Chapter 20
KAGE
The mountain shudders like a living thing.
Dust rains from the cliffs above as the shockwave from the blast hammers into us, hot and gritty, slamming into my back hard enough to drive the air from my lungs.
Bella’s weight is light against my arms, too light, her blood smearing hot across my scales where she’s pressed to me.
I leap the last ridge before the wave hits full force and duck behind a jagged outcrop, curling around her. The rock vibrates like a drum, heat licking over my shoulders. The smell is everywhere—burnt wiring, scorched meat, the bitter sting of ozone.
Bella groans, her fingers clawing at my chest. “You’re—heavy—” she coughs.
“You’re—bleeding—” I growl back, easing her onto the gravel.
Her uniform is dark at the side, wet. My claws are slick when I press down. Not a kill wound, but deep enough to drain her fast if I don’t fix it.
She bats at my hands, voice hoarse but sharp. “Stop fussing. I’m fine.”
“You’re leaking,” I snarl, ripping her medkit open with my teeth. “Shut up and let me fix it.”
Her mouth twitches. “You’re bossy when you’re scared.”
I bare my teeth at her, pressing a clotting patch to the wound. She hisses, curses under her breath.
“Hold still,” I mutter.
“You’re not my—” she gasps, biting off the word.
I meet her glare. “What?”
She shakes her head, hair sticking to her cheeks. “Nothing. Just—hurry.”
We both laugh, but it’s brittle, a sound cracked down the middle.
Beneath it, something huge is shifting. Not just in the ground—between us. Around us. The edge of something enormous.
On the horizon, through the thinning smoke, a pulse of light flickers. Faint at first, then steady. A beacon.
Bella sees it too. She tilts her head, eyes narrowing. “Alliance evac point,” she rasps. “That’s—”
“Far,” I finish for her.
“Yeah. But it’s our shot. If we can get there, we’re out.”
I squint at the terrain between us and the beacon. Nothing but open rubble, blackened ground, bones of burned-out transports. No cover.
My frills twitch, tasting the air. It’s wrong. The smell of hot metal laced with something sour, like blood left too long in the sun. The hair along my spine prickles.
It’s here. Not just in signals. In the air.
I fight the urge to pace, to roar. My instincts scream: run. Hide. Hunt from shadows.
“Move,” I say. My voice is too low, too steady. “I’ll draw it off.”
Bella blinks, pushing herself up on one elbow. “Excuse me?”
“You go to the beacon. I’ll keep it busy.”
She lets out a hoarse, incredulous laugh. “Are you out of your scaled mind?”
I bare my teeth. “I’m faster. Heavier. It’ll follow me.”
Her eyes flash. “If you think I’m leaving you again, you don’t know shit about me.”
“Bella—”
“No.” She jabs a finger at my chest, even as her hand trembles. “I’ve done the whole ‘abandon someone to survive’ thing. I’m not doing it again. Not to you. Not now.”
My claws curl into the rock. “This isn’t your choice—”
“The hell it isn’t!” she snaps. “You dragged me through hell, Kage. You tied me up. You gagged me. And somewhere along the way you started acting like I was a person. Well guess what? You don’t get to choose for me now.”
I stare at her, every word a blow.
Her voice drops. “We run together. Or we don’t run at all.”
The wind howls between us.
Then I nod, slow. “Then we make it count.”
She exhales like she’s been holding her breath for days. “Good.”
A sound rises over the ridges—a metallic howl, low and rolling, like a thousand gears grinding at once. The ground vibrates.
Bella’s face drains of color. “What is that?”
I rise to my feet, claws digging into the gravel. “It.”
On the far edge of the plain, a shape uncoils. Massive, serpentine, made of shattered drones and scaffolded limbs lashed together with glistening silver gel. It drips nanite fluid like blood, its body flickering where it’s not fully formed, like a nightmare still deciding what shape to take.
It raises a head, or something like one, studded with sensor nodes. The nodes flare red.
Bella steps up beside me, her hand brushing mine. Her palm is small, warm, slick with her own blood.
“Holy hell,” she whispers.
I bare my teeth. “Run.”
“Together,” she says.
“Together,” I echo.
We sprint across the open rubble, the beacon a thin pulse of light ahead of us. Every step jostles her wound, every breath scrapes my throat raw. The ground underfoot crunches, slippery with ash.
Behind us, the howl rises. The thing moves—not walking, not slithering, but flowing, its body reconfiguring as it goes, claws sprouting and retracting, limbs scaffolding out to grip rock. The silver fluid splashes, hissing where it lands.
“Faster!” Bella gasps.
I scoop her up without thinking, her weight nothing against my chest. Her heart hammers against my arm. “Hold on.”
She clings to my neck, breath hot against my jaw. “Don’t you dare drop me.”
“Not a chance,” I growl.
The beacon pulses brighter, like a heartbeat calling us home.
The air tastes like metal now, every inhale a burn. The sky above flickers faintly, like a signal scrambled.
It’s not just chasing us. It’s pressing on us, a weight inside my skull, a hiss under my skin.
Bella’s voice is a gasp against my ear. “It’s in the air—”
“I know.”
“Then keep going,” she says. “We’re not done yet.”
And I run, the ground blurring beneath my claws, the beacon beating like a star ahead, the monster’s howl rising behind us like the sound of the world breaking.
We run together.
Or not at all.