Page 96 of Owned By the Hvrok

The word was ice.

He stepped out into the red light, the sun casting the snow in hues of rust and blood. The wind howled around him, whipping his cloak and wings.

It was fitting.

He was about to deliver a massacre.

His weapons came to life: gun in one hand, blade sheathed at his back, pulse charges armed at his hips. His body thrummed with readiness.

They would not reach her.

He would paint the snow in Nalgar blood before they got within ten paces of his ship.

He walked forward.

Into the red.

Into the storm.

Into war.

The very thing he’d been built for.

CHAPTER 44

Sylvia pressed her hands to the cockpit glass, heart slamming wildly against her ribs as Kyhin strode out into the crimson-stained snow.

He looked like a shadow made real, his black armor glinting faintly under the strange red sun. A lone figure against a tide of silver.

The enemy.

She didn’t know what they were. Didn’t care. They moved with a terrible kind of coordination—too fast, too many. And they were here for him.

Or her.

Her throat closed. She swallowed hard, fighting the panic rising like bile.

He was walking into an army.

She’d seen him fight before—seen him tear through a dozen armed enemies like they were nothing more than training dummies. But a hundred? Maybe more?

He can’t. He won’t make it. They’ll kill him.

And it wasn’t just the thought of being taken that made her stomach twist.

It was the thought of losing him.

That brutal, beautiful creature.

She didn’t want to admit it. But god, she felt it now.

Kyhin meant something to her. It was madness—she didn’t know exactly what he was or where he had come from, didn’t know much about him at all—but she actually cared about this strange, winged, alien male.

The army moved. Surged. Streaks of silver across the white, kicking up snow as they charged forward, silent and swift.

Kyhin flared his wings and rose.

She gasped as he took to the air, guns drawn, sleek and lethal. The Nalgar fired upward, shots cracking across the sky, but he soared higher, out of their range, turning into a blur of black against the bleeding sky.

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