Setting the controls on autopilot to a set destination, I rise to my feet and head to my closet, tossing my torn jacket aside. I grow back to my original stature of thirteen feet and sit down, propping my oddly shaped feet atop the console, my legs crossed above my hocks.
I press a series of buttons, and an image of a cyclops—a Cyril—appears on the projection. “This is Kayden Royal reporting. I've apprehended the suspect. I'll be arriving within seven hours at the Quarter Six trading outpost. Send someone over to collect him. He's on ice,” I inform.
The man on the other end of the communication channel appears aged, with wrinkles on his forehead and around his eye, but no gray in his short brown hair. He must be tens of thousands of years old or more. “Good work, Kayden… for a bounty hunter, you still haven't lost your touch,” the Cyril remarks.
Don’t put it that way, dammit.
I lower my gaze, my expression solemn. “I’m headed straight for the colony now. Kayden out,” I say before ending the conversation. I gaze at the stars, now mere streaks of light as I travel past planets on my journey through space. Rising from my seat, I set an Earthling alarm clock for six hours and thirty minutes in my private quarters. Climbing onto my lower bunk, I rest my head on my folded hands.
I better not be heading back to Earth anytime soon.
My eyes stare up at the ceiling with a forlorn gaze. Fretting, I slowly close my eyes.
“Chiip!” Lil Manx lands atop my chest, but doesn't startle me. Instead, I raise my hand to blindly stroke the creature—my little Furrble’s soft tufts.
“It went as well as it could, I guess,” I mutter.
Lil Manx probes my face with his mana pom, garnering a small smirk on my lips as I gently swat it away. “I know, I know. I’m trying.” I look down to my furry friend, my dark eyes softening with a vulnerable gaze. “It isn’t getting any easier, no matter how many years go by.”
Lil Manx sprawls on my chest, looking up at me with a sympathetic gaze. “Chiip!”
Sighing, I just nod. “So you keep telling me.” My eyes become heavy as Lil Manx’s mana pom starts to glow bright blue, luring me into a slumber as it coos.
Before long, I fall fast asleep. I start to dream.
“Felicia!!” I cried against her bosom, losing myself to my sorrow. The familiar sound of a gun cocking was heard before me, catching my attention. I looked up, catching the figures of two human men, one holding out a Glock.
“You were both in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the man with a tattooed teardrop near his left eye said.
“Rick, don’t do it, man. It’s bad enough you shot the girl!” the man with the snake tattoo around his neck stood nearby, his legs shaking in fear.
“Shut it, Armin!! The bitch saw everything, and now this prick is a witness!” Rick growled.
My eyes grew wide at his words. I barely glanced at her abdominal wound to see the reminder of her mortality. I gently laid my fated mate down with care, my mind bent on a mission. I turned to face the two men, my lips curling into a snarl as I roared. I threw a powerful punch, my anger completely blinding me—losing my handle on my otherworldly strength long enough to make an action that was irreversible. The man’s neck snapped as he spun around, dropping to the ground with a thud.
Armin gasped, backing up as he stared at me. “Y-You killed him!”