Page 44 of Deserted

Rhaekar blinked up at me, dazed. “You saved me.”

I brushed damp hair off his forehead, marveling at how soft it was despite its wild appearance. “That’s what mates do, right?”

He smiled, slow and reverent. “Mine.”

And despite the aching muscles, the scorched boots, and the mild concussion I was probably rocking—I grinned back.

“Yours.”

For now.

And forever.

I settled beside him on the med mat, careful not to disturb the healing systems still working on his wound. My fingers intertwined with his, our bond humming with contentment despite the chaos surrounding us.

“So much for making good time to the extraction point,” I said, glancing at the bunker’s chronometer. We’d lost at least an hour to this detour, and Rhaekar would need time to recover before we could travel safely.

“We will make it,” he assured me, his thumb tracing circles on my palm. “This bunker has transport capabilities. Once the systems are fully activated.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Transport capabilities? You mean like a vehicle?”

“Of sorts.” His eyes drifted closed, fatigue evident in every line of his body. “Short-range teleportation grid. Can get us... closer to Delta-Nine-Seven.”

Hope flared in my chest. “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“Most outposts... systems dead. Didn’t expect this one... functional.” His words slurred as the medication pulled him toward sleep. “You... remarkable. Making things work.”

I smiled softly, leaning down to press a kiss to his forehead. “Rest. I’ll check out this teleportation grid while the med station does its thing.”

He nodded, already drifting off, his hand still clutching mine as if afraid I might vanish if he let go.

I waited until his breathing deepened, then gently extracted my hand and moved to the bunker’s main console. Like everything else in this forgotten outpost, it was covered in a fine layer of sand and showed signs of long disuse. But if I’d learned anything in the past few hours, it was that Legion tech was built to last.

The console responded to my touch with a reluctant flicker of lights. Systems that had been dormant for decades sluggishly came online, one by one. Environmental controls. Communication arrays. Defense protocols.

And there, at the bottom of the list: Transport Grid.

I tapped the option, holding my breath as the system processed the request. A schematic appeared, showing the bunker’s location relative to a network of similar outposts scattered across the desert. Most were marked in gray—offline or destroyed. But three glowed with a faint blue light, indicating operational status.

And one of them—Outpost Delta-Eight-Four—was just two miles from our extraction coordinates.

“Jackpot,” I whispered, hope rising in my chest like a bubble.

If I could get the teleportation grid working, we could bypass the expanding Swarm network altogether. Jump directly to Delta-Eight-Four and make our way to the extraction point fromthere. We’d arrive with time to spare, and Rhaekar wouldn’t have to push his injured body through miles of hostile desert.

I glanced back at his sleeping form, his face relaxed in a way I rarely saw when he was awake. Always vigilant, always protective. Always putting himself between me and danger without a second thought.

Well, this time I’d be the one doing the protecting.

I rolled up my sleeves, cracked my knuckles, and set to work. The teleportation grid needed power—more than the bunker’s aging systems could currently provide. But with a little creative rewiring and maybe some energy siphoned from that defense turret outside...

I smiled to myself, already planning the next impossible task. Because that’s what mates did—they saved each other, over and over again, finding ways through problems that seemed insurmountable.

And I’d be damned if I was going to let a little thing like ancient alien technology stop me from getting my mate to safety.

“Hang tight, big guy,” I murmured, fingers already busy with the console’s innards. “Your fierce little human’s got this one covered.”

16 /RHAEKAR

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