Page 17 of Deserted

Yet here I was, thinking about her scent rather than focusing on the half-buried perimeter sensors blinking lazily under a thin film of red dust. I knelt to check the western unit, my fingers brushing over the sand-etched alloy. No power. No signal. No surprise.

“Fantastic,” I muttered to the empty desert. My superior hearing confirmed that Jas was still asleep inside—her heartbeat steady and slow, her breathing deep. Good. I needed time to compose myself after what we’d shared. After feeling her body against mine, her dream-self begging me to claim her.

Not helpful, brain. Focus on the dead tech.

The flare had likely fried every exposed component across Base D-7’s sprawl. The good news: no signs of immediate danger. The bad news? The communications relay was toast. I’d have to dig out the secondary panel, reroute the charge coils, and pray to the stars nothing had surged past the breakers.

And all this while pretending I hadn’t just experienced the most intense Unity dream of my life with a woman who probably thought I was a hallucination brought on by heat stroke. Perfect.

I stood and turned toward the distant dunes, watching the horizon ripple like a mirage. But this was no illusion. Beneath the surface, something pulsed—deep, steady, and ancient. Swarm tech.

I could feel it again, that low thrum beneath my boots, the way it had hummed to life in pockets ever since Jas arrived. As if her presence had stirred something slumbering. Maybe itwas coincidence. Maybe it was the buried hive-mind recognizing someone it didn’t catalog as Legion.

Or maybe the universe had a sick sense of humor, sending my fate mate to the one place in the galaxy guaranteed to complicate our bonding with deadly alien tech and Legion protocols that would have her memory wiped if I didn’t figure something out fast.

I growled low in my throat, the sound rumbling up from my chest without conscious thought. A group of small reptilian scavengers that had been cautiously approaching scattered at the noise, skittering back beneath the shelter of a nearby rock formation. I hadn’t even noticed them. My situational awareness was shot to hell, and all because a small human female with a smart mouth and eyes like the depths of space had stumbled through a portal and straight into my fate.

What was I supposed to tell Command? “Sorry sir, can’t let you erase her memories because we shared an ancient Rodinian mating dream and I’m pretty sure I’ll go insane if you take her away from me now”? That would go over brilliantly.

I paced along the perimeter, checking each sensor and making mental notes of the repairs needed. Work. Focus on work. Not on how her skin had felt against mine, or how she’d moaned my name in her sleep, or how the scent of her arousal had nearly driven me feral.

The sand shifted beneath my boots, revealing more damaged tech—a communications array half-melted by the heat flare. I crouched to examine it, running a diagnostic with my wrist scanner. Complete failure. Parts might be salvageable, but I’d need to extract the core processor from beneath the?—

The ground beneath me trembled, just slightly. Barely perceptible to human senses, but my enhanced perception caught it instantly. I froze, extending my claws instinctively as I pressed my palm flat against the sand.

There it was again. A pulse. Like a heartbeat, but wrong—mechanical, precise. Swarm tech awakening.

I closed my eyes, focusing on the sensation. The vibration was stronger than yesterday. Closer to the surface. Almost as if it were...growing toward us.

Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.

The Swarm had been dormant for years, the remaining tech sealed away in underground bunkers after the war. Nothing should be active, especially not responding to surface stimuli. Yet here it was, pulsing beneath my hand like a technological tumor that had sensed new prey.

New prey named Jasmine.

I straightened, scanning the horizon with narrowed eyes. The twin suns were climbing higher, their combined heat already making the air shimmer. In a few hours, the surface temperature would be lethal to humans again. I needed to fix the communications relay, report the Swarm activity, and keep Jas safe until extraction.

All while pretending I wasn’t completely, utterly compromised by feelings that had no place in a Reaper’s mission parameters.

My tail lashed behind me, betraying my agitation. The sensation of the tech beneath the surface made my fur stand on end, my instincts screaming danger in a way they hadn’t since the war. Whatever was happening, it was escalating. And it seemed to be focused on our shelter—on Jas.

I growled again, this time embracing the primal sound. Let the tech hear it. Let it know that between it and my fate mate stood a very pissed off Rodinian with absolutely no patience left for universe-ending threats.

“Try it,” I muttered to the sand, to the buried tech, to whatever intelligence might be stirring below. “Just try to get to her.”

The desert offered no reply, just that steady, ominous pulse beneath the surface. I turned back toward the shelter, my decision made. I had two missions now: fix the communications to get us off this hellscape, and protect the human female inside that bunker with every fiber of my being.

Legion protocol could go to hell.

7 /JAS

I was going stir-crazy.Rhaekar had gone to check the perimeter hours ago, leaving me alone in the bunker with nothing but filtered water, stale rations, and my own increasingly explicit memories of our shared dream to keep me company. Not ideal for maintaining my already tenuous grip on sanity. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw golden skin and felt phantom hands, heard that gravelly voice whispering “kassari” against my neck. I’d already tried pacing, but the bunker was too small—five steps this way, six steps that way, bump into a wall, repeat until crazy.

“This is ridiculous,” I announced to the empty room. My voice echoed off the metal walls, bouncing back at me like the universe’s most pathetic conversation partner. “Get it together, Jas.”

I’d already re-inventoried my salvaged gear twice. My camera was toast—melted beyond repair when I’d first stumbled through the portal. My satellite phone was equally useless, though I’d managed to save the memory card. My recorder had survived, surprisingly, though what good audio files would do me on an alien planet was anyone’s guess. Maybe I could leavemy last will and testament. “Here lies Jasmine Navarro, who died of sexual frustration after dream-banging a cat alien.”

God, I was losing it.

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