[A/N:There is time difference between the original show, things happen slowly. Also, MC is not focused on romance now, he is focused on survival and he trying to create a foundation for top leaders like Clarke, Bellamy...etc. Also, the whole Transcend Race thing is not something I can go with, but I will include other movies or shows like Predator or something else to fill the gap. You can suggest some of them. Also, this is a harem.]
The heavy, humid air of the forest forced the group to take a brief rest.
Finn, entirely incapable of sitting still, immediately wandered off toward a game trail to investigate some tracks, completely oblivious to the ticking clock in Clarke's head.
A few yards away, Jasper, Monty, and Octavia were lounging in the shade of a massive fern, laughing about something trivial.
But Clarke wasn't resting. She was sitting on a fallen, moss-draped log, frantically studying her weathered paper map. Her fingers dug fiercely into her temples. She was visibly exhausted, her shoulders hunched as if she were physically trying to carry the weight of three thousand suffocating people on the Ark.
Aleksander watched her for a moment from the edge of the clearing. He didn't say anything at first. He just moved with that quiet, fluid grace, closing the distance and taking a seat on the log beside her. He unscrewed the cap of his metal water canteen and pressed the cool steel directly against her flushed cheek.
Clarke jolted with a sharp gasp, her head snapping up. She let out a ragged sigh as the cold metal drew the heat from her skin, her tense shoulders dropping just a fraction as she took the canteen from him.
"We're losing daylight," Clarke muttered, her eyes dropping immediately back to the map. "If we don't make the ridge by sunset—"
Aleksander gently but firmly pulled the parchment out of her hands. Before she could protest, he folded it neatly and tucked it into the inner pocket of his jacket. "We'll make the ridge. But you aren't going to do anyone any good if you pass out from exhaustion first."
Clarke stared at her empty hands, the exhaustion finally bleeding into her voice, cracking it slightly. "They aren't taking this seriously, Alex. None of them. Finn treats this like a vacation, Bellamy's playing dictator... If we don't find that food, everyone dies."
"Hey." Aleksander reached out, hooking a single finger under her chin and gently forcing her to look up at him.
His dark, glamoured eyes locked onto hers, and the gaze was intense, incredibly focused, and utterly grounding. Aleksander's primary focus right now wasn't romance—it was survival. He was meticulously laying the foundation for a partnership, making sure the strongest person in this camp didn't shatter under the pressure.
"You aren't doing this alone," he told her, his voice quiet but carrying absolute certainty. "I didn't throw my life away to come down here just to watch you work yourself into an early grave."
Clarke swallowed hard. "Someone has to be in charge. Someone has to keep them alive."
"And who keeps you alive, Clarke?"
He reached up, his thumb lightly brushing a streak of dirt and ash off her cheekbone. The touch was familiar, deeply rooted in years of childhood friendship on the Ark, but out here on the ground, it was suddenly charged with a heavy, magnetic tension.
For Aleksander, it was a promise of protection. But for Clarke, the touch sent a sudden, electric shock straight to her chest.
She looked at him—really looked at him. The quiet, aloof prodigy she had grown up with was gone. In his place was someone entirely different. He was calm, lethal, and radiating a raw, ancient authority that had brought John Murphy to his knees and forced Bellamy Blake to back down. He was a fixed point in a world that was spinning violently out of control.
Clarke's breath hitched. A heavy, unfamiliar flutter erupted in her stomach, and she realized with sudden, terrifying clarity that she was falling for him. Hard.
"You don't have to wear the crown every second of the day," Aleksander murmured, his thumb lingering for just a second longer against her skin. "Lean on me. Let me carry it for a while."
Clarke took a shaky breath, leaning infinitesimally into his hand before he pulled it away. A small, genuine smile finally broke through her exhaustion. "You always were stubborn."
Aleksander offered a faint, devastating smirk. "Only when it comes to you. Now drink your water, Griffin. Before I have to carry you up that mountain myself."
Clarke held his gaze for a second longer, the heavy burden on her shoulders suddenly feeling entirely manageable, before she lifted the canteen and drank.
Soon time came they started moving and the sound of rushing water cut through the dense forest long before they saw it. They pushed through a final, thick wall of brush and stumbled out onto the rocky bank of a wide, fast-moving river. The water was crystal clear, cutting through a gorge of mossy rocks and ancient trees.
While the others immediately gravitated toward the water, Aleksander stopped dead at the edge of the tree line. His boots sank slightly into the damp, loamy soil.
Underneath his glamoured brown eyes, his irises flared a bright, warning green. His Fey empathy, which had been buzzing with the low, chaotic hum of insects and small wildlife for the last three miles, suddenly hit a wall of absolute, suffocating silence.
Clarke noticed him stop. "What is it?"
Aleksander knelt down, his fingers brushing against a massive, smooth groove pressed deep into the muddy bank. It wasn't a footprint. It looked like something incredibly heavy had been dragged into the water.
"The ambient noise just dropped to zero," Aleksander murmured, his eyes scanning the opposite bank. "No birds. No insects. Nothing. Something apex claims this territory."
He stood up, wiping the mud from his fingers. "Stay on the rocks. I'm going downstream to check the perimeter. Don't get in the water."
He melted into the dense brush before Clarke could even reply, moving with that unsettling, silent speed.
But Octavia, riding the absolute high of her first day of freedom, wasn't about to listen to a perimeter warning. With a wild, exhilarated laugh, she ran to the edge of the bank. She unbuttoned her pants, kicking them off without a care in the world, leaving her in just her undergarments and jacket.
Jasper's jaw practically hit the rocks. "Oh, damn, I love Earth."
Monty's eyes went wide. "Oh! Holy…"
Finn just grinned, throwing his hands up in the air. "Ha ha!"
"Hoo hoo hoo," Jasper cheered, practically vibrating with excitement as the rest of the boys began shedding their heavy Ark jackets.
Clarke scrambled over the rocks, map in hand, looking horrified at the absolute lack of caution. "Octavia, what the hell are you doing?"
Octavia ignored her entirely. She leaped off the rocky ledge into the current below.
Splash.
"Octavia!" Monty yelled, suddenly realizing the danger. "We can't swim!" None of the hundred had ever seen a body of water larger than a hydroponics tank, let alone knew how to tread in it.
Octavia popped up a second later, wiping water from her eyes and laughing brightly. The water barely reached her waist. "I know, but we can stand. Ha ha ha!"
Clarke frowned, looking rapidly between her map and the rushing water. "Wait. There's not supposed to be a river here."
Finn unbuttoned his shirt, offering Clarke a wicked, challenging grin. "Well, there is. So take off your damn clothes."
He was about to jump in when Jasper, who had been staring appreciatively at Octavia, suddenly went rigid. The playful grin slid off his face, replaced by pure, visceral terror. A massive, serpentine shadow was rapidly winding its way through the shallows, kicking up a trail of silt directly toward Octavia.
"Oh…" Jasper choked out, pointing a trembling finger. "Octavia, get out of the water! Get out of the water now!"
Octavia stopped laughing. She looked down just as the water around her boiled.
"Aah!"
The massive river snake breached, its mutated jaws clamping down on her leg. It yanked her violently beneath the surface.
"Octavia!" Jasper screamed, scrambling forward to the edge of the bank.
She breached a few yards downriver, thrashing desperately and gasping for air. "Aah! Aah!"
Monty backed up in sheer panic, grabbing his hair. "What the hell is that? We have to help her. What are you gonna do?"
Finn grabbed a heavy tree branch from the bank, his face pale but determined. "Try not to get eaten."
"No. Wait," Clarke shouted, her mind racing for a tactical solution. She ran to the edge, grabbing a massive, heavy boulder. "If we distract it, it might let her go. Help me!"
She, Monty, and Finn hauled the rock to the ledge, preparing to hurl it into the water to draw the creature's attention.
But Aleksander hearing the noise came back running didn't wait for rocks.
While the others panicked, his hand slipped smoothly into the deep inner pocket of his jacket. The pocket was enchanted with an undetectable spatial expansion charm—a complex piece of magic he had carved into the fabric months ago. His fingers wrapped around cold, familiar steel, withdrawing two blades that physically shouldn't have fit inside the coat.
They were karambits. The wicked, crescent-shaped blades were perfectly forged, ending in ergonomic rings that slipped securely over his index fingers. They were small, designed for brutal, close-quarters lethality, allowing him to spin them and switch grips with blinding speed.
Aleksander launched himself off the rocky ledge, diving seamlessly into the turbulent water.
The cold hit him instantly, but the Phoenix fire in his veins flared, keeping his muscles perfectly loose and his mind razor-sharp. The river snake was massive, easily twenty feet of mutated, armored muscle and scales, dragging Octavia toward the deeper channel.
Aleksander closed the distance with terrifying, unnatural speed, cutting through the current like a torpedo. He breached the surface right beside the thrashing monster.
Sensing the disturbance, the snake hissed, a second set of mutated gills flaring as it released Octavia's leg to snap at this new, sudden threat.
It was a fatal mistake.
Aleksander spun his right karambit into a reverse grip. As the snake lunged, he sidestepped in the waist-deep water, his Fey reflexes making the massive predator look like it was moving in slow motion. With a brutal, fluid upward strike, he drove the right blade directly under the creature's jaw, severing its primary arteries.
The monster shrieked, thrashing wildly. Without missing a single beat, Aleksander fluidly hooked the finger ring of his left karambit, shifted his grip, and slammed the second curved blade straight down into the top of the snake's skull. The reinforced steel crunched through bone and brain matter, pinning the creature's head deep into the shallow riverbed.
The massive body convulsed violently, splashing river water high into the air, and then went completely, eerily still. A dark cloud of blood began to wash downstream.