Chapter 2
KALLUS
The air tastes like blood and ozone, and the scent coils hot in my nostrils as I pace the command deck of the Relentless.
She’s purring under my boots, engines surging as we close distance with the cruiser drifting ahead—The Grand Lady. Pretty name. Soft ship. A floating pleasure palace fat with velvet and slow-tongued nobles, primed for harvest.
But none of it matters to me.
Not the valuables. Not the hostages. Not the usual haul of spoiled tech and terrified flesh.
I want something else.
I don’t know what.
And it makes my claws itch.
Brom stands to my right, helmet tucked under his arm, bone-plated armor stained from our last kill. “Boarding team’s ready,” he says, voice a low gravel grind. “Ten units, three insertion vectors. All hungering.”
I grunt. My fingers flex. The black bone spurs that arch from my wrists glisten faintly in the low light.
“Make sure they stay disciplined. No unnecessary carnage.”
Brom blinks, surprised. “That’s not how we usually—”
“I said what I said.”
He doesn’t argue. Good. I don’t feel like repeating myself.
My crew is a storm bottled in obsidian glass. We are precision and horror braided into one. Every Reaper aboard this ship has earned their talons in fire and death. We’re not marauders. We’re art.
I slam my fist into the comm pad. The lights on the bridge flare blood-red.
“Prepare for boarding,” I growl. “This is not a raid. It’s a hunt.”
Cheers echo through the lower decks, a chorus of growls, stomps, and warcries. A sound like planets screaming.
I stalk down the gangway toward the drop bays, armor clicking at the joints. My boots leave dust-shaped echoes on the steel.
The docking clamps shudder as we ram the Grand Lady’s flank. The vibration buzzes up my spine.
“Entry sealed,” a tech calls. “Door breach in three… two… one—”
A concussive blast tears through the corridor. Metal screams. The sweet, clean air of a pleasure cruiser rushes in.
And we’re through.
My Reapers pour into the breach like demons loosed from black myth. Smoke coils around them. Blades flash. Bone-armored silhouettes descend in waves.
I walk through them, unhurried.
Screams rise.
A steward bolts from a hallway to my left, slips in his own panic, and scrambles backward on all fours. His eyes are white, mouth open in a silent plea.
I step over him.
A Reaper starts to raise his weapon toward the man—an impulse, nothing more. I snarl and slap it down with the back of my clawed hand.
“Not that one,” I say. “He’s already broken.”
We move deeper into the ship. Down gilded halls and past mirrored walls, through lounges soaked in velvet and pheromone mist. The crew’s perfume masks the fear-sweat for only so long. Then the scent shifts.
Fear-urine. Adrenaline. Terror-soaked flesh.
Familiar.
Boring.
I don’t slow down.
My boots crush shattered glass and fallen datapads. A trail of unconscious bodies lines the floor, stunned and tagged for slave sorting. My crew knows to keep them breathing. Mostly.
But still… something’s missing.
I don’t know why the gnawing in my gut won’t stop.
Not until I pass the arched threshold into the forward viewing deck—and I freeze.
It hits me like a silent scream.
A pulse.
No sound. No heat. Just a sudden, impossible weight in the center of my chest, like something ancient and coiled just stirred awake inside my ribcage.
Jalshagar.
I go still. Vision narrows. The scent in the air shifts again.
Something new.
Something real.
And suddenly—I know.
She’s here.
I move like smoke through the ruined halls, drawn forward by something I don’t understand but can’t ignore. It tugs at my marrow, an invisible tether threaded through every instinct I’ve ever relied on.
She’s close.
She. I don’t know how I know that—but I do. Her presence sears the inside of my chest, louder than any scream, brighter than any blade. I’ve felt heat from explosions, rage from betrayal, but this? This is something older. Deeper.
The jalshagar.
I should be afraid of what it means. Instead, I feel ravenous.
I pass the bodies of the crew—some stunned, some dead. I don’t remember cutting them down, but the wet sheen on my wrist spurs tells me I did. A slash across the stomach, another across the throat. Quick, silent, done.
No sport in it.
They weren’t her.
Her scent is all over this corridor now—delicate but wild, like heat-soaked silk and ozone. Not perfume. Nothing artificial. This is skin and breath and raw, desperate defiance.
The kind of scent you don’t just smell—you feel it punch behind your ribs and stir every primal instinct you’ve ever buried.
I follow it like a wolf.
My boot steps are silent. No need for thunder when the storm has already passed. The others are still sweeping the lower decks, echoing laughter and dragging chain-binders through ruined lounges. They haven’t found her.
Good.
I need to see her first.
Another turn. The walls here are higher. This is command. The scent sharpens. My nostrils flare—yes, yes. She’s here. She was here. Still is.
The bridge doors are open.
Strange.
I duck low and slide in, blades drawn.
Empty.
No—not quite.
At the far end, hunched over the main control panel, is a figure. Small. Female. Blonde hair escaping from a messy braid. She’s breathing hard, slapping at the console with both hands like it might bite her.
The SOS beacon blinks.
Too late.
She turns just as I take another step forward.
Her eyes find mine.
The world stops.
Not slows.
Stops.
Every sound, every light, every heartbeat—all of it gets sucked into a single, perfect moment. The jalshagar hits hard, like my soul’s been lit on fire and dropped into ice. I stagger. Just a little. My knees threaten to buckle under me.
Her gaze burns. Blue fire. Wide with shock, then—rage.
Not fear.
Not submission.
Challenge.
She gasps. Her mouth opens. “You—”
Then she kicks me.
Right in the balls.
Pain explodes through my lower half. I grunt, folding forward with a sound that’s more fury than agony, but it’s agony too. Stars crackle behind my eyes. My breath leaves me in a snarl.
By the time I blink back the pain, she’s gone.
Bolted through the side hatch, bare feet slapping on metal.
I drag in a breath, slow and sharp. Straighten.
I’m grinning.
“Magnificent,” I mutter, voice husky with a mix of laughter and something far more dangerous.
The real hunt has begun.