Page 75 of The Huntmaster

I moved closer, sinking onto my haunches across from her. The blue fire cast long, dancing shadows that looked like grasping fingers against the cave walls. "I need answers, Elder. Not prophecies. I am bound to an Outsider. A woman who fell from the void in a vessel of screaming metal. My blood recognises her. My soul... it has locked into hers with a finality I cannot describe. How is this possible? She is not Oru-ka. She is a creature of another sun."

Valra let out a low, wheezing cackle that turned into a wet, rattling cough. She reached out with a gnarled, trembling hand, her fingers searching the air with uncanny accuracy until they found my forearm. Her touch was as cold as mountain ice, but the moment her skin met my glowing markings, she flinched and pulled back as if she had touched a hot brand.

"You seek logic in a place where only destiny breathes," she whispered, rubbing her fingertips together. "I have felt that girl since the moment she stepped onto our soils. I felt the forest reach for her, testing her, and I felt the Alu’un extend their mercy. Do you think the world is a fool, Kaelen? The very atmosphere of this planet accepted her alien form, allowing her to breathe our air and walk our paths without the wild-rot taking her. She was permitted to survive because she was already woven into the fabric of this place before she ever fell from the stars."

"But what is she?" I pressed, my voice raw with a desperation that bordered on anger. "The tribe will demand to know why their Master is tied to a celestial stranger. I felt the bond complete, Valra. I felt my spirit anchor into hers. If she is truly alien, why does she fit the hollow in my soul like a missing piece of my own body?"

Valra’s sightless gaze turned toward the blue flames, her expression darkening into something grim and heavy. "I do not hold the answers you crave, Kaelen. Not even I hold the keys to this specific mystery. This is a bridge that has never been crossed in my memory, nor in the memory of the wind that carries the songs of the grandfathers."

I felt a cold weight settle in my gut, a bitter disappointment that tasted like ash. "If you do not know, then my journey was for nothing. I have a people to lead, and a mate who will be hunted by their judgment if I cannot explain her."

"Patience, Huntmaster," she snapped, her sightless eyes flashing with a sudden, eerie intensity that made the fire flare higher. "I felt the turning point, but I cannot see the destination. However... there are those who might. The Ancients. The ones who built the First Nest, before the Great Silence fell and the stars became distant. Their records are etched in the deep roots of the world, in the places where the shadows never lift, and the skymetal of the first gods still hums with the power of the beginning."

"You are telling me to go into the Forbidden Deep?" I asked, my jaw tightening until it ached. "To chase legends and dust while my people look to me for stability? I have to stand on the Speaker's Stone and announce her at sundown."

"I am sending you where the truth lives," Valra replied, her voice fading as she leaned back into the shadows. "She is a key, Kaelen-Thul. Whether she unlocks a future of light or ends our cycle, even my sightless eyes cannot discern. But the bond you feel? That supernova in your chest? It is not a mistake. It is a summons."

She leaned forward one last time, the blue light making her look like an idol carved from ancient bone. "Search for the ruins of the First Nest. Find the places where the metal meets the bone. Only there will you find a semblance of an answer. Until then... guard her. For if she is truly the bridge between the earth and the sky, there are many who would rather see the world remain divided."

I stood up, the frustration boiling in my veins like a slow poison. I had come for clarity, and I was leaving with a map to a tomb and a mystery that reached beyond the atmosphere.

"The tribe will expect an announcement," I said coldly, turning toward the mouth of the cave.

"Then give them one," Valra’s voice drifted after me, sounding more like the wind than a person. "Tell them their Master has found his match. But do not tell them you are afraid, Kaelen. For a leader who fears his own destiny is a man already defeated by his own shadow."

I strode out of the cave, the mountain wind whipping my hair across my face. The bond pulled at me again—a sharp, insistent tug at my soul, demanding I return to her side. I didn't have the answers I wanted, but as I looked down at the flickering fires of the Nest far below, one truth remained unshakable.

She was mine. Whether she was a blessing from the Alu'un or a harbinger of our end, I would tear the sky down before I let anyone take her.

Chapter 48

Lyra

Ibolted upright, my breath rattling in my throat as cold sweat washed over my skin, instantly chilling me in the hut’s dim interior.

For a terrifying second, I didn’t know where I was. My mind was trapped in the residual gravity of a deep, suffocating dream—shattered fragments of blinding blue-white light, the crushing weight of a subterranean pressure, and the echo of a voice that sounded like grinding tectonic plates. It was entirely nonsensical, a chaotic tapestry of alien architecture and cosmic mathematics that my logical brain couldn't piece together. No matter how hard I tried to apply human reason to the images fading from my retinas, the data slipped through my fingers like water.

As the fog of sleep cleared, the immediate, inescapable reality of my own body crashed into me.

"Ah..." A ragged gasp escaped my lips, and I sank slightly back into the heavy, dark furs.

I was entirely wrecked. My muscles ached with a deep, systemic fatigue, and my skin bore the unmistakable, dark-blossomed bruises of Kaelen’s hands—brute-force finger marks stamped onto my hips and thighs like temporary brands. But the true epicentre of the ache was between my legs. My pussy felt incredibly sore, swollen, and thoroughly stretched out from the brutal, uncompromising size of him.

Frowning, I carefully slid a hand beneath the heavy fur blanket to check the tenderness. My fingers brushed against my sensitive, pulsing lips, and my breath hitched. I wasn't just sore. I was completely full. A thick, pearly warmth was still slowly weeping from my core, coating my inner thighs.

I pulled my hand back out from under the furs, intending to wipe my fingers, but I stopped dead, staring in absolute, clinical shock.

The fluid on my skin was glowing. A faint, bioluminescent radiance emanated from the thick cream, pulsing in a slow, rhythmic decay that perfectly mirrored the residual hum of the markings on my skin. It looked like liquid starlight, alive and chemically charged, continuing to emit light long after it had left his body. He hadn't cleaned me there. He had wiped down the rest of my body—I could feel the faint, clean crispness of a water-wash on my arms and torso—but he had deliberately left that glowing, radiant evidence of our joining inside me.

I lay back against the furs, staring up at the thatched roof as my mind spiralled into a dangerous loop of analysis. How is this biologically possible? I was a xenobiologist. I had spent years studying cellular compatibility, evolutionary biology, and genetic drift. Two entirely different species, evolved under different suns, on different sides of the galaxy, should not be capable of a synchronised, symbiotic climax.

They shouldn't be compatible at all. The fact that my body had accepted his, that his length had altered to lock us together, and that his very fluids carried a bioluminescent charge that seemed to be absorbing into my mucous membranes, defied every piece of peer-reviewed data I had ever memorised. Was I mutating? Was the planet's atmosphere doing something to my neurochemistry? Or worse—had I completely lost my professional objectivity to primal, fear-induced Stockholm syndrome?

Suddenly, a bizarre sensation rippled through the base of my skull. Like a phantom pressure. A wave of exhaustion that wasn't mine, mixed with a fierce, burning thread of possessiveness, flared in my mind.

Safe. Sleeping. Mine.

The thoughts weren't formed in English, nor in the guttural language of the Oru-ka. They were pure, unadulterated intent, striking my consciousness with the force of a heavy weight.