Chapter 18
KYLDAK
Idon't like this feeling.
It's clawing under my skin like sand lice—familiar but never welcome. The kind of nerves I thought I'd burned out of myself after the third year on Jurtik. After I lost everything.
But here I am, staring across the pit at Jaela while we gear up for a raid, and all I can think is: If she dies out there, I’ll rip this whole moon in half.
She’s strapping on a repurposed blast vest like it’s her second damn skin. She's modified it already—removed the overpadding, added spike plating from a scrapped hover bike, stitched it with medic-grade tension mesh. Smart. Always smart. Too smart for this place.
"You’re not coming," I growl, tossing an extra mag into my belt.
She doesn't even blink. "Try and stop me."
"Jaela—"
"No."
She slides a modified sidearm into her holster and walks past me like I’m some random soldier, not the warlord who commands this entire death-ridden junkpile.
I grit my teeth. “You’re not a soldier.”
“Neither are half the idiots you’ve got on this crew, but you’re sending them.”
“I trust them.”
She turns, sharp. “And you don’t trust me?”
I stare at her. Hard. “I don’t want to watch you die.”
Her jaw sets. “I didn’t come this far to sit on the sidelines.”
I want to shove her into the med tent and lock the damn door. But I don't. I just curse under my breath and walk.
We roll out in three modified buggies—scavenged scrap with engines tuned for speed and brutality. The sun’s a white-hot bastard above us, cooking metal, boiling blood.
She rides with me.
Of course she does.
At first, I keep half an eye on her, expecting her to flinch, freeze, panic.
But no. She’s scanning the terrain, plotting routes, calling out wind shifts like she’s been doing this her whole life.
When the first trap detonates—plasma wire rigged to a fake comm dish—she’s the one who spots it. Disarms it. Cool as hell.
Ten klicks later, she shouts, “Buggy right! Take the ravine!” and I follow her instinct without even thinking.
Because it’s right.
Because she’s right.
And that scares me more than anything.
The battle hits us like a scream.
They ambush from both flanks—Molteks, the flame-junkies, fueled up and grinning like devils. The air smells like burning skin and rusted dreams.
I charge the left flank, twin blades out, howling like the monster they think I am. Behind me, I hear Jaela screaming orders. Not to retreat. To push. To flank. To end them.
I hear a detonator click.
Too late.
The sand beneath me explodes, tosses me into the air like a rag. I hit the ground hard, breath knocked out. My vision swims.
Gunfire.
Then her voice.
“KYD!”
I blink—she’s there, over me, dragging my ass back behind cover, blood smeared across her temple. She's shooting adrenaline into my leg like she's patching up a war beast. Her hands shake. But not her voice.
“Get up, you big scaled bastard.”
I do.
Not because the shot helped. But because she’s here.
We win.
Barely.
The Molteks scatter into the canyon like roaches with their shells cracked open. We torch what’s left of their fuel stores. Their base burns blue.
I stand in the ashes, gasping, blood in my mouth, and look at her.
She’s bleeding from her shoulder. Dust-caked. One eye swollen.
And still fucking radiant.
She looks at me like she’s about to yell. Or cry.
I don’t let her do either.
I grab her face and kiss her like the war’s still raging. She doesn’t resist. She grips my vest and pulls me closer like she needs it to breathe.
Around us, my crew whoops and howls. They don’t care. They’re half-mad on victory and smoke.
But I do.
I scoop her up and carry her into my quarters, kicking the door shut behind us.
This time’s different.
Not quick. Not frantic.
Slower. Deeper.
She undoes my gear piece by piece, fingers grazing scars like they mean something. I trace the line of her jaw, the hollow of her throat, like she might vanish if I blink too long.
We move like gravity’s real again. Like we’re not on a broken rock full of killers. Like time didn’t break us once already.
After, we lie tangled in silence. The kind that says more than words ever could.
She’s on her side, back to me, but not far. My hand rests against her hip, thumb moving slow.
I ask, “Were you ever going to come back?”
She’s quiet for a long time.
Then she whispers, “I didn’t think I’d have to.”
And just like that, my heart cracks all over again.
The fire’s low and sputtering, kicked up to life every few minutes by wind-lashed sparks.
It’s quiet.
Too quiet.
We just came back from a raid victorious—Molteks flattened, tech secured, no casualties for once.
Usually, that means booze, bones, and bragging for hours.
But tonight, the pit is near silent. Grunts nurse bruises and fiddle with weapons they don’t need to clean.
Nobody looks at me. Nobody looks at her.
Jaela sits near the back of the encampment, inspecting a plasma burn on her arm, wrapped in cooling gel. The glow flickers over her skin, makes her look like a ghost. A war angel. Too whole, too human, too bright for this place.
And that’s the problem.
They don’t know what to do with her. Not really.
Hope don’t survive long on Jurtik. And she’s walking around with it pouring out of her like light.
I shove a rusted door open, stalk toward my command tent. I need a drink. Or a distraction.
Instead, I get both.
Two of my lieutenants—Brannik and a newer grunt called Lys—are crouched inside, whispering over a battered terrain map. When they see me, they jump like kids caught stealing rations.
“Get out,” I growl.
Brannik doesn’t move. “We need to talk, Red Eye.”
Wrong tone. Wrong time.
I step forward, slow, like a storm rolling in. “You forget who you’re talking to?”
He lifts his chin. “It’s about her.”
My spine straightens. “Jaela?”
“She’s soft. Dangerous. She’s got you... different.”
Lys shifts, eyes down. “People are getting nervous.”
I cross my arms. “You mean you’re getting nervous.”
Brannik spits. “We all know what happens when softness spreads here. Mutiny. Weakness. She makes you hesitate.”
“She’s not a threat to me.”
“Not yet. But she will be.”
And that’s when I hear it—under his breath, just a muttered phrase between gritted teeth: “She won’t survive the week.”
Everything inside me freezes. Then burns.
I smile.
Slow.
Deadly.
And then I move.
Brannik doesn’t even see it coming.
One punch crushes his jaw sideways. The second rips his shoulder from its socket. The third throws him across the room like meat.
Lys tries to run. I slam him to the ground, boot on his spine, blade at his ear.
“Try again.”
The whole camp hears the ruckus. That’s the point.
I drag Brannik out by his collar, blood trailing behind us like a leash. My crew gathers. Eyes wide. No one speaks.
“This man,” I say, “just suggested killing someone under my protection.”
Gasps. A few murmurs.
“Not an outsider. Not a stranger. My woman.”
Brannik coughs blood. Tries to speak.
I slam him against the engine rig so hard his ribs crack. “You forgot the rule.”
The crowd chants, low and growing: “Red Eye’s rule. Red Eye’s rule.”
I drop Brannik at their feet.
“Anyone touches her,” I say, voice like stone cracking, “dies screaming.”
I leave him there. Alive. Barely.
Let ‘em all watch him try to breathe through a shattered rib cage and know what the fuck I meant.
That night, I return to quarters and close the door behind me like the wind’s a beast trying to follow.
She’s asleep already.
Curled up, jaw tight, arms wound around her like a shield. I see the fresh bandage on her thigh. I didn’t even notice she got hit.
What else am I missing?
I sit in the chair across from her, hands steepled, heart pounding slower now. Just enough to think.
She mumbles something. Flinches. Her brow furrows.
Then I hear it.
Again.
That name.
Kel.
Soft. Like a lullaby slipping out between breaths.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, blood pounding in my ears.
Kel.
Same name she muttered days ago.
I don’t say anything. Don’t touch her.
But something shifts in me.
I’ve killed for her. Bled for her. Taken her back into my bed, into my bones.
And still—she’s hiding something.
I sit there until dawn cracks the sky open like a rotten egg.
And I keep the name in my mouth like a secret.
Kel.
Who the fuck are you?