POV: Dylan The creature roared, the sound vibrating through the marrow of my bones as it lunged forward.
The ground shuddered under its grotesque, asymmetrical weight, its milky eyes locking onto the easiest target in the clearing: the trembling woman sprawled in the mud with a dead man’s wedding ring clutched in her palm.
I could have ended it instantly.
My sights were lined up with the core of its neck, my finger resting against the smooth metal of the trigger.
Two rounds of anti-anomaly ammunition would have dropped it before its claws even grazed the gravel.
Instead, I deliberately checked my movement, easing off the tension in my trigger finger by a fraction of an inch.
I wanted to see what she would do.
If it had been Kristen standing in that ravine, the situation would have been easily resolved.
Kristen possessed the innate gift of a Peacemaker—a rare, gentle aura capable of soothing the chaotic surge of a high-tier manifestation, calming feral instincts long enough to contain or pacify the host.
But Stella Knox was entirely empty.
Everyone in the high circles knew it.
She possessed no gifts, no anomalous affinity, no tactical training, and no combat instinct whatsoever.
She was a baseline civilian dropped into a meat grinder and unfortunately, my wife.
I waited, watching through the scope as the feral beast closed the distance, curious to see how a completely defenseless woman intended to survive her first second in the wild.
The creature leapt, its black-veined jaw unhinging to reveal rows of jagged teeth.
Stella didn’t try to dodge.
She didn’t roll out of the way either.
She simply shrieked—a high pitched sound that probably alerted every creature within a ten mile radius—and grabbed the nearest object within reach.
It was unfortunately her cream-colored designer handbag.
With a frantic, terrifyingly uncoordinated swing born of raw adrenaline, she launched the luxury leather bag straight at the oncoming nightmare.
By all rights, the bag should have bounced harmlessly off its reinforced, muscle-bound hide before the beast tore her to ribbons.
But luck—an absurd, unbelievable, maddening stroke of pure chance—intervened.
The bag flipped mid-air, and one of its sharp metallic studs struck the creature directly in its left milky eye.
The beast screeched in sudden, blinding pain, its head snapping back as the impact disoriented its trajectory mid-jump.
That single split second was all I needed.
I closed the distance in three long strides, stepping inside the creature’s guard just as its feet slammed unevenly back onto the earth.
Dropping low beneath a wild, flailing claw, I drove my combat blade upward into the soft, unarmored cartilage beneath its jaw, twisting the steel before racking my sidearm with my free hand and burying a round directly into its central core.
The creature went stiff.
The sickly glow in its veins flickered once, twice, and then snuffed out entirely.
It collapsed into the mud like a felled tree, motionless, pinning the squashed, ruined remnants of the luxury bag beneath its massive shoulder.
Silence reclaimed the forest.
The suffocating stillness returned, broken only by the sound of Stella’s ragged, wheezing breathing as she sat frozen in the dirt, her knuckles still white around the dead technician’s ID bracelet.
I stood over the corpse, drawing my blade free with a wet slide and wiping the dark, viscous residue against the creature’s shredded sleeve.
I checked the perimeter out of habit, keeping my weapon raised until I was certain no secondary anomalies had been drawn by the gunfire.
Satisfied, I holstered my sidearm and looked down at my wife.
She was staring at the dead beast, then at the squashed piece of leather sticking out from beneath its side.
”That bag was custom leather!” she gasped, her voice cracking with a mixture of delayed shock and rising indignation.
I looked at the corpse, then back at her dirt-streaked face.
“It’s dead.” Stella’s head snapped up, her eyes wide, furious, and wildly disheveled as mud dripped from her chin.
“The bag or the beast?!” A sudden, unexpected impulse twitched at the corner of my mouth before I caught myself, keeping my expression completely flat.
”Both.” She let out a strangled noise, dropping her head back against the tree trunk with a thud.
“That was a limited edition.
You watched it jump at me!
You stood there for two whole seconds before doing anything!” ”I was calculating the trajectory,” I said smoothly, stepping over the beast’s arm to retrieve what was left of the technician’s gear.
“Besides, you handled it quite well.” ”I threw a purse at a demon!” she yelled, her hands waving wildly in the air.
“That isn’t handling it!
That’s gross negligence on your part as my self-appointed bodyguard!” ”You’re alive,” I noted, crouching down to unclip the encrypted data drive from the dead technician’s chest rig.
“And the target is neutralized.
That makes it a successful field test.” I glanced back at her from the corner of my eye.
She was still complaining, muttering colorful curses about my lineage, my operational methods, and the sheer tragedy of her ruined wardrobe.
But as I watched her tuck the dead man’s gold ring carefully into her jacket pocket—ensuring it wouldn’t be lost in the mud—I realized something that irritated me far more than her shouting.
She hadn’t broken.
No Peacemaker gifts.
No training.
Just sheer, ridiculous luck and an astonishing refusal to give up, even when she was chewing sand.
I wasn’t certain about what to do with that.
They always gave up but she didn’t.
Maybe I hadn’t tried enough?
I extended a gloved hand toward her.
“Get up, Knox.
We still have two miles to the western perimeter, and you’re wasting light.” Stella glared at my hand like it was a poisonous snake, spat out a lingering grain of dirt, and slapped my hand away to push herself up on her own two feet.
”Don’t touch me,” she grumbled, swaying slightly before catching her balance on her ruined boots.
“If we survive this day, I’m billing you for the bag and my shoes and my clothes.
Ugh!
Everything.” ”Put it all on my tab, you’re my wife after all,” I replied, turning back toward the dense forest trail.