The scent of blood was thick in the air.

It clung to the ruined remains of the battlefield, a coppery tang that mixed with the acrid stench of burning wreckage and smoldering flesh. The once-thriving settlement was reduced to a wasteland of shattered stone and broken bodies, a massacre wrought by something—or someone—far beyond human.

And in the center of it all stood a man.

Richard B. Riddick was a predator.

Everything about him spoke of a creature forged in darkness—his broad, muscled frame, the way he moved with lethal grace, the eerie silver gleam of his eyes that saw too much. He was a force of nature, a beast clothed in human flesh, and he lived for the hunt.

But this? This wasn't his kill.

He crouched low, gloved fingers brushing over a corpse still warm. The clean slice through the throat told him everything he needed to know—whoever did this was fast. Unnaturally fast.

A sound—soft, barely above a whisper—brushed against his ears, but it was enough.

His head snapped up. His muscles tensed.

A shadow flickered at the edges of his vision, a wraith-like figure dancing between the ruins. He turned, letting instinct take over, letting the primal part of him that had survived more death than most men could imagine guide him.

Then he saw him.

Riddick had seen many things in his life—things that would break lesser men, things that had turned him into the beast he was. But nothing, nothing, had ever made his breath catch like the creature standing before him.

Small.

That was his first thought. Small, but dangerous. A contradiction in every sense.

Riddick had always trusted his instincts, and right now, they screamed at him—this was no ordinary prey. This was something different.

The man—no, the creature—was draped in darkness, his wild raven hair a stark contrast to the unnatural pale glow of his skin. His features were hauntingly beautiful, too sharp, too perfect, too inhuman to belong to anything so mundane as a mortal. His lips, full and taunting, curled slightly, revealing a hint of teeth—sharp, wicked little fangs that promised pain and pleasure in equal measure.

But it was his eyes that caught Riddick's attention.

Emerald fire.

They glowed in the shadows, twin beacons of something ancient, something untamed. They studied him with an amusement that made his muscles coil, not in fear, but in anticipation.

"You're not afraid," the creature murmured, voice silken yet laced with something cold, something deadly.

Riddick smirked, rising to his full height, his own silver eyes gleaming beneath his goggles. "Should I be?"

The creature tilted his head, studying him like a cat watching a particularly interesting mouse.

"You're different," he mused. "Not prey. Not predator, either. Something…else."

Riddick took a step forward, slow and deliberate, testing. The creature didn't flinch. If anything, his lips curled higher.

A challenge.

"Name's Riddick," he said finally, voice rough like gravel.

The creature took a step closer, the air around them crackling with something thick and unseen. Power. Magic.

"I know who you are, Furyan," the creature whispered. "Your reputation precedes you."

That made Riddick pause.

He hadn't been called that in a long time. Few knew what he was. Fewer still survived after learning it.

"You got a name, too?" he asked, gaze locked onto the strange being in front of him.

A slow, almost teasing smile spread across those deadly lips. "Harry."

Just that. No last name. No titles. But something in the way he said it, the way it hung in the air, told Riddick that it was enough.

Harry.

Something about it burned itself into Riddick's mind, carving deep, embedding itself like a brand on his soul.

The hunt was over.

And Riddick knew, with an instinct as sharp as his blades, that he had found something he hadn't even known he was looking for.

His.

This creature, this deadly, hauntingly beautiful thing, belonged to him.

And he would kill anyone who tried to take him away.