Page 29 of Claimed By the Alien Assassin
The real show’s just beginning.
The night air in the old mining outpost is thick with dust and regret, like the world’s been exhaling centuries of unfaced truths. We arrive silent—Dayn’s hand on my shoulder steadying me through the dark—me, too wound tight to breathe easy, too determined to think clean.
We duck under the hatch into the hidden workshop, greeted by the soft hum of patched-together power cells and the onyx glow of a flickering holo-panel. Metal tools lie scattered across the workbench—wrenches, calibration sensors, half-finished circuits that whisper of promises we haven’t fully shaped.
I scrub my hands on a rag, grit lodged under my nails reminding me this isn’t a place for polished armor or polished words. It’s raw and unfinished. Like us, I think.
Dayn watches me, the image inducer still hiding the jagged truth beneath his face, his posture taut with a kind of controlled ignition.
“So,” I start, voice rough, “we pushing harder after the parade?”
He crosses his arms—still too wide for someone who claims not to want power. “We escalate, yes. But we don’t provoke an open fight. We hit Vortaxian supply lines, communication hubs—not people.”
I scoff, tossing the rag into a half-full tub of coolant. “Supply lines won’t erase the sight of that parade, did you see it? We need something more. Something thathurts. Makes them stop.”
He steps forward, heat rising off him. “Hurtswhat, Josie? Hurt civilians too? Hurt the people we’re trying to save?” His voice, normally gravel and calm, is ragged now.
I iron a curl from my hair, using the tension to fuel me. “We’re not safe under their thumb, Dayn. We’re planning a revolution, not cuddling under the status quo. You can’t keep being the voice of caution with that steel under your ribs.”
He narrows his eyes, jaw working. “And you can’t keep throwing firecrackers at a bunker and expect it to crumble. That’s impulsive.”
I step forward. Hard. Too hard. “And you calling me emotionally constipated?” Every word digs in, proud and jagged. “We’re working with limited resources, I know that. But they need tobelievein our cause with more than whispers.”
“I’m trying tosavelives!” he hisses. His voice echoes in the cavernous workshop. “Not spark off an uprising we’re not prepared to control or win.”
I laugh—short and bitter. “Save lives how? Starve them into obedient silence?”
We stop. Breath catches in our throats like ragged nets. The harsh hum fills the pause between us.
His eyes, dark behind the visor, soften. He exhales, sudden weight in his shoulders. “Your fire scares me,” he admits. “Not because it’s bad—but because you’re too close to getting burned.”
“Maybe I want to burn,” I whisper.
That stops him. The line in his jaw claws at control. He steps closer, hands settling on my shoulders like he’s anchoring himself. “I don’t want to lose you.”
That breaks something open in me so fast my vision blurs. “Don’t,” I echo.
Silence blankets us. Only the hum, only our ragged breaths.
Then a spark ignites.
His lips find mine with an urgency that sets every nerve ablaze. My world tilts, the workshop’s cold metal and low light bleeding away under his touch. His mouth is firm, demanding, and for the first time in my life I feelwanted—not as a cause, not as a spark, but as something hot and real.
My hands clench his jacket, tugging him in deeper. This is a reckoning more intense than any map or weapon. This is us unguarded and unprepared. He tastes of bitterness, blood, maybe something he didn’t want to carry alone.
He kisses back hard, binding us into storm and shadow. His hands drift to my waist, pressing me against him. I can feel the scar across his chest through his jacket, the hard muscles that have killed and now hold me. The masculine strength I feared... but needed.
Our breath comes in ragged gasps. Clothes tangle. We stumble toward the old cot, but never make it. That deep starfire ignites in the space between us and drags us further past hesitation.
Josie shakes against Dayn’s chest, knees weak with desire and need. She whispers, “Gods, Dayn?—”
He pauses, forehead against mine, his voice a rasped prayer. “Shh.”
The world contracts to skin, fire, and heartbeat shared.
The cot’s a joke. We both know it. But Dayn doesn’t just let it go—he makes apointof ignoring it.
In one motion, he lifts me straight off the floor like I weigh nothing. My breath catches as his arms wrap around my thighs and his claws rake up my back through my shirt. My legs cling around his waist, heat pooling between us. The moment I grind against his belt buckle, he growls—a deep, primal thing that vibrates against my chest.
