Hello there everyone this is XenaHime53 and I welcome you to the next chapter of Hard Fall. While you continue on from this point, please remember that it is rated M for Mature audiences on and E for Explicit on here for a reason. Please take this to heart because it will only increase from here. Thank you for taking the time to read this as well as your comments, favorites and follows. It will also be updated on Fanfiction if you follow me on there. Thank you.

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They say most of your brain shuts down in cryosleep. All but the primitive side… the animal side. He mentally chuckled at his very own thoughts as he reflected on how most of the people nowadays, from distant shores and planets, abandoned their own chemical makeup to fit into the puzzle that made up society. It was both amusing and frustrating to bare witness the sight of people from different background suppress themselves for what they chose not to understand. He himself couldn't do so, physically couldn't, but even if he did have a choice he would stay exactly the way he was. The primitive side over ruled every other part of him, he intertwined with the animal within him so much, tangled within one another, that he couldn't part from it. He never claimed he was like most people, fate herself agreed with that statement from the very moment he was let out of the womb. It made him strong of course, learning to survive at such a young age but that didn't mean that fate wasn't a bitch. She was just a someone else that didn't count on him becoming as comfortable in his role as the criminal grew to be. Typical.

With blood tainted hands and all. If he could smirk around the bit that outwardly showed the animal he was within him, the man would have laughed. There wasn't a person dead or alive that didn't know the name 'Riddick' - Alpha, escaped convict, murderer - and he favored to keep it that way. The only thing that sucked about all of it were the heats. Sure there were always the woman that didn't care more than helping him during that time, but Richard knew that it would be vastly different with an omega of his own to lay claim upon. It shouldn't matter anyway, for he had not felt the mating pull that tied his tattered soul to another. Whatever race he came from, mated for life and Riddick couldn't help be somewhat resigned to the possibility that his mate had died long ago. He still had mixed feelings about that even after all thirty years of life that had gone by. Riddick knew that he shouldn't feel so damn lost without someone that he had never even laid eyes on but... On one hand, he enjoyed the very fact that there would be someone solely his but on the other what kind of life could he give her whilst on the run from mercs?

Look at him now, for instance. He was being transported with civilians like some dog that was locked in a cage, a rabid one that had to go several planets over just to get some 'medicine' that would cure the disease that made him who he was. Pathetic. It was kind of like caging a dangerous animal and then trying your hand at taming it. He thought he heard an Arab accent before whilst the civilians were boarding; the voice was male that clung to the scents of musk and expensive cloth, covering skin that was touched by water in the middle of the forehead. In his cryosleep the water had trickled down his face from it's original point, Riddick senses immediately cataloged. Holy man? The water from his forehead, slowly mixing seamlessly with the sweat that was collecting at his brow, could have been holy water. It was indistinguishable from ordinary water. Even after it was 'blessed', the very thing that made it special as the belief that it was.

He is probably on his way to New Mecca, the light fucking capital of Helion Prime. Now, all I have to do is get out of this lock box, figure and what route and… accommodate it. Riddick thought with great amusement, after all he was the only one that was wake right now and it was like taking candy from a baby. Actually, scratch that. Easier than taking candy from a baby, at least with this I wouldn't have to deal with all that incessant crying.

To add to the Holy man and the children that accompanied him on this journey, there was only one woman close enough for him to detect her scent among the many others on board, even the little stowaway in the back; the woman's beta scent definitely feminine but overall overlapping that of her mate. The sweat and leather from what seemed to especially come from their jacket, boots and toolbelt stung at Riddick's nose for a moment before his heightened senses adjusted. Definitely prospector type. Free settlers… and I betcha they only take the back roads. Lucky me, could prove to be not so lucky for them.

My real problem though is Johns, blue-eyed devil. Merc that thinks I will be the payload that sets him up for retirement. He wouldn't have even caught me if he hadn't threatened a kid at bullet point. He doesn't quite grasp that when I escape, he is the first head that I am going to sever… question is, is it going to be the one connected to his shoulders first? If the prospector couples' scents stung his nose, it was nothing compared to the Johns' purely made up of sweat and chemicals. Riddick's nose twitched in disgust, even as the animal within him stood at attention after scenting it's chosen prey. Drug fiend. He's taking me to a slam, kinda wish him luck on choosing one that I haven't yet broken out of. Heh. This time though he chose a ghost line, close to no traffic for Johns' prized vessel, the Hunter Gratzner. Probably thinks that in doing so, he would be able to keep the bounty for himself. It's also the only plausible reason why Johns willingly got into a cryosleep container in the first place.

There would be a greater distance between stops… and an even greater chance of something going wrong.

It was less than a half an hour when it happened, about ten minutes after Riddick solidified his plan in his mind; they were all in the path of a meteor shower, the rocks that were showering down upon them drilled holes in the ship. Not everyone came out unscathed. Blood, the criminal immediately scented the copper in the air, coming from the head of the Hunter Gratzner. Captain's dead, fellas. All hands on deck. It changed his plans, but didn't hinder really hinder them; so Riddick forced himself to just hang there in the cryosleep container like a wild animal that bid on time. Johns was even so kind as to put a warning label on it: with the 'NO EARLY RELEASE' warning etched on the glass in big, black block letters. Two unsuspecting passengers fell out of their cryo containers, one right after the other. Johns, who apparently fell on someone else, actually asked the person, "Why did I fall on you?"

If Riddick could, he would have laughed right in that moment. Though that amusement was accompanied by rage, for someone as stupid as Johns shouldn't have been able to catch him in the first place. Damn his soft spot for kids.

"He's dead…" A woman with a sort of masculine hinted voice spoke up with shock from underneath of him - wouldn't be the first time, I'm sure - before she elaborated with heavy breath puffing off her lips, "Captain's dead. I was looking right at him." Right at him, huh? Must be the co-captain, how else would she have earned that spot? Not a smart one either because if she was there when the Captain died and she is indeed the co-captain, then what stopped her from redirecting the vessel to safety? Could either prove to be interesting or otherwise, only time would decide… if she survives that is.

When what she said was finally registered, Johns pulled himself up and together the two of them scrambled to the pilot's cabin; with Riddick's hearing following them the entire way.

Interesting, he decided on after he heard her claim that she wouldn't die 'for these people'. She said, "I gotta drop more load. I tried everything else. I still got no horizon." Apparently even if you spent your own life in civilization, proper grammar is null and void in a time of crisis. As is morals, funny. Called it murder last time I checked.

"Company says we are responsible for every single one of those people." A man spoke then in protest, while Johns shifted nervously in his seat. The merc spent too damn long trying to catch him and he wasn't going to let him die until the paid amount was in his grubby little hands, before going straight into his favorite vein. After that happened, Johns could care less. For appearances sake though, he needed to act like a good cop with that obvious disappointing radiating from his scent. Typical. As if he would ever give a rat's ass about anything more than a payload.

"What? We both die out of sheer fucking nobility?" The woman, Fry he heard her last name to be, argued back. Again, how. fucking. humorous. Oh, she could claim it was to save her own life, the two words 'self preservation' aimed to help her sleep at night - but that didn't stop the emotionless thought that Johns was right next to her. Surviving is what Riddick did best, and he would do so even if the sole reason right now was to kill one William J. Johns.

I'll make sure of it.

The landing was rough, obviously something that the resident co-captain wasn't trained for; yet it still made Riddick wonder where the hell she got her piloting license. Nevertheless, it worked out to be in his favor. Due to the damage that was inflicted on the ship during the landing on what was sure to be the closest planet available, the repercussion jolted the heavy glass that held him. The movements shattered the container from the outside in, the mental image of that lovely warning label shattering as well gave his moonlit eyes a glint of satisfaction behind the blindfold. In what seemed to be no time at all, he got out of the chains that previously had bound him and he knew with primal satisfaction that the rough landing that caused his container to break… was also going to be the very same thing that concealed it.

With his black goggles in one hand and the bit that Johns put on him fit for an animal clutched in the other, Riddick worked his jaw muscles to get it feeling right again. When that was done, the criminal couldn't help but form a smirk from his place deep within the the shadows that currently shrouded him.

Child's play, Johns… Child's play.

When the ride stopped, Riddick made a swift exit out of the Hunter Gratzner; covering his eyes from the blinding sun with his body shaking with laughter. His exit turned out to be a hole indented in the side of the spacecraft, one that could fit three of his bulking size. He just firmly placed his black goggles, scoped out the area for high ground, made it up and over a sand dune before Riddick finally felt the beast stir within his chest. Awareness seeped into him and he wasn't quite sure what it actually was from, until naught a minute later that within the sky a wormhole of darkened blue and violet swirled open. Falling was a feminine, dark haired figure that was being dumped here, the landing point not six feet from him if he calculations were correct. He shouldn't have cared other than curiosity, but the stirring within his chest increased dramatically. It was with pause that he finally understood what it was, and as he rushed forward to catch her before she seriously hurt herself… Riddick hoped that he would be able to catch her. That she wouldn't be some broken doll that was left in the sand.

She was the one that finally invoked the pull within him.

His mate had finally crossed his path.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope that you like it so far! :)