novelraw Chapter 472: Doing it Right
Chapter 472: Doing it Right
Lachlan didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
He moved like a soldier, not a comedian that most people mistook him for. His energy was completely focused and clean. He had one mission... he needed to put bodies down and keep Sera’s perimeter clear.
Aerenyx’s body count continued to climb in silence. Men stumbled near him and died without understanding why their organs had decided to up and quit on them.
Psycho froze a cluster of three military personnel who tried to retreat. The cold hit them like a wall. Their breath locked and their eyes froze wide in an expression of shock and disbelief. Then, almost like a subtle ’fuck you’ he shattered each individual one with a flick of his fingers.
The crazy creature even grinned like a maniac when the ice fragments sprayed outward like thrown blades...
Or confetti.
Zubair’s creature watched it all with a competitive edge. The winter one is showing off. The death one is too efficient. Both of them are making us look bad. Do not let them forget their place.
Zubair felt irritation spike.
Not because he wanted glory, but because his creature was right about one thing: if he lost his place in the horde, he lost his ability to do what mattered most.
The ability to look after her.
His focus shifted back toward Sera, cataloguing her movements, her placement, her everything.
She had finished with the man who had spoken and had moved on to another operator, catching him and dragging him close like she was choosing the best part of a meal. She tore into his abdomen this time. It wasn’t all that dramatic, she definitely wasn’t messy for the sake of being messy, but he could tell that she was doing it simply because she liked the warmth on the man’s internal organs.
Her hands were steady. Her chewing was steady. Her eyes kept tracking movement even as she fed.
Zubair felt his throat tighten.
His creature spoke with a sharp, unyielding certainty. See? She is still hunting while she eats. She does not get to rest. You should have prevented that. You could have had her meal all laid out for her while she was lying down. She shouldn’t have to so much as twitch a finger to tell you what she wants or needs. I’m almost ashamed about sharing a body with you.
Zubair’s jaw flexed. He kept his fire low and moved closer, placing himself at an angle where he could intercept anything stupid enough to rush her.
A Black-Badge operator tried anyway. He came over the ridge line with a knife, his eyes wild, and clearly no longer thinking like a professional.
He didn’t even get close.
Zubair snapped heat across the ground in front of him, turning rock into a brief, molten slick. The man’s boots hit it and he went down hard, palms slapping into heat and burning through gloves.
He screamed and tried to crawl away, but Zubair stepped in and ended it with a simple, controlled burn through the skull.
The screaming stopped.
Sera didn’t even look up. She didn’t need to. She knew he would handle it.
That knowledge was a weight on Zubair’s chest. A privilege. A responsibility.
His creature didn’t let him bask in it. She trusts you to take care of her. That is why your failure is worse.
Zubair swallowed once, feeling the sting of truth even as he kept moving.
The operators who were still alive backed toward the secondary line, shouting into radios, pleading for extraction, calling for "Phase Four" like phases mattered when Sera was standing in their world.
Zubair tracked the pattern with a soldier’s eye. The drones were lining up to saturate the ridge in overlapping impacts. They wanted to collapse the rock, bury Sera, bury the pack, and then mop up whatever pieces remained.
His creature’s voice slid in again, almost mocking. They still think this is about damage. They do not understand this is about permission.
Zubair glanced at Sera.
She lifted her head, blood on her mouth, soot on her cheek, eyes bright as she looked up at the drones.
She looked... pleased.
Like the world had finally offered her something that might be entertaining.
Zubair felt a flicker of something dangerously close to laughter, and his creature caught it. Stop enjoying it and start providing her with what she needs.
He clenched his jaw.
Providing didn’t mean shelter. It didn’t mean planning a camp. It meant making sure Sera got what she needed before she had to take it the hard way.
And right now she needed two things.
More prey.
And the freedom to take it without interruption.
Zubair planted his feet, angled his body, and opened his heat wider than he had been letting himself. He didn’t explode into an inferno. He expanded into a controlled field, a temperature shift that turned the air around him into a warning.
Human skin would blister if they got too close.
Metal would soften.
Ammo would cook.
The drones dipped slightly, sensors reacting, trying to compensate.
Good.
Come lower.
Aerenyx’s head turned fractionally, black eyes narrowing as he felt Zubair’s heat push outward. Psycho’s gaze flicked over as well, that pleased, predatory smile still carved into his face.
Zubair didn’t care if they noticed.
He wasn’t doing this for them.
He was doing it for her.
The drones fired.
The impacts hit the ridge line in a brutal chain and still, Sera stepped into it. She didn’t have to. She could have moved. She could have dodged. She could have used her speed.
But she didn’t.
Because she wanted them to understand something.
Her body tore open under the strike and rebuilt itself as fast as it was destroyed. Blood sprayed, then was replaced. Bone shattered and reformed. She didn’t retreat. She lifted her face toward the drones, eyes bright, and laughed.
She had proved that she wasn’t human.
She was a predator... and apex one that was too strong to truly feel fear.
Zubair felt his creature purr with satisfaction and contempt all at once. They are praying with bullets. She does not answer prayers.
Zubair’s heat surged upward in a tight, violent column.
He caught the lowest drone as it dipped and burned through its underside, melting wiring, searing mounts, cooking the core. It detonated, the explosion rolling across the ridge and showering debris.
Lachlan’s lightning snapped into the gap, catching another drone and ripping through its system. It spiraled and crashed.
Psycho raised a hand and the air itself seemed to harden. Frost climbed metal mid-flight. Another drone seized and dropped like a stone.
Aerenyx walked through the falling debris without slowing, and the last operator near him collapsed, coughing blood and clutching his stomach like his organs had turned against him.
The Black-Badge were no longer a line.
They were a scatter of terrified humans with expensive gear and no story that worked anymore.
Finding one of the few survivors, he crossed the distance in three strides and drove heat through the man’s mask. Plastic warped as the operator screamed once and then choked, lungs collapsing under heat and panic.
Zubair let him drop.
He didn’t feel joy from it. He felt nothing at all for the man.
The only thing that mattered was Sera.
His creature didn’t soften either. Good. Now stop watching and start thinking. She will want to be clean enough to hold that plush. Are you going to make her do that alone too?
Zubair’s chest tightened again.
He looked at Sera.
She was wiping blood from her mouth with the back of her hand, not to be clean, just because it was in her way. Her hair was still white under the soot, her skin still pale under the blood. Her eyes tracked the last movement on the ridge like she was deciding whether the remaining humans were worth the effort.
Zubair stepped closer—not hovering, not crowding, but present.
He didn’t speak yet. He waited for the moment where she looked his way, because he didn’t interrupt her when she was deciding.
His creature watched with impatience. She should not have to look at you to be cared for. You should already be there.
Zubair’s jaw flexed again, but he didn’t argue. He couldn’t.
Because the creature wasn’t saying he was weak.
It was saying he was distracted.
It was saying he was thinking about the pack like they were equals.
And Sera wasn’t equal.
Sera was the axis.
Sera lifted her gaze at last, eyes sliding to him as if she had finally remembered he was there.
"Are they done?" she asked, voice conversational, almost bored.
Zubair scanned the ridge. Bodies. Broken gear. Smoke. The last drone falling in pieces. The last operator crawling and then going still.
"We can make sure," he answered.
Sera’s smile sharpened.
"I want to," she said, and the way she said it made it clear it wasn’t a command. It was simply desire.
Zubair felt his creature lean forward inside him like a second spine. Then you will give her what she wants, it said. And you will give it to her before she has to bleed for it again.
Sera’s eyes flicked over the ridge line and she started walking, not toward safety, not toward escape, but toward whatever was left.
Zubair followed without hesitation, heat humming under his skin, his attention split between the sky, the ground, and her.
He didn’t know where they were going after this.
He didn’t know what came next.
He only knew one thing with absolute clarity.
Wherever Sera decided to go, he would make sure she got there fed, whole, and satisfied.
Even if the thing inside him had to sneer him into doing it right.