4. Rhykor
RHYKOR
The night I spent hunting the men who threatened Cassia's clinic cost me more than I'll admit to anyone.
I made it back to my territory before dawn and collapsed against a cargo pylon, bleeding through the bandages she'd wrapped around my torso until Varrik found me unconscious two hours later and dragged me onto a cot.
The Kraaj healing process burned through my caloric reserves so aggressively that I woke ravenous and shaking, my body having cannibalized its own muscle mass to fuse the bullet wounds shut.
By midday, I could stand. By evening, I could function.
But the cost sits in the tremor of my hands and the deep, grinding ache behind my ribs that tells me the medic's careful work undid itself the moment I chose violence over rest.
The scavenger's left kneecap shatters under my boot, and he screams loud enough to echo off the walls of the abandoned freight bay.
I crouch down beside him, letting the heat from my palms radiate inches from his face, until sweat breaks out across his forehead and drips into his eyes.
Three of his crew are already unconscious, zip-tied to cargo pylons, bleeding from various places I put my fists through over the last twenty minutes.
This one, the youngest, has held out the longest, whether it is from loyalty or stupidity.
On Luvon, the difference rarely matters.
"The weapon crates at the market exchange." I keep my tone even and conversational. The contrast between calm words and the searing heat inches from his skin tends to loosen tongues faster than shouting. "Where did the tech originate?"
"I don't—I swear, I don't know the full chain?—"
I let my hand drift closer. His cheek reddens, the skin tightening.
"The tunnels!" He chokes on the word, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face.
"The old maintenance tunnels beneath Sector Nine.
There's a salvage operation running through the abandoned Legion zones; crews are pulling tech out of decommissioned infrastructure.
Nobody goes down there willingly, man; the machines are wrong down there, they move on their own, they?—"
"Who's buying them?"
"Mixed clients of syndicate crews and independent dealers.
I only moved crates. I didn't ask questions.
" He flinches when I shift my weight. "The tech was already packed when we picked it up.
Sealed in containers with military-grade locks.
Whatever's coming out of those tunnels, somebody with serious access is packaging it for distribution. "
I file the information away and stand, scanning Legion sectors with their abandoned infrastructure and tech being harvested from zones where malicious AI remnants were supposedly contained decades ago after the occupation.
These are the same zones the same beings in District Seventeen avoid because the machines inside them behave in ways that defy standard programming.
It was the same volatile behavior that tore through the market exchange and killed my men.
I leave the scavengers tied to the pylons. They'll work themselves free eventually, or someone will find them. Either way, they've given me enough to start pulling threads, and dead informants are useless informants.
Varrik waits for me outside the freight bay, bracing against a corroded support column.
Tucking his hands into his opposite armpits, he casts a sharp silhouette against the flickering overhead light, his broken horns stark in the gloom.
Fifty-eight years of war and survival are carved into his faded bronze skin, etched deep alongside the burn scars that claim the entire left side of his body.
Between the wing permanently angled in a jagged, unstraightenable fold and the limp he refuses to discuss, he carries the weight of a long, brutal existence.
Battered military armor pieces hang over scavenged civilian clothing, and the overall effect is somewhere between retired war captain and junkyard prophet.
Given his age and his perpetually grumbling demeanor, my crew calls him "Old Fang" behind his back. I call him the closest thing I have to a father, which means he's earned the right to focus on me the way he's looking at me right now, like I've lost my mind and he's the only one willing to say it.
"You could have sent Karst's crew to handle the interrogation," he observes, falling into step beside me as I head toward the main corridor.
Gravelly-rough and laced with dry amusement, his voice echoes from a throat ruined by chemical smoke long before I was ever born.
"Instead, you did it yourself before dawn.
After spending half the night perched on a rooftop above Ash Alley like a gargoyle with a vendetta. "
I keep my mouth shut. Varrik takes this as an invitation to continue, because Varrik always takes silence as an invitation.
"Interesting pattern forming, brother. First, delivering medical supplies to a human clinic through a hole in the ceiling. Not long after, you’re burning four scavengers alive for threatening the woman who runs it.
You even interrogate their associates personally instead of delegating to your lieutenants.
" He pauses, letting each observation land with precision.
"And now you're walking toward Sector Six, which—unless my geography has deteriorated along with the rest of me—puts you within three blocks of Ash Alley, again. "
"I'm checking perimeter security."
"You're checking on the medic."
"Drop it, Varrik."
"I will not." He catches my arm, a liberty exactly two people in District Seventeen are permitted to take, and he's one of them.
His ember-orange eyes, duller than mine but no less sharp, search my face with a gravity that punctures the layers of deflection I've built.
"I've known you since you were a juvenile with blood on your fists and rage in your chest, Rhykor. Back then, it was just watching you fight, command, and kill—taking hits that would drop a lesser warrior like pain was an inconvenience you’d scheduled for later. But in all those years, I’ve never seen you behave like this. "
"And how am I behaving?"
"Like a mated beast," he says plainly, without mockery, and the words hit harder for it.
"Territorial, obsessive, circling the same location over and over, guarding a human you've spoken to exactly once.
You display instincts dormant in Kraaj males on Luvon for generations, and yet you choose to suppress them. "
My claws bite into my palms. I clench my fists and grind my teeth together. "You're wrong."
"I'm old and broken, missing pieces of myself I'll never get back.
" Varrik releases my arm and resumes walking, his limp more pronounced today than usual.
"But I'm not wrong. And you know it, which is why you're angry instead of dismissive.
" He glances sideways at me, and the corner of his mouth twitches.
"Go check your perimeter security, brother.
I'll be at the shop when you're ready to stop lying to yourself. "
He peels off down a side corridor, his uneven footsteps fading into the ambient hum of failing infrastructure. I stand at the corridor junction with heat surging through my veins, Varrik's words burrowing into places I've spent years bricking shut.
The phrase, mated beast, repulses me. Fated mate bonds are stories, old tales the elders whisper about, remnants of the early occupation years when Kraaj settlers first arrived on Luvon and the planet’s environment began reshaping their biology in ways nobody fully understood.
The emergence of wings, heat abilities, and amplified territorial instincts were changes that never fit neatly into science.
And then there are the stories of rare Kraaj-human bonds, forming spontaneously and irrevocably, binding two species together through mechanisms that defy explanation and mock the idea of self-control.
I've always considered those stories a weakness, a soft mythology embraced by Kraaj, who wants to justify their attraction to humans as a destiny-driven inclination rather than a failure of discipline.
Softness and weakness are luxuries other males can afford. I will contain and eliminate this compulsion toward the medic through the same force of will that's kept me alive for thirty-four years.
I resume walking toward Sector Six for perimeter security and nothing else.
The intelligence reaches me before I've covered two blocks.
One of my scouts, a stocky human woman named Britt who monitors communication channels throughout the outer districts, intercepts me at a junction point with a datapad and a face tight with urgency.
Most commanders refuse to employ humans for intelligence gathering, viewing them as inferior or untrustworthy, but Britt navigates the human-controlled black market networks with an invisibility my Kraaj soldiers could never manage.
"Anti-Kraaj chatter, Commander. Multiple channels, all referencing the Ash Alley clinic.
" She scrolls through intercepted transmissions while I read over her shoulder.
"Three separate extremist cells are discussing retaliation against the human medic who sheltered you during the market raid.
Two of them are proposing direct action, including arson, assault, and public humiliation, to discourage other humans from aiding Kraaj. "
My fangs bare instinctively, the sudden predatory shift so severe that she takes an involuntary step backward, her grip tightening on the data-pad.
"Names," I growl.