"You're watching me like I'm about to bolt." I let the sentence drag along the floorboards, a rough, low-frequency scrape that demands he look closer. "Is the big, scary Reaper worried I'm going to find a way to hijack his ship?"
"The ship would likely help you if you tried," he replies with a hint of frustration. "The neural core is becoming increasingly distracted by your presence."
He reaches out, his large hand cupping the nape of my neck, his thumb tracing the racing pulse at my jawline. The heat of his palm is overwhelming. He pulls me forward until our foreheads touch, our lips bare inches apart. The space thickens, heavy with an undeniable gravitational pull. The embedded mark aflames—a slow, rolling warmth that spreads through my chest like a second heart beat. It feels like leaning over a precipice. I want to close the gap. I can see in the molten red of his eyes that he wants to devour it.
"Nyra." He pulls back just a fraction, his breathing ragged as he fights his own instincts. "Something is changing. The way you move through the halls, the way the ship responds to your voice... it is shifting the fundamental alignment of this vessel."
“Maybe it's just bored,” I suggest, though my heart is beating like it’s trying to get out. "A thousand years is a long time to wait for a guest."
His hand stays on my neck. Neither of us moves to close the distance. Neither of us moves away. The heat of our proximity exists as a living thing, coiling tighter with every second of silence, and I realize with a cold, clear awareness that I choose to stay in this moment. I could pull back. I have pulled back before. Instead, I choose to stay.
The distinction matters. It changes everything.
He leads me toward the command console, and the shift back to practicality is almost a relief. He points to a small screenflickering with text. The text is Reaper script, but it is overlaying a blueprint of theHarrow—my old salvage ship.
"I recovered the data core from your vessel before the breach became terminal," he explains in a low, melodic rumble. "Your modifications to the atmospheric recycler are illogical. You rerouted the secondary intake through a heating coil instead of the standard filtration bypass."
I let out a sharp laugh. "Because the filtration bypass was rusted shut and if I didn't reroute, I'd have frozen to death in the Belt. It's called 'making do,' Commander. You should try it sometime. You don't always need the perfect part to make something run."
He stares at the blueprint, his eyes tracing the messy, improvised lines of my handiwork. "It is a miracle that the vessel stayed airtight."
“My own skill saved her, leaving miracles out of the equation." A strange surge of pride swells in my chest. "I knew every bolt on that ship. I knew exactly how much pressure those coils could take before they blew."
He turns to look at me, and his expression is one of genuine respect. "You possess a profound understanding of structural limits, Nyra. You find the breaking point, and you live just shy of it. It is fascinating."
"It's exhausting," I confess, and the word carries more weight than I intend.
He holds my gaze, and for a moment everything goes still. ThenVirex Primerumbles—a low, warm note that traverses through the dais, and the moment passes without breaking.
Over the next two days,the ship becomes an extension of my own body. Draevik becomes more controlled now—uniform, deliberate, precise—and focuses on me more than ever. His eyesfollow my every move as I explore the corridors he has cleared for me. He appears at my side whenever I push too hard or stay on my feet too long, as though the bond is feeding him real-time data on my fatigue levels.
Heat settles around us, sinking into the foundation of every interaction like magma under stone. When he hands me a bowl, his fingers brush mine, and the contact lingers a beat longer than it needs to. When I sit on the dais to study the Reaper script he is teaching me, he stands close enough that his arm presses against my shoulder, and the warmth of him makes the words swim on the holographic display.
I examine the silver line on my wrist, then look out at the viewport. Halvek Four and the scrap yards remain a world away, as does the girl who once spent her days stealing ration tokens. The thought should send me scrambling for the nearest airlock. It should trigger every survival instinct I have built over a lifetime of running.
Instead, I stand here and feel his presence at my back and the mechanical breathing of his ship under my feet, and I realize that the escape plans have gone quiet. They are still there—filed away deep in my mind like old schematics—but they are gathering dust. I no longer run calculations every time I pass a maintenance hatch. I no longer map ventilation routes to the hull. The shift happened so gradually that I failed to notice it until now, and the recognition sends a shiver through me—a mix of awareness and a lingering, fading loyalty to the life I knew.
I should be more afraid of that. I am not.
As we head toward the galley, K-Seven zips toward us, its blue eye whirring with a series of frantic clicks. "Commander! Nyra! Unit has optimized the nutrient cycles!" The drone puffs up its chassis with what I can only describe as pride. "After extensive analysis of Nyra's complaints regarding the stew—specifically the forty-three instances where she used the word'bland' and the twelve instances where she used language Unit is unable to repeat—Unit has synthesized a flavor profile that resembles 'spice' through a series of unauthorized chemical experiments with the galley's base amino acids."
"You kept count?" I ask, patting the drone on its chassis.
“Unit always keeps count,” K-Seven chirps. “Maintaining numerical accuracy remains essential to my sanity on this vessel.”
Draevik watches the exchange, and his features soften, the hardness of his jaw easing. His hand settles along my spine at the waist asVirex Primecarries us deeper into the unknown. Every word we speak carries heat underneath, a current that runs just below the surface of everything we say.
I glance up at him, and he is already looking at me.
I stare right back.
CHAPTER 14
DRAEVIK
The tremor starts to intensify in my left hand.
I hang around the command console in the Sanctum, scrolling through the navigation feeds, when my fingers seize on the jet-black surface. The muscles lock from knuckle to wrist, a violent contraction that sends a spike of light racing up my forearm. Flattening my palm against the stone, I press hard until the spasm passes, counting the seconds between tremor and release. Four. The last one lasted two.