The super alpha saw them.
It rose slowly to its feet, not with the aggressive fast reaction of a normal roller, but with the slow patient rising of a creature that had time. It regarded the three of them with what Bruce could only read as consideration. Was this worth its effort? Were these three hunters a threat, or a meal?
It decided they were a meal.
It curled, slowly, deliberately, the folding of the spine-blades and the drawing-in of the legs, into the tightest most complete curl Bruce had yet seen from a roller. The whole body became a compact sphere of layered dark spine-blades, and Bruce could see immediately that its armor was significantly more complete than the smaller alphas. There was no visible gap between plates. The curl was seamless.
It launched.
The roll was faster than the two-core alpha's had been.
