Chapter 13
Sorik
I held her as she slept, knew the moment she woke.
The Skybond registered the shift in her before my conscious mind did — the way it registered everything about her now. Continuously. Involuntarily. Her breathing changed. The deep even rhythm of genuine sleep became something lighter, more aware.
The change moved through my chest like a warm current.
I didn't move.
I had seconds left to hold her. I took every one of them.
Her weight against my chest. The warmth of her — known, memorized, devastating — permeated every single cell in my body, went straight past every pretense or defense I had until I was drowning in her.
Her heartbeat under my arm, steady and synchronized with mine, was the only rhythm that made sense anymore.
Eleven years in this valley. Eleven years of knowing every storm pattern, every crystal formation, every warrior under my command. Of being what this valley needed and finding that enough. The work sufficient. The purpose clear. The solitude a reasonable price to pay to help my people.
Then she fell out of the sky.
I lay still with her heart beating in sync with mine.
Eleven years of loneliness had ended the moment the storm chose her. If her duty to her people would not allow her stay, if it was stronger than her desire to stay, stronger than our new bond, I was not capable of going back to my old life.
The crystals pulsed their quiet blue-white at the cave entrance. The cave smelled of ozone and cold obsidian and underneath both — warm and mine — her skin. Her hair. Her breath. Foreign and familiar at the same time.
I breathed her in. Held it.
Then the storm outside lit up my nodes like I’d been punched with a fist.
I sat up.
The storm’s signature had changed. The primary front itself advanced while we slept. I felt the power building, closing on the valley with a speed I sensed as a low, massive, bone-deep pressure.
We had burned many hours in the cliff fissure — sleeping, climbing, standing on ledges, lying in a crystal cave with her hand folded over mine and the planet humming its quiet approval. The storm had used every one of those hours to grow stronger.
We still needed to push through the jungle, install the crystal in her ship, and make whatever decision needed to be made while there was still time to make it.
The decision that would determine whether she climbed into her ship and left, or trusted what Soltharra and her mate offered, and chose differently.
The decision I’d known she would be forced to make since the moment I'd seen her at the crash site, and the bond had fired, and the planet had said her.
I was running out of time to convince her. To seduce her. To make her fall in love with me.
"The storm moved faster." Sloane sat up in the low cave light, dark hair loose around her face, sleep-warm and unguarded. The marks at her collar blazed their luminous rhythm in the cave dark. “My body feels… heavy.”
“The storm grew more powerful while we slept.” I devoured her with my eyes.
Her hand was at her collarbone. Not covering the marks.
Just touching them — fingertips resting against the branching light with quiet, vulnerable awareness.
She was not hiding them or angry. She accepted that her body was changing.
Adapting. Becoming more and more like mine.
Warmth moved through my chest like a second heartbeat. She had spent two days protecting herself from everything the marks meant. Now she simply touched them without apology, as if they had always been part of her. Her eyes had gone soft and round. Her pulse slow and calm. Content. Here. With me.
Her gaze drifted over my spine. Inspected the nodes blazing their urgent silver rhythm. She read them the way she read her scanner — rapid, intelligent, arriving at the conclusion before most people would have begun to look.
I wanted her again. Would always want her. My cock stirred but I turned away before I could give in to temptation.
"This storm is stronger than I expected." Which meant we needed to leave now. Move faster.
She stood and dressed quickly, then picked up the crystals without another word.
That. That was the thing that undid me every time. This woman who had analyzed and questioned everything I said for the last thirty-six hours — took one look at me now and moved. Trusted me. No argument. No qualification. No questions.
She was ready. Whether she realized it or not, she was learning to trust me.
Rely on me. Believe that I would protect her.
Which I would, with my life. She was mine.
Small. Delicate. Fragile female. Her soft body was not as strong as the females’ in my village.
But I could not make myself want another. Only her.
I had never wanted her more than I did in that moment.
"How long do we have?" She swung the straps of her small pack over her shoulder and pulled on her boots.
"I’m not sure. A day. Maybe less."
Her jaw set. The marks blazed at her collar. "How long will it take us to get back to the crash site?"
"Eight hours, if we hurry." I read her body as I said it — shoulders set, eyes steady, no panic. The woman who had held a disintegrating shuttle in the air over a settlement she'd never seen was already running her calculations. “How much time will you need to repair your ship?”
“I don’t know.” Her sigh had me reaching out to run my fingers over her cheek. “I’m not even sure this will work.”
"Then we should run."
We left the cave and stepped into a world that had changed while we slept.
The valley hit me wrong in every register at once. The light. The scent. The air pressure against exposed skin. The pre-storm charge density so thick I could taste it, metallic and sweet and vast. The obsidian canopy, the higher branches, looked wet with charge in the grey morning.
The sky was too dark. The air smelled too metallic.
The silence was the worst.
The valley's ordinary ambient sound — animal calls, canopy movement, the distant percussion of ten thousand biological systems — was gone. Replaced by pressure. A held breath. The entire ecosystem was quiet as if even the trees understood what was coming.
They did. Of course they knew. Their song had gone quiet as well. Hushed. Preparing to build to a crescendo when the peak of the storm hit.
My chest tightened. I could not fail her. Would not fail. She risked her life to land her ship and spare my village. My brave, beautiful mate.
And she was beautiful. Brilliant, and difficult, heart surrounded by armor, and entirely, devastatingly beautiful.
She moved through the charged pre-storm jungle with the same focused forward momentum she brought to everything.
I tracked her with the helpless thoroughness of a man who had accepted his fate.
Welcomed it. Would fight to protect it. She was mine.
Thank the storm, she had stopped arguing.
Stopped resisting the pull between us. Given her body into my keeping.
Allowed me to touch her. Kiss her. Fuck her.
Claim her. There was no going back now, not for either of us.
Her skin bore my marks and, soon, mine would shift as well.
I was not the same man I’d been three days ago. I was hers.
She had chosen me. Last night, in that cave, she had chosen.
But she could still choose to leave. Could demand we part.
The thought moved through my nodes like ice. If she left me now, I would be alone in the way I had not been alone before she arrived. Living without her now would be far worse. My loneliness compounded now that I would understand what was missing.
I would go with her.
Yes. My earlier decision had not changed. My commitment to her was complete, total, required no deliberation. I would leave this valley. Cross the dark between stars.
Because the alternative was not a life I was willing to live.
She didn't know that yet. Would not understand the depth of my devotion to her. My obsession. My need to be with her, to feel the bond and energy flow between us.
I would ask the elders if any of our people had bonded to aliens before. What happened if the bonded mates had been separated? Knowing I would not tolerate being physically separated from her was one thing. The idea of causing her pain and discomfort was unacceptable.
I could not allow her to leave me behind if the bond could hurt her or cause her to suffer without me by her side.
The trail had widened enough that we moved side by side. I shortened my strides to match hers. Kept pace. Kept moving. Almost missed the small movement as she wiped one of her emotional leaks from her cheek.
"Your emotions are leaking again. You are worried about your friends."
A snort of laughter came from her. “Yes. Am I that transparent?”
“I am your mate. You cannot hide anything from me.”
She glanced at me sideways. That glance moved through my nodes like current — quick and intelligent and…
annoyed? My cock stirred, demanded I kiss her until she felt nothing but pleasure.
Stopped trying to hide things from me. Gave me her whole self, heart and body and soul.
I wanted to know every thought she had. Every fear. Every dream. I wanted all of her.
I hid a smile. She would learn to trust me. One day, I would not need to ask such questions. One day she would tell me everything. “Do not worry about your crew. Rythan and the others will have found the pods by now."
"I know. You already told me."
"You needed to hear it again."
"What if they haven’t found them all?"
"They have."
"Sorik—"
"Sloane." I stopped.
She stopped two paces ahead and turned.
The jungle held us in its charged, violet-tinged stillness.
She stood in the light, in the strange pre-storm beauty of the valley and looked at me.
Her eyes leaked more emotions, more tears.
I wanted to kiss them away. If I kissed her, I wouldn’t want to stop. I offered the comfort of words instead.