Page 17 of Claimed By the Alien Assassin
I lean in. “You’ll need more than courage.”
She nods, determination carved in her eyes. “I’ve got fire.”
I pause, searching her face. It’s not bravery or defiance I see—it’shome. Something I haven’t felt in decades.
I nod. “We’ll build from that.”
Tonight, I won’t be just a killer in the shadows.
Tonight, I’ll be her steel.
She walks away like she owns the corridor. Like her spine’s made of star-forged alloy and her pride’s more oxygen than blood. I tell myself to let her go.
I don’t.
I tell myself again—this isn’t my war, this isn’t my fight, this isn’tme—and yet, my boots move without permission, treading the filth-stained metal plates where countless others have scurried or died. The station air clings to everything, thick with carbon exhaust and old fear. The kind that leaves a taste on the back of your tongue like rust and old regret.
She rounds a corner, and I lag behind just enough to stay unseen. Not that I’d be missed. The mercs part for me like a tide breaking against rock. Not because I’m respected. Fear isn’t reverence.
It’s obedience. Cold and temporary.
Some make the mistake of holding eye contact too long. I hold it longer. Until they remember what I am and look away.
She doesn’t.
She never has.
I find her in the lower docking ring, hunched over a half-dead console that’s projecting a flickering holomap. It’s just her and a sphere of cold blue light in the middle of chaos—like a star lost in the void. Her hair’s tied back in a messy knot that keeps falling out of place, and her fingers move across the controls with the mechanical efficiency of someone too angry to slow down.
She’s talking under her breath. Numbers. Vectors. Defensive arrays. Calculating a miracle with the voice of someone too proud to beg for one.
I stand behind her for a full ten seconds before I say anything. I watch her shoulders stiffen when she senses me. I can feel the tension in her spine even before she turns.
“Here to tell me again how this isn’t your war?” she asks without looking. Her voice is tight, but there’s a tremble in it she can’t quite smother.
I take a step closer. Lean down just enough to speak low, right at the shell of her ear.
“Maybe I don’t do wars,” I murmur. “But I do retribution.”
She freezes. The holomap flickers. My words hang in the air between us like plasma smoke, curling and catching.
She turns slowly, and our eyes lock.
Something flickers there—hope, maybe. Or exhaustion. Or both. Her lips part, and for once, she doesn’t know what to say.
So I fill the silence.
“You’ve got a colony full of civilians, limited artillery, one mid-range ship, and a fading orbital relay. The Vortaxians have a capital vessel, ground troops, and a perimeter that’s probably scanning every micron of surface within a thousand-kilometer radius. On paper, you’re already dead.”
“Gee, thanks for the pep talk,” she says.
“But they haven’t broken your spirit yet,” I continue, voice low. “And that’s more dangerous than you think. Theywantfear. They expect surrender. Give them something they don’t see coming.”
Her eyes narrow. “You offering strategy now, too?”
I shrug. “I’m offeringme.”
The words come out before I can censor them. And that… that is dangerous. That’snotwho I am.
