Chapter 25
KALLUS
Fire and fury guide my hands.
We split into two squads, Reapers slicing through the sterile hallways like black blades in a white void. I move beside Ayla, her eyes twin eclipses of wrath. She’s no longer my precious mate who needed protecting—she’s a predator in her own right.
We breach the lab wing by wing.
"Clear right!" someone shouts.
“Forward!” Ayla roars.
The blast doors yield to our hacked protocols—stolen codes burned into my ship’s core. We flood into another corridor, cold and stinking of copper and old chemicals. The lights above flicker red—emergency power. Somewhere deep in this hellhole, they're trying to flush evidence. Burn it. Hide it.
Not today.
A young guard scrambles backward, too green to hold his weapon steady. He drops it with a clatter.
“Please—please, I have a sister—”
Ayla doesn’t hesitate.
The bolt lights up the hallway. The guard slumps, face frozen in disbelief.
“Coward,” she mutters.
The Black Fangs stare, but none question it. One even chuckles low in his throat.
“You sure she ain’t Reaper?” he asks me, nudging my arm.
I bare my teeth. “She’s mine.”
We descend deeper.
The air thickens. Lights dim further, replaced by bio-luminescent gel panels glowing sickly blue along the walls. We pass shattered vials, folders of genetic code strewn across the floor. Names. Serial numbers. Experiments.
Then... we smell it.
Burned protein. Reaper musk, faded by time and death.
We find the chamber.
Ten bodies, suspended in vats of fluid, torn open along their spines. Tubes still feed into the bones. Red eyes stare lifelessly through the haze.
Reaper corpses.
Our kin. Our brothers.
One of the Black Fangs drops to his knees.
“By the void…” another breathes.
I don’t speak. I can’t. My claws shake. I push a hand against the glass of one tank. A female. Still young. Barely full-grown. Her face looks like someone I once trained beside.
Ayla touches my back, voice low.
“We stop it. All of it.”
I nod.
We move forward, rage distilled to ice.
Then the alarms scream—full lockdown.
We run.
Down a main corridor. Red lights. Klaxons. Auto-turrets swing toward us. I rip one from the wall with a blade slash. The others fall under Ayla’s return fire and the Fangs' coordinated charges.
We reach the vault.
It opens on a scream.
Chelsea.
She’s in the far corner of the room, knees scraped, face dirty. But her eyes—her eyes glow like mine when I lose control.
And standing between us… is Frederick.
Greasy hair. Wild gaze. Blood on his sleeve and a gun to her head.
“Stay back!” he screams. “I’ll do it! I’ll paint this room with her brain matter!”
Ayla screams. “NO!”
Frederick jabs the barrel into Chelsea’s temple. The girl doesn’t cry.
“She’s defective! You did this to her!” he spits.
I step forward.
“No, Frederick. You did this. With your needles. Your terror.”
“Stay back!” he shouts again, finger curling on the trigger.
Ayla sobs, “Please, take me instead—”
“You don’t get to bargain!” he snarls.
I throw my weapon down.
Everyone freezes.
Kallus… unarmed.
“I’m here,” I say. “Shoot me.”
“What?” Frederick stammers.
“You want to end it?” I growl. “Shoot me. I won’t stop you.”
He blinks.
Then fires.
One. Two. Three. I take them in the chest. My body jerks but I don’t fall.
Four. Five. Six.
Ayla screams.
The sixth slug tears through my ribs—and my vision grays around the edges. I fight to stay conscious..
Fire. Pain. Cold. It all hits me at once, like a thousand hammers slamming into my chest from the inside out. I’m on my knees, choking on blood, my vision swimming with red and shadows. But I’m not done. Not yet.
A sound slices through the chaos.
A growl.
Low. Unnatural. Deep. It’s not human. It’s her.
Chelsea.
I force my head up. Frederick stares at her, backing away like he’s seen a ghost. His hand trembles, still holding the gun, still pointed at Ayla.
“No,” he whispers. “Stay back. Stay—”
Chelsea’s eyes blaze crimson.
She launches.
Frederick screams as she sinks her tiny teeth into his trigger finger and rips it clean off. Blood arcs across the room. The gun clatters to the floor. He howls, flailing, stumbling backward, clutching his hand.
“My finger! My goddamn—!”
Ayla moves.
Smooth as a viper.
She doesn’t pause. Doesn’t scream. She just acts. There’s a launch thruster hatch cracked open behind Frederick, steam venting, blue light flashing like a warning.
She shoves him.
Hard.
He stumbles back—arms flailing—into the open vent. The blast of heat ignites his coat. He shrieks, writhes, tumbles to the floor just outside the full stream, smoke curling from his body.
He’s alive.
Barely.
And it’s more than he deserves.
I gasp.
It’s all I can do.
The pain is like fire behind my ribs, every breath a chainsaw through my lungs. I taste copper. My vision fades in and out.
But I hear her.
“Ayla,” I croak.
She’s already there, on her knees beside me. Her hands cradle my face like I’m made of crystal.
“Kallus! No, no—stay with me, baby, please—!”
“We’re not… done yet,” I rasp, trying to smirk.
She sobs—laughter and tears in the same breath.
Chelsea crawls into my lap.
“Daddy?” she whispers.
Her voice is soft, confused, scared. Her hands are warm, streaked with blood that isn’t hers.
I wrap one shaking arm around her tiny body and pull her close.
And I smile.
Pain, fire, smoke, blood—none of it matters.
I have them.
I have my family.