Page 11 of Savage Bond

“Shit—”

Before I can react, the pod jerks and launches.

We slam against the bulkhead. My shoulder cracks hard into the wall. His body pins mine, and I feel the solid weight of him like a damn forcefield. I bite down on a scream as the pod spins, inertia dragging us through pressure drops and atmospheric shake.

He braces us both, teeth bared.

I dig my elbow into his ribs, shoving back. “You launched us?—!”

“I didn’t—” He ducks as sparks rain from the ceiling. “—fucking touch it.”

My hair whips into my face. The heat spikes. The screen near the console blinks red and glitches. Emergency override. Descent trajectory unstable.

“I’m going to kill you,” I snarl.

“You’re welcome to try. After we don’t die.”

He pushes off me, bracing himself against the control panel, his movements a chaotic dance of desperation. He stumbles slightly as he tries to regain his balance, fingertips grazing the scorched surface of the console. The panel’s fried—whatever power we had left is now shorted out, a cruel mockery of our situation. He punches the panel anyway, the sound echoing in the cramped space, accompanied by a growl that rumbles from deep within his chest, spilling forth in a language I don’t recognize, a guttural sound that seems to resonate with the very chaos surrounding us.

Ignoring the sharp sting of pain lancing through my body, I force myself onto my knees, pushing through the discomfort. “Why didn’t you kill me?” I demand, my voice steady despite the fear clawing at my insides.

He freezes at my question, his muscular shoulders tensing in a way that signals something has shifted. The atmosphere between us thickens, charged with unspoken words. He doesn’t turn to meet my gaze, his focus locked firmly on the console, as if it holds the answers. “Too much trouble,” he mutters, his voice low and dismissive, but I can sense an underlying tension.

“That’s bullshit,” I shoot back, anger flaring within me. The truth is, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to his hesitation than he’s letting on. I want to understand, to grasp the motivations behind his actions—or lack thereof.

The pod howls around us, the sound a haunting wail that pierces through the mounting dread. Wind shrieks outside, a banshee’s scream, and the pressure dials tick upward into the red, warning us that we’re breaching atmosphere far too fast. My heart races, the urgency of our situation crashing down on me like the violent turbulence shaking our fragile pod. Time is slipping away, and with every passing second, the reality of our impending doom looms larger.

My chest tightens. This is it.

The last seconds of my life are gonna be next to a muttering, arrogant, half-dressed Reaper who won’t even answer a straight question.

Perfect.

“Brace,” he barks.

I grip the nearest rail. He plants one arm over me as if that’ll do anything. And then the world rips open.

CHAPTER 6

KAIRON

Pain pulses through my skull, sharp and rhythmic, like a war drum beating behind my eyes. I groan, dragging in a breath that tastes like smoke and hot metal. The pod is a goddamn ruin—its walls crumpled in on themselves, the floor twisted under the weight of impact. Wires dangle from the ceiling like vines, spitting sparks every few seconds, painting the interior in jittery bursts of orange light.

“Augh…” I groan, pushing off the ground slightly. “Fucking hell.”

Acrid smoke curls in the air, burned plastic and scorched wiring stinging my nostrils. I shove a shattered panel off my chest and sit up, gritting my teeth against the groan of stiff joints. Outside, through the half-shattered viewport, a sea of green looms. Jungle—thick, humid, choking with vines and leaves as big as my chest. The sky beyond it is a violent smear of violet clouds and twin suns bleeding light into the horizon. This isn't any planet I’ve seen logged. And there’s no comm ping. No locator tone. Just the high whine of heat settling into the metal.

I squint upward through the broken pod roof. Nothing but sky. No ships. No crew. No damn answer. My comm’s dead, fried in the crash or something worse. I wonder if Nyra and Renn gotclear. Wonder if they got the data. If they’re even still breathing. If they even give a shit that I’m not. I slam a fist against the metal floor, the sound dull and final.

That’s when I see her.

The human officer—the one who charged me like she had any chance in hell of stopping this. She’s sprawled across the far side of the pod, half-buried in bent bulkhead plating. Her uniform’s torn open across her side and leg, blood staining the fabric dark. Her braid's come undone, brown waves matted with soot and sweat. She’s still breathing—barely—but unconscious.

Instinct moves before thought. I reach for my blade, fingers closing around the hilt with familiar ease. Ending her now would be cleaner. Smarter. She’s a threat, a liability, and a constant reminder of how sideways this mission went.

But when I lunge forward, intending to finish it, pain detonates in my chest. White-hot. All-consuming.

It drops me to my knees with a snarl torn from my throat, like I’ve been impaled from the inside. I clutch at my side, fingers pressing against unbroken skin as if that could stop the agony. My breath shortens, turns ragged. Dropping to my knees, I grit my teeth against the agony. Must be an injury from the crash.

---