"Release her!" he roars, the command echoing in the alien tongue of the Reapers, coming out as a snarl of absolute authority. The bioluminescence around us flickers and dies, leaving only the amber sheen of his skin to light the dark.
Virex Primegroans, a low, sub-vocal tremor of protest. The panel progressively, reluctantly, recedes. My arm falls free, and my body follows, slipping out of the vent.
I expect to hit the hard bio-mat floor. But I never hit the ground. Instead, Draevik catches me.
His hands are massive, wrapping around my torso with a grip that is terrifyingly strong and strangely delicate. He hauls me against his chest, his breathing heavy and ragged. He exudes a heat that burns with furnace-like intensity. His hearts are thundering against my back, two distinct, powerful frequencies.
He is shaking.
The High Commander is palpitating with a tension so thick I can taste it. He drags me away from the vent, handling me roughly, his movements jerky with a frantic, contradictory care. He supports my neck, his fingers brushing against my skin with a lightness that contradicts the fury in his eyes. He is checking my vitals, his large hands moving over my body.
"You foolish, small creature," he growls, but the words sound like a sob.
He looks at my arm, at the mangled, bleeding mess the ship made of my wrist. His features are drawn so hard I hear bone creak. The expression on his face looks to be disproportionate, confusing protectiveness. Anger is absent over my attempt to escape. Fury is absent over my breaking into his archives and seeing the secrets of his past.
He is furious that I am hurt.
He holds me tighter, his large palm pressing against my shoulder as if he were shielding me from the very ship he commands. I look up at him through the haze of my tears, and I observe the mask failing. His gaze excludes prisoner classification, excludes battery assessment, and excludes leverage utility. His gaze on me holds a weight that suggests nothing else in the universe matters.
The realization hits me harder than the pain in my arm. I broke into his archives. I tried to run. I triggered a security breach that could have compromised the entire ship. And he says nothing about any of it. No interrogation, no restraint. He cradles my wrist like the blood on my skin is the only emergency in the universe. Something fractures in the constructed wall around my perception of him. The damage resists repair. This exceeds strategy. This is beyond control. A man prioritizing my survival over every parameter of his engineered logic.
He stands there, a bronze giant in a sea of blazing violet light, holding a bleeding scavenger as if she were the only thing left in the galaxy worth saving. He looks down at the blood on his hands—my blood—and his eyes widen with a sudden, sharp clarity. He is choosing me over the mission.
"Stay with me, Nyra," he pleads, the sound so soft I almost miss it over the noise of the ship.
I try to speak, but the words are caught in my throat. I can only lean into him, my head resting against the hard muscle of his chest. The smell of him—ozone and ancient spice—is what keeps me grounded.
I see a male who fears being alone in the dark. "Draevik..." I choke out, the name a heavy weight in my throat.
He simply turns and begins to carry me back toward the Sanctum, his strides long and urgent, his gaze never leaving my face. He only looks at me, his eyes glossy with an intensity that promises the stars will fall before he lets go. He ignoresthe maintenance shaft. He ignores K-Seven, who follows us in a silent, hovering panic.
The weight of him—his heat, his strength—is overwhelming. I want to lean into the warmth. I want to understand why a High Commander would risk his ship for a girl with a pulse-welder and a mountain of debt. As the doors to the Sanctum hiss open, I realize the rules have changed. The hunter takes his prey—and chooses to keep it safe from the world.
As the dais takes the weight, the scavenger fades, leaving only the one responsible for teaching a ghost how to live.
CHAPTER 12
DRAEVIK
Her blood is on my hands. I silence the frantic, discordant howl of proximity alarms in my mind with a mental snarl, focusing entirely on the weight of her broken little body against my chest.
Nyra looks like a small, broken thing against my chest. Her deep brown skin turns ashen, a greyish hue, as the rich warmth of her complexion drains away where the blood leaks out. Her scent—a sharp, intoxicating mix of grease, spice, and fear—saturates the air with the metallic tang of copper. My dual hearts hammer in a frantic, echoing rhythm that feels like they could split my sternum. I lay her down on one of the dais of the Sanctum, my hands trembling with a primal, electric instability.
As a High Commander, I have led legions into the maw of dying stars. I have held the line against entire fleets. Yet, as I glance down at the gash on her wrist, I feel the raw, terrifying weight of her mortality.
"Stabilize the atmospheric pressure." The directive flows from my mind into the ship's circuitry, bypassing the air entirely to pulse through the deck plates beneath my boots. "Increase oxygen saturation by four percent. Initialize the Sanctum’s localized medical field."
The ship’s interface responds immediately, the violet light in the walls gleaming in time with my agitation."Acknowledged, Commander. Atmospheric pressure stabilizing. Prisoner's blood pressure is critically low. Oxygen saturation adjusting to requested parameters. Medical field initializing."
Reaching into the recessed compartment beneath the dais, I retrieve an airtight canister ofSovereign Weave—a bio-synthetic lattice of nanites suspended in a numbing, nutrient-rich gel. I have used this to patch warriors on the front lines, knitting muscle and bone back together so they could immediately return to the slaughter. Using it on a human is risky; their biology is fragile, their cellular walls like wet parchment compared to the fortified structure of my people.
My fingers, thick and calloused from centuries of war, move with a forced, painful deliberation. I press the canister's nozzle and spray a thick layer of the iridescent gel over the wound. The nanites instantly ignite. A soft, cool cerulean tinge emanates from the gel, tiny sparks of silver-blue light dancing as the lattice begins to weave itself into her flesh. Nyra gasps, her back arching off the dais.
"Easy." I let the reassurance roll out in a thick, subterranean growl, the kind that settles in the marrow of the bone. I place my hand over her shoulder, pinning her gently to the black stone. "TheWeaveis aggressive. It is rewriting the damage. Breathe, Nyra. Let the medicine work."
Watching the wound close, the shredded skin pulls together until only a faint, silver line remains. But theWeavegoes beyond the surface. I can see the faint hue sinking deeper, chasing the damage through the layers of muscle and tendon, reknitting what the ship's teeth shredded beneath the skin. She whimpers, her fingers curling against the obsidian, and I flatten my palm against her forearm to hold it in place.
"The deep tissue is rebuilding," I murmur, more to myself than to her. "The nerve dampeners will take hold soon. You will not feel the worst of it."