All Chapters of His Contractual Luna: Bought by the Beast: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

For thirty-six hours, the subterranean laboratory became a pressure cooker of high-tech alchemy and raw, grinding exhaustion.The air was thick with the bitter, sharp scent of vaporized silver and scorched ozone. Agnes’s fingers were raw, the delicate tips stained a deep, permanent cobalt from handling the volatile liquid moonstone primer. On the central workbench, under the magnifying gaze of a holographic projector, lay the skeletal chassis of Rhys’s new combat wraps.They looked like beautiful, lethal armor. Woven from thousands of microscopic carbon-fiber threads, the wraps were laced with a highly complex web of raw, uncut moonstone filaments. Agnes had spent the entire night hand-soldering each micro-filament to a centralized bio-sensor array—the brain of the kinetic-reabsorption weave."If the alignment is off by even a single micron, the energy loop will backfire," Agnes muttered, her eyes bloodshot as she peered through her magnifying visor. She carefully threaded the last si

The private VTOL roared through the storm-tossed clouds of the corporate sector, slicing toward the shimmering glass skyscrapers of the High Spires. Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was suffocatingly tense. The mechanical hum of the engines rattled the titanium floorboards beneath Agnes’s boots as she worked frantically under the dim LED cabin lights, running the final software calibration on Rhys’s moonstone wraps.Rhys sat directly across from her, his massive chest still sheening with sweat from the lab battle. The dark leather jacket he had thrown on did little to conceal the raw, coiled power of his shoulders. His hazel-blue eyes were fixed entirely on her hands, tracking the precise, delicate movements of her cobalt-stained fingers as she adjusted the microscopic receiver nodes on his left wrist."The core frequency is locked," Agnes murmured, her voice tight with exhaustion as she tapped a final command into her portable diagnostic datapad. She looked up, meeting his heavy, int

"Get down!" Rhys roared.Before the words had even fully left his throat, his massive hand slammed into Agnes’s shoulder, driving her hard against the concrete floor. At the same instant, he lunged sideways, his heavy boot catching Marcus Vance square in the chest. The force of the kick sent the gaunt doctor flying backward, tumbling behind the thick, reinforced steel landing gear of the idling VTOL.A split second later, a high-velocity plasma round hissed through the air.The superheated bolt struck the exact patch of concrete where Marcus had been standing, vaporizing the stone in a blinding flash of white light and showering the hangar in a spray of molten slag. The sharp, metallic scent of scorched rock and ionized air instantly filled the space.Spit. Spit.Two more silent, suppressed rounds punched into the floor, tracing a lethal line toward where Agnes was scrambling to her feet."Sniper! Catwalk, North-East!" Agnes yelled, her eyes tracking the trajectory of the thermal dist

The salt-heavy wind off the Moonhaven Coast slammed into the side of the VTOL the moment the side hatch hissed open. Rain fell in thick, horizontal sheets, turning the black sand of the desolate beach into a freezing, waterlogged slurry. Two miles up the coastline, the jagged silhouette of the abandoned salt-crushing refinery rose against the dark horizon like the ribcage of a dead leviathan, illuminated only by the faint, rhythmic sweep of a distant coastal lighthouse.Agnes pulled her high-collared waterproof coat tightly around her throat, her boots sinking two inches into the wet sand as she stepped off the landing ramp.Beside her, Rhys was a shadowy pillar of raw, unyielding mass. He didn't seem to notice the freezing rain plunging down from the storm-clouds. His dark hood was pulled low over his face, but his hazel-blue eyes were sharp, scanning the treeline and the crashing surf for any sign of Council patrols. On his left arm, beneath the dark fabric of his tactical sleeve, t

The flooded vault became a killing floor in the span of a single heartbeat.Seawater poured through the breached eastern manifold in a violent, foaming torrent, swiftly rising past Agnes’s ankles. The cold water hissed as it splashed against Rhys’s boots, vaporizing into white steam the moment it touched the blazing, superheated light radiating from the Apex Core on his chest.The lead Council herald didn't wait to marvel at the impossible sight of an activated primal relic. He raised his heavy plasma rifle, his visor tracking the high-voltage energy signatures spiking across Rhys’s neural pathways."Fire!" the herald barked.Two heavy, blue-white plasma bolts tore through the rising mist, humming with enough concentrated heat to punch clean through a light tank's forward armor.Rhys didn't dodge. He didn't even raise his arms to cover his face.He simply stepped forward, taking the full impact of both plasma rounds square in the center of his chest.Agnes gasped, her hands flying tow