautiful,” I whisper.
“Shut up.”
Everything goes dim.
But her voice follows me.
Holding me.
Burning through the dark.
Pain is a goddamn wildfire beneath my ribs.
Every breath is a blade—jagged, rusted, and unforgiving.
My blood isn’t just hot—it’s lava, pumping out in thick spurts, slicking my side, soaking Aria’s fingers where she’s pressing down with everything she’s got.
My vision pulses in and out, red edges curling at the corners like flame eating through the edges of a memory.
But I can still hear them.
The Nine.
Skittering back into the dark like the vermin they are, their stealth fields flickering, retreating. Cowards. They came for precision, for silence. They didn’t expect noise. They didn’t expect me.
They didn’t expect war.
I push off the wall, tearing out of Aria’s grip with a snarl that’s more beast than man. She grabs for me, hissing my name like a plea, like a curse, but I don’t stop. Can’t. Not yet.
I can feel the Reaper in me—deep and old and furious. He’s been pacing inside my chest for years, waiting for this. Waiting for a fight worth howling over. My bones creak, my skin burns, and something ancient cracks open behind my ribs.
And then I sing.
It’s not a song like humans know. No melody, no harmony. Just rage given sound—raw, guttural, a Reaper war cry that’s older than language and louder than death. It bursts from me, primal and deafening, shaking the very walls of the compound.
The lights overhead shatter.
The sky goes red.
The floor beneath me trembles.
I see them—those faceless assassins—stumble mid-escape. Their cloaking tech shorts out. Their neural implants misfire. One grabs his head and screams until his brain cooks inside his skull. Another drops, convulsing, froth spraying from his mouth.
It’s not just sound. It’s pressure. A sonic cascade that flays thought from flesh, rips control from muscle. Reaper biology is voice, is dominance, is power so pure it makes lesser species forget what breathing feels like.
I walk through it all like a revenant.
Blood soaking my boots. My own, theirs—I can’t tell anymore. Doesn’t matter. My mouth still moves, the war cry shaping around every cracked tooth like prophecy. I can taste metal and ozone, the sharp tang of my own fury splitting the air.
Aria’s still behind me. I hear her scream something. My name? Maybe. But her voice is miles away, underwater. My heartbeat is thunder. My bones are fire.
Three assassins still moving. I see them blinking through the chaos, hunched like cornered dogs. One raises his weapon.
Too slow.
I lunge—nothing elegant, just brute force. I crash into him shoulder-first, slam him against the reinforced bulkhead hard enough to dent it. My claws dig in. He screams.
I twist.
The next swings his blade, screaming in Varnox. It’s meant to scare. Intimidate. I smile. Blood teeth.
I catch the blade mid-arc with my bare hand. It slices me, but I don’t care. I pull him close—close enough to smell his fear—and I whisper one word in Old Reaper.
“Die.”
His body folds in on itself.
The third tries to run.
I don’t chase.
Because Aria’s scream finally slices through the fog.
“AEBON!”
I turn—just in time to see the fourth. Hidden. Waiting. Coward.
The blade is raised.
Aria’s gun is empty.
I throw my glaive.
It hums through the air like a vengeful spirit, finds home in the assassin’s spine. He drops like a puppet with its strings cut.
Silence.
Real silence.
The kind that only comes after slaughter.
And that’s when my knees buckle.
My legs just... give. Like the rage was the only thing holding me together, and now that it’s gone, I’m just a sack of ruined muscle and fractured bone.
The floor rushes up.
But I don’t hit it.
Because Aria’s there.
She catches me, arms sliding under mine, dragging me down slow, soft. Her breath is ragged. Her hair’s falling loose, strands sticking to her cheeks where sweat and blood and maybe tears have left their mark.
“You stupid, beautiful son of a bitch,” she breathes, lowering me into her lap.
I try to smile. “Told you I’d handle it.”
“You’re bleeding out.”
“You’re welcome.”
She laughs—a broken, raw thing—and cups my face with blood-slick hands. Her thumbs trace the curve of my cheekbones. Her fingers tangle in the white mess of my hair.
“You’re not allowed to die,” she whispers.
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
Her face bends down to mine. Her forehead touches mine. Her breath is sugar and gunpowder. Her lips tremble.
“Don’t you dare leave me,” she murmurs.
And then she kisses me.
It’s not soft. It’s not sweet. It’s desperate, like she’s trying to keep my soul in my body with her mouth. Her lips press to mine, tasting of salt and pain and something dangerously close to love.
And gods help me... I kiss her back.
Because even if I bleed out in this hallway—if this is my last breath—I want it to taste like her.
I sink into her like gravity.
And for the first time in my violent, brutal, empty life...
I feel home.