Arthur's Heat Arrives

Six hours later.

The tracked bus finally made it through the quarantine zone.

The City of the Radiant Sun was the largest city on New Thebes, and it was currently under the control of the terrorist organization Twilight. Access to the city was restricted by time, and it was 20:00 standard time now, so the bus wouldn't be allowed in until tomorrow. The driver pulled up at a small settlement just outside the city walls.

Two passengers helped drag Arthur Kane off the bus like a sack of potatoes and hauled him into a room at the settlement's inn.

Annie shut the door behind her and immediately stripped off her scarf and hood. She pulled her earpiece and glasses from her backpack and went online at once.

It was already late at night back on Spica, so Annie relayed the situation at the checkpoint to the logistics AI, emphasizing the possibility that the Federation's operation had been compromised.

Next, she pulled out her hacking module and plugged it into the personal terminal on her wrist.

Arthur Kane still hadn't woken up.

Annie moved to the bedside and leaned down, tapping his neck lightly. The Alpha, knocked out by the electric shock, didn't react at all.

Good.

She nodded in satisfaction, then reached directly for the hem of Arthur's T-shirt.

Lifting the thin fabric, Arthur Kane's torso was exposed. His wheat-toned waist was firm and powerful, and since he was still unconscious, his muscles were relaxed. His defined abs rose and fell with each breath, looking soft.

And touching them...

Well, Annie's hand brushed against Arthur's side, and she couldn't help but make contact. They were soft, indeed.

It felt nice, not that Annie was taking advantage. Unlike the Galactic Empire, which preferred external equipment, Interstellar Federation agents implanted various parts and devices directly into their bodies.

Her fingertips found a metal component that didn't belong in a human body—a small piece of exoskeleton attached to the muscle on his left side. Here it was.

Annie connected the data cable from her hacking module to the interface on the exoskeleton.

Having worked in logistics, Annie knew the Federation's systems inside and out. Countless streams of data flashed past her glasses, and she quickly found a vulnerability, hacked into the program, and located the communication function.

Annie's original intention was to leave a backdoor for the Empire's logistics to listen in on.

One reason was to confirm whether the Federation's operation had been exposed; the other was... well, the Empire and the Federation were hostile to each other, after all.

They'd said they were cooperating to solve the problem, but what if the Federation agent's real mission wasn't to destroy the gene weapon, but to take it back and use it against the Galactic Empire?

She needed to stay on guard at all times. Annie's plans were running smoothly, and then—

The moment she accessed the program, Annie, with her logistics background, spotted something unusual in the code at first glance.

There was a network signal that didn't come from the Interstellar Federation.

The signal was traced to New Thebes. It was from Twilight.

Damn it, she thought to herself.

It wasn't that the Federation agent had been exposed.

It was that their communication equipment had already been bugged! No wonder Twilight's people could locate Arthur Kane but couldn't pinpoint him—the guy never followed orders from above, so he probably hadn't even turned his comm on.

Realizing this, Annie snapped her head up—

Following Arthur Kane's powerful waist and chest upward, she met a pair of cold, icy blue eyes.

In that instant, Annie's heart skipped two beats in shock.

With a thunderous crash, the Alpha who had been lying there unconscious just a second ago lunged like a beast of prey, flipping Annie off the bed and onto the floor.

What the hell?!

That electric clasp had enough energy to knock out a grown man for twenty-four hours, and this guy woke up in less than eight?!

Annie was caught completely off guard. She stumbled, lost her balance, and hit the ground back-first.

A sharp pain shot through her skull, and the next moment, Arthur Kane's tall frame loomed over her completely.

The Alpha's broad silhouette blotted out the inn's light. His long, bony fingers clamped around Annie's throat. Annie knew she was in trouble, and by the time she reacted, reaching for Arthur's forearm, it was already too late.

Arthur leaned in, his handsome face inches from hers.

Cheek to cheek, nose to nose, his breath brushing against her skin, so close that she could clearly see the pattern of his irises in those blue eyes.

His expression was blank, like a man gripping a small bird in his bare hand.

The gaze of a beast sizing up its prey was burning, and being this close made Annie deeply uncomfortable.

"I'm not here to cause you trouble," Annie forced out. "Can you let me go first?"

Fighting a male Alpha nearly two meters tall was not wise. Annie instinctively turned her head away, trying to avoid his gaze.

But that just exposed the side of her neck to his view.

He narrowed his eyes and closed the last bit of distance.

Annie: "..."

When Arthur's nose brushed against her ear, Annie shuddered instinctively. At the same time, she caught a distinct scent, something like burning metal.

She was stunned for a moment before she realized: this was Arthur's pheromone.

Damn it.

Even outside of heat, Alphas and Omegas released pheromones when emotionally agitated. Arthur was definitely not as calm as he appeared—he was ready to kill.

There was still room to turn this around.

Annie forced herself to stay steady, even with his hand around her throat, and insisted on explaining: "You—your comm is being monitored—"

The man in front of her closed his grip without any change in expression.

Annie: !!

The suffocation made her vision go black.

Adrenaline spiked, and Annie clenched her teeth: "Wait, cough, you—"

Arthur ignored her completely.

He just furrowed his brow, moving his head from behind her skull to her neck, and took a deep sniff through his own palm.

Orange peel and lemon leaf.

"First you electrocute me, then you hack into my terminal," Arthur said, his clear blue eyes as cold as glaciers. "You think I'd believe your nonsense?"

Annie couldn't speak anymore.

Her lungs and trachea burned with a fiery pain as oxygen deprivation screamed in her brain. She had no doubt that Arthur genuinely intended to strangle her to death right here.

This mad dog—that red-badge officer had been far too reasonable. Why hadn't he just blown this guy's head off back at the checkpoint!

Just before her consciousness faded, Annie let go of his arm.

She couldn't pry his grip off anyway, so she reached down instead, raising two fingers and waving them in the air—

The personal terminal on her wrist instantly received the emergency gesture.

With a sharp click, the data cable still connected to Arthur's waist exoskeleton detached automatically.

A sensor on her personal terminal activated, and that specially made data cable, as if it had eyes, coiled around Arthur's neck and yanked tight!

His blue eyes, so close, contracted sharply.

Unlike a human hand gripping a throat, the cord caught his airway directly. Arthur's face flushed red from oxygen deprivation in an instant.

He had no choice but to release Annie.

She had witnessed Arthur Kane's strength back at the checkpoint.

The man could bend a gun barrel with his bare hands—a simple cord wouldn't hold him. He threw his head back and snapped the cord wrapped around his neck with brute force!

But using that opening, Annie rolled straight out from in front of him.

Her wristband detached, and several special cords flew out, wrapping around Arthur's arms and ankles, automatically pulling tight and knotting, binding his hands and feet behind his back.

The tall man lost his balance and crashed heavily to the floor with a loud thud.

The more he struggled, the tighter the cords got. With his hands bound behind him, he couldn't get leverage, and even his immense strength couldn't break free.

Annie, meanwhile, hid off to the side, gasping for air.

"Cough, cough, cough, cough, cough!"

Her trachea and lungs were still burning. She gulped in air desperately and coughed for a full thirty seconds before her body finally started to recover.

"You—cough," Annie looked up, "your personal terminal is bugged. There's a mole in the Interstellar Federation!"

Arthur, bound face-down on the floor, struggled a few times, then chose to lift his head and stare straight at Annie.

He said nothing, but the scent of burning metal in the room grew even stronger. Clearly, his rage had gone up another level.

Fine!

There was no reasoning with a mad dog like this. The guy's face was completely expressionless, but when it came to action, he was more ruthless than anyone.

Still, it wasn't hard to understand why Arthur was so angry: the Empire and the Federation had been at odds for ages, and Arthur Kane had been going against the Empire his entire career.

Now Annie, an Imperial, had electrocuted him and, the moment he opened his eyes, she was hacking into his system.

She wouldn't believe it either if the roles were reversed.

But she had no regrets—whose fault was it that this guy wouldn't listen to reason?

Annie strode forward. As she approached, the tall, muscular young man tracked her every move without moving a muscle.

A barking dog doesn't bite. He was silent, but Annie knew that if Arthur ever got a chance, even bound as he was, he'd take a bite out of her.

She cursed under her breath and took off her glasses.

Annie held the glasses up to Arthur's face. The latter immediately tensed, every muscle on high alert, but bound as he was, he couldn't dodge in time. Annie forced the temple piece into his ear.

Arthur took a deep breath in anger and started to speak: "You—"

But he stopped short as he saw the code displayed in the glasses.

He was a Federation agent, after all. No matter how little he liked to use his brain, he could still read basic code.

Among those lines of communication code, a monitoring signal from Twilight was scrolling clearly.

"Believe me now?" Annie said, annoyed.

When he didn't respond, she sat down directly on the floor.

Her neck still ached terribly. In just a few dozen seconds, it was probably already bruising.

"The bus I was on got stopped by soldiers at the checkpoint, and they said they were looking for Federation agents," Annie said. "I suspected your operation had been exposed, so I took the opportunity to access your comm port."

The Federation's intelligence network wasn't that easy to penetrate—otherwise they wouldn't have been able to hold out against the Empire for so long.

Clearly, Twilight had a spy inside the Interstellar Federation.

"Now," Annie said, "you've seen it with your own eyes."

She yanked her glasses off his face and put them back on: "You don't have to trust me, but at least believe that I don't want to be killed by you."

Arthur remained completely silent.

He didn't say anything, and Annie couldn't tell whether he was listening, so she kept pressing the point: "Your people can't be trusted, Mr. Kane. Your best bet right now is to cooperate with me—finish the mission and root out the Federation's mole at the same time."

Silence stretched between them.

Those blue eyes stayed fixed on Annie without moving. Then, out of nowhere, he said: "I remember you."

"...What?" Annie couldn't keep up.

"Six months ago, Alcyone, the City Star bar." Arthur said coldly.

Six months ago, Annie had been a logistics assistant. She'd accompanied a royal agent to Alcyone to provide support, and by sheer bad luck, she'd run into Arthur.

Arthur had spotted the Empire's royal agent and, of course, stepped in to intercept without a second thought.

The situation was urgent, so Annie burst out of the logistics vehicle, blended into the bar, and pretended to be a bystander while she clocked Arthur one.

She hadn't been able to stop Arthur's team from completing their sabotage mission, but at least she'd saved her own agent.

"There's no way you recognized me," Annie frowned. "I didn't show my face."

"Pheromones."

"..."

Are you a bloodhound?!

City Star was the biggest bar on the entire planet of Alcyone. There were countless Alphas and Omegas there that night, and Annie had nearly passed out from the cocktail of pheromones, yet he'd somehow memorized her scent just from that?

This was trouble, Annie thought.

She'd zapped him once six months ago, and zapped him again six months later. Of course he'd hold a grudge.

Especially since...

This guy was so quiet, she couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"I'll let you go," she tested. "We talk properly."

"Mm." Arthur's face still showed no expression.

That easy?

Annie raised an eyebrow.

"Fine." She waved her fingers subtly.

Sensing the hand signal, the cords automatically released.

Arthur Kane, who had been lying prone on the floor, exploded upward!

His movements were as swift as a leopard's. Released from the beast's restraints, his sharp blue eyes locked onto Annie again. Without a word, the tall man charged at Annie, who was still sitting on the floor—

But Annie's fingers swept out again.

The cords, which hadn't even hit the ground yet, wrapped around Arthur's hands and feet once more via their sensors.

With a loud thud, he'd barely gotten up before he was tripped right back down, bound up again.

Arthur's cold, stern expression finally cracked.

His throat worked, and his blue eyes flew wide. He glared at Annie with venom: "...Imperial dog."

Annie tilted her head.

She thought Arthur was just furious at his failed attack. But the next moment, that burning metallic smell turned scorching hot, as if guns and armor had been thrown into a furnace.

The pheromone scent exploded outward, flooding the entire room in an instant.

Not good.

Annie realized it in a flash.

Arthur's heat had arrived.