Page 55 of New World

She was marking herself.

She was using herself as bait.

His blood ran cold.

“Vas’thelan kai’tor! Are you crazy?” he snapped, his voice lower, rougher, as panic started to build inside him.

Mei simply tilted her head. Dorane released another low curse.

The moment Zoak saw her, truly saw her—her face, her connection to him—it was over. Zoak was already obsessed with his hunt. Now? He wouldn’t be able to resist. Mei had just made herself the ultimate prize.

The perfect challenge.

And suddenly, Dorane was filled with a desire to hunt Zoak that was beyond anything he had ever felt in his life. Not because Zoak hunting him…

Because he was hunting her.

Zoak crouched on the narrow beam, his body perfectly still as he watched the controlled chaos of the docking bay below. The cavernous expanse of Cryon II’s launch sector pulsed with activity, the sound of hydraulics hissing and boots echoing against steel platforms as final preparations for departure were made. His focus was not on the mass of workers beneath him. They were of no interest to him. He lifted his view-spotter, the enhanced lenses sharpening the figures below into razor-edged clarity.

Dorane LeGaugh.

The name sat on Zoak’s tongue like bitter ash. The man stood near the base of his star cruiser, arms crossed, speaking with his second-in-command—a feline-featured woman who was radiating anger through every fiber of her being. The way her tail lashed, the sharp tilt of her head, the way she jabbed her finger into Dorane’s chest—oh yes, she was pissed.

Zoak’s lips curled in satisfaction.

Let her be angry. Let her fight him. It won’t matter soon.

Dorane had no idea what was coming. None of them did. The carefully placed charges in the lower sections of Cryon II, near the artificial moon’s core, would detonate in seventy-two hours. The explosion would send a cascading collapse through the structural integrity of the entire base. It would crumple like a dried husk under its own weight. Thousands would die.

And he would be long gone.

Originally, he had planned to eliminate Dorane here, taking his time savoring the moment before the base was reduced to scrap floating in the vacuum of space. But this? This was better. So much better. Dorane was leaving. That meant Zoak could follow. He would hunt his prey in the vast reaches of space, far away from distractions. And when Zoak killed him, it would be against the backdrop of Dorane’s greatest failure—his home, his empire, his friends—obliterated in one perfect stroke.

Zoak’s fingers tightened around the view-spotter, his heart thrumming in anticipation.

Then—a shadow moved into his view.

His instincts flared before his mind caught up. Movement near Dorane. Someone was approaching.

He adjusted the focus, narrowing in on the figure striding toward his target. The dark gray, almost black, cloak. Zoak’s smug satisfaction twisted into irritation. He knew that cloak. It belonged to the person who had been trailing him.

The one who had dismantled his traps.

The one who had evaded him.

For the past two weeks, this ghost had stalked him through Cryon II’s underbelly, unraveling his carefully laid plans, forcing him to adapt, move, change course. The two times he had thought he finally had the assassin cornered—they had vanished. No one had ever done that before. No one. It had taken every ounce of his patience to not lash out in frustration. To not kill indiscriminately. He couldn’t, because a legend must have control, remembered for his choices, not his reactions.

His irritation soured into something sharper as he focused in. Arrogant. To walk so boldly in the open now—right up to Dorane, in front of all these witnesses—it was almost like?—

Zoak’s breath locked in his throat as his own personal predator slowly reached up and lowered the hood of his cloak. Shock coursed through Zoak as he sucked in a sharp breath. The view-spotter trembled ever so slightly in his grip.

A female! A female has been tracking me?

The realization struck him with the force of a laser blast to his stomach. And her features… they made no sense. No Turbinta assassin in the star systems had ever matched him, let alone toyed with him the way this one had. And yet, as her face was revealed, as her dark eyes lifted, a jolt of something strange slid through his body.

Uncertainty.

His fingers clenched around the metal railing, his sharp claws digging into the surface.

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