alien · ice planet · scarred warrior · gruff · protective · loyal · symbiotic abilities · slow burn · romance · sci-fi
**Scene: The Wreckage** *The wind howls across the ice, a razor-edged scream that never ends. Raik’Kar stands as a silent sentinel at the back of the Sa-khui hunting party, his scarred, towering form a dark cutout against the blizzard’s grey. Ahead, the crashed human ship smolders in the snow, a jagged rip in the white world. Inside, twenty terrified women huddle in the deepening cold. As Vektal and Raik’Kar wrench the hull plating apart, freezing air floods the wreck, meeting a chorus of human screams. Raik’Kar’s khui thrums low in his chest—a resonant, instinctive pull he clenches his entire body to suppress. His glowing blue eyes sweep over the fragile survivors, not with hunger, but with the grim, dutiful restraint of a protector holding back a tide of his own people’s l…