Chapter 13 #2
"I have protected this valley for eleven years. My warriors know every pattern this storm system produces. Every stormglass tree. Every trail. I know what my warriors are capable of. Every single one of your crew, your friends, will be found and kept safe. I promise. Trust me.”
The marks at her collar pulsed. Mine answered.
I watched her analyze my expression — the certainty, the urgency, the thing I wasn’t even trying to hide—my devotion to her. I watched her see it. Recognize it. Watched her make a decision.
"Okay. I trust you.”
“Thank you.” I could no more resist her than stop my heart from beating. I took two short steps, lifted my hands to either side of her face and kissed her. Soft. Slow. Lingering. She melted against me and I deepened the kiss. Hungered for her. Needed more.
Would always need more.
I tore my lips from hers and touched my forehead to hers. “We need to keep moving.”
With a quick nod, she stepped out of reach and took off at a jog. We didn’t stop for hours, the storm filling our bodies with the energy we needed to keep a quick pace.
She sprinted. The ground came apart under our feet the way it only did when there was no option but forward. Every ounce of attention focused on the next step, the next hold, the next breath. The burn in my legs I registered and set aside. Then I noticed something else.
She was not slowing down.
She had crashed two days ago. Climbed a towering cliff face in a pre-surge atmosphere.
Survived a crystal discharge. Spent all night in my arms, coming apart, putting herself back together so I could make her lose control again.
She had spent hours clinging to a narrow ledge.
Now she ran through the jungle at a pace most of my warriors would have found demanding.
She was not tiring. If anything, she was gaining speed. Faster. Stronger. Her pace relentless.
She hadn’t noticed yet. She believed she was running on pure will and determination, too focused on getting to the crash site to notice that the exhaustion she should have felt, wasn't there.
That the injuries that should have slowed her, hadn't.
That something in her physiology had shifted overnight — not from rest, but from our bond, this planet, running its current through her nervous system, changing her while she slept against my chest.
I had taken this power for granted my entire life. The planetary energy that ran through my nodes and into my reserves. The stamina of a man whose body drew on something larger than itself. The healing that happened faster than biology accounted for.
I had never thought of it as a gift.
I thought it now.
Watching her run. Watching the marks blaze. Watching a woman who had fallen out of the sky drawing on the same reserves I drew on, her body already learning the language of it — stronger and faster and more vital than she had been two days ago.
The Skybond had done this. The planet had looked at her, said mine, had not waited for her agreement before beginning the work of transforming her, making her truly part of my world.
Something moved through my chest I had no name for. Pride was too small. Wonder was closer. Gratitude.
She must have picked up on my thoughts. She stopped so abruptly I nearly ran into her.
She stood with one hand pressed flat against the nearest tree trunk. Eyes unfocused. Head slightly tilted — the listening posture I recognized from when she turned her thoughts inward. Not reading external data. Reading herself.
"Are you in pain? Do you need rest?"
"No." A slow headshake. "I can feel — the charge in this tree. Through my palm."
My entire body went completely still. I did not want to frighten her with the truth, that she was no longer human.
I had known this was possible. I had not known it would happen this quickly.
"They’re talking to each other." She had gone quiet.
Her voice barely above a whisper. The voice she used when she didn't have the answers yet, when she was forced back to raw data. She smiled, the joy on her face made me forget my own name. "The trees are talking and I can hear them. I know what they’re saying.”
I could not speak.
I stood in the charged pre-storm jungle and watched her feel the lifeforce of Soltharra move through her hand.
The nodes along my spine fired in slow, massive waves.
Not the urgent silver of threat assessment.
Not the warm current of the bond. Something deeper.
Something that felt like the valley exhaling.
Like it had been waiting for this, for her, like I had.
"I felt the ground humming last night in the cave.
" She turned to look at me. Eyes dark and wide and open in a way that stripped everything back — scientist and fear and wonder all present simultaneously, none of them managing the others.
"I thought I felt your nodes through the Skybond.
But it's not just you, is it?" Her palm pressed more firmly against the bark.
"It's all of it. I can feel the whole network. I can feel the—"
"Life."
"Yes." Barely a whisper. "It’s everywhere."
I looked at her hand against the tree. At the faint luminescence where her palm met the bark — the same blue-white frequency as the root network, the same pulse as the valley's own electromagnetic language.
Her nervous system reaching out, connecting with the stormglass trees, the ground, eavesdropping on the planet's conversation.
The planet speaking to her.
The elders had documented the effects of the Skybond. The slow, patient work of the bond integrating two nervous systems into one shared electrical relationship with the planet. With the storm. But everything I’d been taught said it could take months or years.
"Sorik." Her eyes on mine were enormous. Wonder and terror and the raw undefended look of a person standing at the edge of knowing something that could not be unknown. "Has this ever happened to another human?”
"I don’t know."
"But something is happening to me." She bit her lower lip. Took a deep breath. “I’m not going crazy. Right? You hear the trees, too?”
"Yes." Simple. Absolute. I could not lie to my mate. Would not. “I believe you are becoming what I am. Your body is changing.”
She stared at her hand against the bark. At the luminescence where her palm met the tree. Her eyes closed. She held still. “Is it safe? How does it happen? Am I infected with a pathogen? A symbiotic life form? Nanotechnology? How is this happening?”
“I don’t know the mechanism. I only know you will feel the storm, as I do. You will be able to read the energy all around you. The heartbeat of Soltharra. The storms building. You will feel the connection to your mate. To me." I knew what she was feeling. Had felt it my entire life.
"Yes." One word. Barely sound. The admission of a woman who had spent two days naming everything as mechanism and stimulus and response, finally standing in front of something she could not hide from. The storm was inside her now. Part of her.
"Is this happening to me because of the Skybond? Or because I am here, on your planet?” She looked at me, head tilted at an angle I found irresistible. I wanted to kiss her again. Didn’t dare. “Is this happening to the rest of my crew?”
"I do not know. I suspect, if it happens to them, the process will be slower. But you are my mate."
Three seconds of silence. Each second contained a different kind of reckoning.
I watched them move across her face — the scientist, the engineer, the woman who had been carrying herself alone for a very long time.
Finally, the mate who had cried out as she came riding my cock.
Each version of her arrived at the same conclusion.
She was mine. Our bond was permanent. Something that could not be undone.
Then she took her hand from the tree. Chin up. Eyes on the direction of the crash site. She set her face toward it with an expression I recognized. Strength. Raw determination.
She was not running from our bond. She was, however, filing it away, ignoring the storm building between us until her ship was repaired and her people, and mine, were safe.