Chapter 18
The draanthic thought they were clever, hiding in an asteroid.
Grey and jagged, the asteroid's cratered surface was scarred from abandoned mining. Raaevik's eyes narrowed as it filled the viewscreen. He'd tracked their engine signature and found them... now he just had to find a way in.
There… he spotted it finally, a shuttle bay carved into the rock face, its atmospheric shield flickering against the black.
He didn't bother with landing protocols or the automated docking sequence. Instead, he cut power to the interceptor's stealth systems, diverted everything to engines and shields, and shoved the throttle forward.
The shield tore apart around the interceptor, sparking as the hull ripped a hole the size of a building through it. Alarms shrieked. The console lit up, warnings he ignored.
The bay deck rushed up to meet him.
He fired reverse thrusters at the last second, just enough to keep the landing short of a crash. Metal screeched as the struts bit, skidded, caught, and held. Engines still cycling down, he hit the ramp release and dropped into the bay.
His boots hit the floor with a crash. He didn't pause. Didn't check his surroundings. He just ran.
The bay was small, crates piled along dusty walls. Three warriors stood by the far door, weapons half-raised, staring at the wreck of his entrance like they couldn't believe anyone was insane enough to do that.
The first took a blade through the ribs. The second dropped with a crushed windpipe. The third fired... a bolt screamed past Raaevik’s shoulder to punch a hole in the bulkhead. Raaevik broke his neck, dropped the body, and kept moving.
He could feel it in his blood. She was closer.
The corridor beyond the bay was narrow, carved from rock and lined with exposed conduits. Emergency lighting cast everything in red. Her scent pulled him. Sharper now, cut with fear and chemicals. He followed it deeper into the rock, left at the junction, then down.
Six more guards spilled out from a junction ahead.
"Contact!" The point warrior bellowed.
They were fast and professional. Rifles up, stocks to shoulders in unison. Energy bolts filled the corridor in a storm.
Any other day, he'd be tactical. Smart. Alone in enemy territory, his plan would change from a full-on assault. Logic vanished once he’d realised Emily was taken. Now, only the mission mattered: getting her back.
He pulled his lips back from his teeth in a snarl.
He didn't check his stride, didn't weave, just lowered his head and ran straight into the fire.
A bolt caught his shoulder, another his thigh. Pain flared, hot and immediate, but it didn't matter. He registered the damage and kept moving.
He returned fire instinctively. Two guards dropped. A third scrambled, shouting into his comm. Raaevik put a blade through his throat before he could finish.
The corridor sloped down, and he followed it deeper into the asteroid.
Then he caught her scent—sharp and wrong, terror bleeding through it. The fear wasn't hers alone. It pulsed through him, overriding tactical sense and the knowledge that this was stupid, that he should slow down and think.
But she was scared.
And that was unacceptable.
He dug deeper, legs burning, lungs dragging in thin air. She was close; he could smell her through metal and rock. The corridor blurred as every cell screamed for more speed.
The corridor opened into a wider junction, and five warriors stepped out to meet him. Weapons up. Formation tight. Professional.
He didn't care.
The bolt caught him square in the chest.
The impact drove him backward, his booted feet skidding on the metal deck-plating as he landed on his ass, back against the wall.
He looked down. Smoke curled from the burn hole in his leathers, and beneath it, the wound was deep.
Fatal. He saw his own heart struggle to beat as blood welled hot and thick, spreading across his ribs.
His vision grayed as he tilted to the side.
No, it couldn't end like this. He couldn't reach her…
He was dying. He couldn't save her.
She was somewhere ahead of him. Terrified… and he couldn't save her.
Agony lanced through the center of his chest. Not from the wound welling his lifeblood, but inside… in his very soul.
No, this wasn't happening. This couldn't happen. He had to get to her. Had to save her.
The snarl ripped from his lips as he tried to sit up.
He looked down. The blood welling from the chest wound didn't fall. His eyes widened as it hardened, darkening and thickening to seal over the wound in the center of his chest.
And then the rest of him followed.
His body jerked as bones cracked. Shoulders broadened, spine grinding as it reshaped. Skin darkened; plates formed along forearms and chest as he became something else.
The pain vanished as he pushed to his feet, head down as he looked through the fall of his hair at his opponents.
Then he grinned, power surging through him as claws punched through the skin of his fingertips.
They didn't have time to react before he was on them. The first died with Raaevik's claws in his throat. He took down two more with brutal swipes.
The last two bolted.
He let them.
Instinct drove him now. Not words, just blood and violence and the hot copper smell of things that needed to die. The corridors blurred. More guards. More bodies.
He didn't count.
Nothing existed except the need to find her, protect her, and kill anything between them.
A blast door loomed ahead, sealed tight.
He didn't slow.
Slamming into it, his claws bit into the seam, found purchase, and pulled. Metal screamed and bolts sheared. He tore the door free of its housing and threw it aside. It hit the wall with a crash that echoed through the facility like thunder.
The room beyond was circular and domed. Sterile white walls that caught the light and threw it back.
And in the center—
Emily.
She was strapped to a table, her wrists and ankles locked in restraints, and a wide strap across her chest pinning her flat. Her face was pale, her dark hair matted with sweat, and her veins were visible beneath her skin in dark lines that branched like lightning.
A male stood beside the table. Tall, orange eyes, dark robes. He was already moving, one hand reaching for her, trying to put her between them.
The fury that punched through his chest was absolute. They had hurt her. The knowledge of it burned through him, intoxicating and terrifying and right.
He launched across the room, intercepting the male before he reached the restraints. Snarling, he drove claws into the draanthic’s forearm. Meat and bone parted. He felt a claw scrape bone, a joint pop, hot spray across his knuckles.
The limb hit the floor.
The male's mouth opened, but the scream hadn't started yet, his brain still catching up to what his body already knew.
His claws punched through the soft tissue of the male's throat, and there was a moment—just a split second—where he felt the pulse against his fingertips. Felt the male's heart beating one last time before he tore the warrior's throat out.
Blood sprayed hot across Raaevik's face.
The male's eyes went wide, his mouth opening and closing like a fish drowning in air, and then his legs buckled, and he crumpled.
Raaevik stood over the body, his chest heaving, and blood dripping from the ends of his claws.
He should feel horror. Disgust at what he'd done. Something.
He didn't. Instead, he felt satisfied.
Another male bolted through a side door, robes billowing behind him. The predator in him locked on, tracked the fleeing male for half a second, and dismissed him. The only thing that mattered was three feet to his left.
Strapped to a table.
Alive.
The red receded from Raaevik's vision like a tide pulling back. His body shifted back with a snap and grind of his bones. His frame shrank back toward something recognisable, shoulders narrowing, spine resettling as the hardened skin softened across his arms and chest, colour returning in patches.
But not everywhere.
The chest wound stayed, a blackened, thickened scar. His claws didn't fully retract—dark and sharp at the ends of trembling fingers he couldn't control.
He fell to his knees beside the table.
She looked small and cornered, waiting for the final blow. Her chest rose and fell in panicked gasps, like an animal caught. Dark lines traced her veins in a wrong pattern—poison or drugs or something worse branching through her.
But her eyes.
Her eyes locked on his face with an intensity that stopped his breath.
There was fear there, yes. Terror even. But beneath it… There was trust. She looked at him like he was the only thing standing between her and the end of the world, and the weight of that trust crashed into his chest harder than any weapon ever had.
She was so fragile. So breakable. And they'd hurt her.
"Emily." His voice came out rough, broken.
Her lips parted. She didn't flinch. Didn't scream. Just looked at him like she was trying to memorize his face.
He started to reach for her face… to brush the damp hair back from her forehead, to touch her and prove to himself that she was real and alive, but his hand froze halfway.
His claws.
They were still there. Dark and sharp, streaked with blood.
His hand hovered between them, trembling so hard he couldn't stop it.
These hands had just torn a male apart. Had felt bone snap and flesh part and had gloried in it.
How could hands like that touch something as fragile as her?
How could he be sure the thing that had just killed with such satisfaction wouldn't hurt her by accident?
"Raaevik." Her voice was barely a whisper.
His name.
She'd just watched him tear a male apart. Had watched him kill with a savagery that should have terrified her.
But then she'd said his name like he was still him.
Not a monster. Not something to fear. Not something to run from.
Just... Raaevik.
His hand hovered over her cheek, trembling, and her eyes were wide and dark and terrified, but not of him.
Then boots thundered in the corridor outside.
The blast door he'd torn free was gone, leaving the entrance wide open. Imperial troops flooded through… twelve, fifteen, twenty warriors in full combat gear, weapons raised, scanning for targets.
He moved without thinking, putting himself between the doorway and the table. Between the armed warriors and Emily. His claws lengthened again, and his lips pulled back from his teeth.
He would kill them all to protect her.