Page 178 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Anita’s hair whips around her face in a wind that has no source. Silver-black light climbs her arms. Her eyes reflect fields older than time, and for one terrifying moment, I see her not as fragile, never fragile, but as mortal flesh standing inside a machine built for minds that never expected mortality to look back.

“It’s listening,” she says.

Rolaev moves.

She does not charge like a brute. She crosses the collapsing terrace with cold, precise speed, robes snapping around concealed armor, destruction key compressed now into a blade of black-blue light. She is not coming for the archive interface.

She is coming for Anita.

I intercept her before she reaches the central ring.

Our weapons meet with a crack that shakes sparks from the air. Rolaev is Odex, massive and strong, and the force of her strike drives pain through my wounded ribs. I push back, claws scraping against stone. Her pale eyes burn inches from mine.

“Move,” she says.

“No.”

“You defend the instrument of collapse.”

“I defend the woman making a choice you were too broken to imagine.”

Grief twists her face into fury. She strikes again. I block, but the impact numbs my arm. She is stronger than most opponents I have faced. Not as strong as an Odex warrior bred only for combat, perhaps, but trained, enhanced by concealed exoframe supports under her robes, and driven by conviction sharp enough to cut through exhaustion.

“You think love has made you wise,” she says.

“No. It has made me accountable.”

She feints left, then drives the destruction blade toward my damaged ribs. I catch her wrist with my clawed hand and slam my forehead into her face. The blow cracks one of the metal rings braided through her fur and splits my own brow. Blood runs into my eye.

She does not fall.

Odex.

Of course.

She drives her knee into my chest. Broken ribs scream. I stagger back one step. She uses it, twisting free and hurling a pulse of destructive code toward Anita.

I throw myself into the path.

The code hits my armor and crawls over it like black lightning. Systems die across my chest plate. Heat punches through to skin. I smell burning scales. My body locks, every nerve seized by ancient erasure logic trying to decide whether a living being qualifies as corrupted data.

Anita screams.

The sound tears the code’s hold on me more effectively than strength. I rip the dead chest plate away and drop it, smoking, to the floor.

Rolaev stares. “You should be dead.”

“I receive that critique often.”

Brakk yells from the escape corridor, “And we hate it every time!”

Anita’s voice rises over the chamber. “Ghar, move!”

I trust her.

I drop flat.

The archive activates fully.