Chapter 14
Maya
The confinement felt like being trapped in a beautiful prison.
Twelve hours had passed since the corporate forces had established their perimeter around our Sola, and while the other lords handled tense negotiations with both the corporate teams and the Earth-Lunar Council representatives, Rykar and I were essentially under house arrest. The Sola’s chambers were comfortable enough—crystalline walls that shifted between warm amber and cool blue depending on the lighting, furniture that seemed to grow from the living walls themselves, and a viewport that showed the alien landscape stretching toward the horizon, where corporate transports sat like metal scars against the sky.
But comfort didn’t ease the anxiety gnawing at me.
I kept thinking about the legal documents the corporate team had presented, the contracts with my signature, the claims they were making about my obligation to return.
Something about their confidence bothered me—they weren’t just relying on legal technicalities.
They acted like they knew something I didn’t. Rykar had noticed this, too.
Which was why I found myself sitting cross-legged on our bedroom floor at what passed for dawn on this world, my remaining survey equipment spread around me like the components of a puzzle I’d never quite finished solving.
Rykar was still asleep, his breathing deep and even.
The sight of him relaxed in sleep, the stress lines smoothed from his face, made my chest tight with emotions I was still learning to navigate.
I forced myself to focus on the equipment.
If I was going to fight this legal battle, I needed to understand exactly what I’d signed, what I’d agreed to, and what leverage they might have.
My hands moved automatically over the familiar devices—the geological scanners, the sample analyzers, the data cores that had recorded every moment of my survey work.
It was the data cores that stopped me cold.
I’d been reviewing my original employment contract, cross-referencing it with the survey parameters I’d been given, when I noticed something odd about the file structures.
There were encrypted directories in my equipment’s memory that I didn’t remember creating.
Worse, they were tagged with access codes I’d never seen before.
My heart started pounding as I ran a deeper diagnostic. The encryption was corporate-grade, far beyond anything a simple geological survey would require. And when I managed to break through the first layer using my admin credentials, what I found made my blood turn to ice.
Mission parameters. Real mission parameters.
Locate and activate dormant Sola technology for corporate acquisition.
Subject 7-Alpha (Maya Chen) to pose as geological surveyor.
Crystalline formations detected via long-range energy signature analysis.
Probability of dormant Sola presence: 87%.
My hands were shaking as I opened file after file, each one revealing another layer of the deception that had upended my entire life.
The geological survey had been a cover story.
The “randomly selected” research site had been chosen because corporate sensors had detected energy signatures consistent with Sola technology.
And I—I had been specifically selected because my scientific background made me the perfect unknowing agent to investigate and activate whatever they found.
“No,” I whispered, but the evidence was right there in front of me.
Emails between corporate executives discussing my psychological profile, my likelihood to approach alien technology with scientific curiosity rather than caution.
Mission briefings that outlined exactly how to manipulate me into making contact with whatever dormant systems they suspected were present.
They’d known. They’d known about her all along.
The ancient Sola, sleeping alone in the dark for centuries, waiting for someone to find her, to wake her, to give her purpose again.
And I had been sent here specifically to do exactly that—not out of scientific discovery or happy accident, but as part of a calculated plan to steal her away from the Destrans.
I doubled over as nausea hit me, my stomach clenching as the full scope of my betrayal became clear.
I hadn’t just stumbled into this situation.
I had been engineered into it. Every moment of wonder I’d felt at first contact, every breakthrough in communication, every step toward the bio-fusion that now connected us—it had all been orchestrated by people who saw her not as a sentient being but as a valuable asset to be acquired.
“Maya?” Rykar’s voice was rough with sleep and concern. I heard him moving in the bed, the soft rustle of fabric as he got up. “What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t look at him. Because how could I explain that everything we’d built together, everything we’d discovered, was rooted in my participation in a corporate conspiracy? How could I tell him that I’d been the instrument of a theft that was still ongoing?
His feet appeared in my peripheral vision, bare and silent on the smooth floor. He knelt beside me, and I felt the warmth of his presence like a physical thing.
“Maya, talk to me. What is it?”
“I helped them.” The words came out strangled, barely audible. “Fuck, Rykar, I helped them.”
“Helped who? The corporate forces? Maya, you’ve been fighting them since they arrived—”
“Before.” Complete sentences were a challenge just then. I forced myself to look at him, to see the confusion and concern in those silver-blue eyes that matched the crystal formations outside. “Before I got here.”
“What?” He shook his head. “I’m not following.”
I gestured at the data scattered around me, the evidence of my unwitting complicity. “It was never a geological survey. They knew about her. They detected energy signatures from orbit and they sent me to activate her so they could steal her.”
Rykar went very still. I watched his expression shift as he processed what I was telling him, watched understanding dawn, followed by something that might have been anger.
“You’re saying they knew about the Sola before you arrived.”
“Yes.” The word was barely a whisper. “They’ve been planning this for months, maybe longer. The crystalline formations weren’t a coincidence—they were breadcrumbs leading me exactly where they wanted me to go. And I followed them perfectly.”
I pulled up one of the files, pointing to a schematic that showed the sector where I’d first made contact with the ancient Sola.
“Look at this. They had topographical data that pinpointed her location. They knew she was there, Rykar. They knew she was dormant and alone, and they sent me to wake her up so they could take her.”
Rykar was quiet for a long moment, studying the data with the same careful attention he brought to navigation charts. When he finally spoke, his voice was controlled, but I could hear the tight anger underneath.
“They used you.”
“I let them use me.” The guilt was a physical weight in my chest, making it hard to breathe. “I was so proud of my scientific approach, my careful methodology. I thought I was being so careful, so ethical in how I made first contact. But all along I was just following their script.”
“Maya—”
“I awakened her so they could take her.” The confession tore out of me like a physical thing, leaving me raw and shaking.
“She was dying alone in the dark for centuries, and instead of saving her, I doomed her to become some corporate asset. I’m the reason they’re here. I’m the reason she’s in danger.”
Rykar’s hands settled on my shoulders, warm and steady. “Look at me.”
I couldn’t. The shame was too overwhelming.
“Maya.” His voice turned hard. “Look at me.”
I raised my gaze to his. His face was serious, but there was no accusation there, no judgment. Just that steady intensity that had drawn me to him from the beginning.
“You saved her,” he said quietly. “You didn’t doom her. You saved her.”
“How can you say that? If I hadn’t activated her systems—”
“If you hadn’t activated her systems, she would still be alone in the dark.” His voice was gentle but implacable. “She was failing, Maya. Her systems would have eventually shut down one by one.”
“But now—”
“Now she’s alive. Now she has purpose. Now she has a bond with not just one, but two people who care about her welfare, who fight for her autonomy.
” His hands moved to cup my face, thumbs brushing away tears I didn’t realize had been flowing.
“They may have manipulated you into finding her, but they couldn’t manipulate what happened after.
They couldn’t control the connection you built with her, or the way you’ve protected her interests, or the fact that you and I are bonded mates. ”
I wanted to believe him, but the guilt was a crushing weight. “I was supposed to be a scientist. I was supposed to be objective, careful, ethical. Instead I was just a tool in someone else’s scheme.”
“Being used doesn’t make you complicit,” Rykar said firmly.
“You made every decision based on the information you had at the time. You approached first contact with respect and caution. You prioritized her wellbeing over your own safety. The fact that someone else had a hidden agenda doesn’t invalidate the choices you made. ”
“But if I had been more careful, if I had questioned the mission parameters more thoroughly—”
“Then they would have sent someone else. Someone who might not have cared about treating her as a sentient being rather than a piece of technology.” His thumbs continued their gentle movement across my cheekbones.
“Maya, do you really think anyone else would have fought as hard as you have to protect her? Do you think a different surveyor would have refused extraction, would have requested asylum, would have bonded with her on terms of mutual respect rather than dominance?”