Extra's Life: MILFs Won't Leave the Incubus Alone Chapter 605 600: Out of the Hole

The attack came two hours before dawn.

It did not rush the rods. It tested them. A long forelimb slid out of the fog, raked the nearest binding rod, and yanked back the second the blue light flared.

The rod held. The stone around its base cracked like a bad tooth. A second probe came higher up the wall—claws scraping for any hold that would let the thing climb instead of smash.

Aiden met that one with pure force. He drove the limb back hard enough that whatever owned it made a wet, offended noise somewhere in the fog. Selene reset the damaged rod and muttered under her breath.

"It's learning the perimeter."

"Then we don't sit here while it finishes the lesson."

They dropped the plan of waiting for clean daylight. While the creature circled again, they packed what mattered, cut the horses loose—better the animals ran than ended up as bait—and started up the least vertical stretch of canyon wall.

The climb was ugly. Loose rock, cold hands, fog thick enough that every sound from below felt twice as loud. Halfway up, the creature finally committed. It surged into the amphitheater. Rods flared one after another as it smashed through the circle.

They did not stay to watch. They hauled themselves over the rim as the first binding rod shattered behind them and kept moving across broken ground until the fog and the noise fell away.

Dawn found them on a high, wind-scoured saddle with no horses, limited water, and the waxed pouch still intact against Selene's chest. Below and behind, the canyon had gone quiet again. Ahead, the highlands stretched in a mess of knife ridges and deep cuts.

Selene sat on a flat rock, breathing hard, and checked the pouch for the tenth time. "Still have it. Still not dead. I'm starting to like this record."

Aiden dropped beside her, flexing blood back into his fingers. "Don't get attached. The day's young."

They shared the last of the dried meat and started south on foot. The land offered no trails, only game paths and the occasional old survey marker half-swallowed by lichen. By late morning they had put serious distance between themselves and the canyon.

By early afternoon they found the first sign they were not alone: a single northern lance point discarded near a cold fire scar, the metal still bright.

Selene turned it over with her boot. "They're close. And they're not being careful."

"Or they want us to know they're close." Aiden scanned the ridges. "Either way, we keep moving until we find ground that doesn't feel like a trap."

They did not stop for anything longer than a quick drink until the light began to fail. When they finally made a cold camp in a shallow rock notch, both of them were running on the last of their reserves.

The sex that night was slower, almost careful—less about defiance and more about confirming the other was still solid and warm and present. Selene straddled him, guided him in, and moved with deliberate rolls of her hips, soft sounds leaving her on every downward stroke.

Aiden kept his hands steady on her waist, eyes open, matching her pace until she shuddered and tightened around him with a quiet, drawn-out moan.

He followed soon after, holding her close while the wind moved across the highlands outside their little notch.

Afterward she rested her forehead against his. "Tomorrow we find out if the northern party is hunting the stone, the name, or us."

"Or all three," Aiden said. "I'm an optimist."

They made contact at midday.

The northern party was smaller than the tracks had suggested—six riders, mixed kit, no banners. They had seen Aiden and Selene first and chosen a narrow defile to wait. When the two of them stepped into the open, the northerners closed both ends without a word.

The leader was a woman with a pale scar across her mouth and the calm of someone who had already done the arithmetic. She looked at the pouch on Selene's chest, then at Aiden's hands, then back at Selene.

"You took something from the black stone," she said. Not a question.

Selene did not reach for a weapon. "And you're a long way from the northern roads."

"We're looking for the same thing you already found. Hand it over and you walk away. Refuse and we take it anyway."

Aiden shifted his weight just enough to feel the power coiled under his skin. "You can try."

The scarred woman smiled without humor. "We will."

The fight was short and ugly. The canyon walls limited numbers on both sides. Aiden met the first two riders with pure force, dropping one and sending the other sprawling.

Selene used the last binding rod as both focus and club, cracking a third across the temple before the line collapsed into close work.

When it ended, three northerners were down, one dead, and the scarred leader was on her knees with Aiden's hand locked around her throat and Selene's blade at her ribs.

"Talk," Selene said.

The woman spat blood and spoke. They were not cultists. They were contract scouts hired by a northern house that had felt the same disturbance in the east and wanted the name for leverage. They had no idea what the name belonged to—only that powerful people wanted it badly enough to pay in gold and silence.

Aiden and Selene traded a look. Killing the rest would be simple. Letting them go risked word spreading faster.

In the end they stripped the surviving northerners of weapons and horses, took what supplies they could use, and left them with a clear warning: follow and die.

They rode out on stolen mounts before the survivors could rethink their choices.

That night, in a high camp with actual horses and a slightly less empty food bag, the tension finally loosened enough to feel like something other than survival. Selene sat beside Aiden, shoulder to shoulder, and watched the stars.

"We just made enemies of a northern house," she said.

"We already had a monster and a prison gate. What's one more problem?"

---

Aiden woke before the light fully changed. The wind had shifted overnight and now carried a thin, dry edge that promised a clear day. He lay still for a moment, listening. The horses stamped once, then settled.

No new sounds from the ridges. Selene's breathing was even against his side. The pouch rested between them like a third body that refused to sleep.

He eased out from under the blanket and checked the mounts. Both animals were better stock than the ones they had cut loose in the canyon—stocky, sure-footed, and already used to the high air.

He found a half-full water skin and a packet of hard biscuit in one of the saddlebags. Not much, but enough to stretch the day.

Selene joined him without a word, hair still tangled from sleep. She took the biscuit he offered, broke it in half, and handed the larger piece back.

"You're being generous," she said. "Must be the stolen horses talking."

"I'm practicing for when we meet nicer people."

"Nicer people don't hire scarred women with bad attitudes and sharp steel." She chewed, swallowed, and looked south. "We need distance. Real distance. That house will send better than scouts once the survivors talk."

"Then we ride until the highlands run out of ridges."

They broke camp fast. No fire, no lingering. The stolen mounts took the first steep drop without complaint.

By mid-morning the land opened into a long tilted plain of wind-scoured stone and low scrub. Game trails crossed it like old scars. Aiden kept them to the higher ground where the view was better and the footing less likely to hide holes.

Selene rode a little ahead, scanning. Every so often she reached down and touched the pouch, as if making sure it had not decided to vanish. After the third check Aiden called up to her.

"It's still there. I can hear it complaining about the ride."

"You hear it?"

"No. But if it starts talking I'm blaming you."

She snorted. "Fair."

They made good time. The horses had strength left in them, and the clear weather helped. By early afternoon they reached a chain of low hills that offered cover and a look back the way they had come.

Nothing moved on the plain. No dust, no riders. Either the survivors had taken the warning seriously or they were moving slower than expected.

Selene dismounted at the crest of the first hill and stretched. "We stop long enough to water the horses and check the maps we took. After that we keep south until dark."

Aiden swung down and led both animals to a thin seep that had collected in a hollow of rock. The water was cold and tasted of stone. He filled both skins while Selene sorted through the captured gear.

Most of it was standard scout kit—spare bowstrings, a few packets of dried fruit, a short spyglass that still worked. One of the saddlebags held a folded scrap of parchment with rough notations in a northern hand. She spread it on a flat rock.

"They were tracking the same disturbance we felt," she said. "Marks here, here, and here. Looks like they planned to circle the canyon and wait for whoever came out."

"Lucky us."

"Lucky them, until they met us." She folded the scrap and tucked it away. "This house—whoever they are—has money and patience. That combination usually means they also have more riders on the way."

Aiden corked the second skin. "Then we don't give them a trail worth following. We cut east for half a day, then south again. Break the line."

"Agreed."

They remounted. The horses picked their way down the far side of the hills into a shallow valley where the scrub grew thicker. The air was warmer here, trapped between the slopes.

Aiden felt the power under his skin settle into a steady hum, the same low readiness that never quite left him since the black stone. He did not reach for it. There was nothing to fight yet.

Selene broke the quiet first. "You ever think about what happens when we finally use the name?"

"Every hour since we took it."

"And?"

"And I still don't know if we're going to like the answer." He glanced over. "You?"

"I think about the people who want it badly enough to hire killers. Then I think about the thing that tried to climb out of that canyon. Then I decide I like our odds better if we stay ahead of both."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I've got that doesn't keep me awake."

They rode in silence for a while after that. The valley narrowed, then opened again onto another stretch of open ground. In the distance a darker line of trees marked what might be a watercourse. Aiden pointed.

"Water and cover. We make for that before night."

Selene nodded. "And if we find more northern tracks?"

"Then we remind them why the last group is walking home."

She smiled, quick and sharp. "I'm starting to enjoy your optimism."

The trees turned out to be a thin belt of scrub pine and low willow along a rocky stream. The water ran clear and cold.

They watered the horses thoroughly, then made a careful camp higher up the bank where the ground was dry and the view open in three directions. No fire again. Cold food and the last of the stolen fruit.

As the light faded, Selene sat with her back against a boulder and cleaned the binding rod that had survived the fight. The blue light inside it had dimmed to a faint pulse. She turned it slowly in her hands.

"Last one," she said. "We burn it carefully or we lose the only edge we still have against whatever comes next."

Aiden settled beside her. "We keep it until we need it. Same as the pouch."

"And if we need both at once?"

"Then we get creative."