Chapter 27
“Come with me.”
Ember looked up from the financial projections scattered across her desk, dark circles visible beneath her eyes. She’d been at it since dawn—Rykan knew because he’d woken to find the bed empty and cold beside him, her scent already hours old on the sheets.
“I can’t. The quarterly review is in three days and I still haven’t—”
“The quarterly review will still be there in a few hours.” He crossed to the desk and plucked the stylus from her fingers, setting it carefully aside. “You haven’t left this tower in two weeks.”
“That’s not true. I went to the manufacturing facility on Tuesday.”
“For a board inspection. That doesn’t count.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but he was already pulling her to her feet. Her body swayed slightly—exhaustion or surprise—and he steadied her with a hand at her waist.
“Rykan, I really should—”
“You should eat something that isn’t served cold at your desk. You should breathe air that doesn’t smell like recycled climate control.” He let his thumb trace a small circle against her hip. “You should remember why you’re fighting so hard to keep this company.”
Something in her expression softened. The tension around her mouth eased, and for a moment she looked less like the formidable Duvain heir and more like the woman who’d kissed him in the snow.
“Where are we going?”
“Does it matter?”
A smile flickered at the corner of her lips. “I suppose not.”
He gave her a moment to change, then led her out through the private lift, bypassing the main floors where her presence would inevitably trigger a cascade of interruptions.
The guards at the private entrance straightened as they passed, and he gave them a brief nod before guiding her out through the door and into the chaos of Port Cantor.
He’d already ordered them to follow at a discreet distance, but he didn’t want her to know.
The sound and color of the city surrounded them, along with a thousand overlapping scents, all fighting for dominance in the narrow streets that branched away from Duvain Tower’s pristine plaza.
After two weeks confined to the sterile corridors of corporate power, the sensory assault was almost overwhelming.
Her hand tightened on his arm.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine.” He forced his beast to settle, to categorize rather than react. Food vendors. Machinery. Human sweat and alien spices and the sharp chemical tang of hover-transport exhaust. Beneath it all, her sweet familiar scent anchored him to the present moment. “Where do you want to go?”
“You kidnapped me. Shouldn’t you have a plan?”
“I planned the kidnapping. The rest is improvisation.”
She gave him a startled laugh. It transformed her face, wiping away the strain of the past weeks, and something in his chest loosened at the sound.
They walked without direction, letting the flow of foot traffic carry them away from the tower’s gleaming shadow.
The simpler clothes she’d chosen let her blend with the crowd.
Without the diamonds and the severe hairstyle, she could have been any young female enjoying an afternoon in the market district.
My young female.
The possessiveness of the thought should have unsettled him. Instead, it settled into his bones like truth.
“I used to come here sometimes with my father,” she said as they entered the sprawling chaos of the central market.
Stalls crowded against each other in cheerful disorder, their awnings a patchwork of faded colors, their wares spilling out onto the walkways in defiance of any municipal planning.
“Before he decided I was too fragile for crowds.”
“You remember it?”
“Bits and pieces. The colors. The noise. He bought me honeyed nuts from a vendor who had a pet bird on his shoulder,” she said softly, lost in her memories. “I wonder if that stall is still here.”
He guided her deeper into the market, watchful without being obvious about it.
Old habits died hard. He tracked the movement of bodies around them, noted the exits, assessed potential threats with the automatic attention of long training.
But he also made himself look—really look—at the world Ember had grown up in.
The stalls sold everything imaginable. Fabrics in jewel tones, their surfaces shimmering with embedded light-threads.
Food from a dozen different worlds, the aromas mingling into something simultaneously appetizing and bewildering.
Tech components and hand-crafted jewelry and live plants in sealed atmosphere globes.
A chaos of commerce that somehow worked, each vendor’s territory clearly understood despite the apparent disorder.
“This way.” She tugged him towards a corner stall, her face brightening. “I know this place.”
The vendor was elderly, his skin weathered to the texture of old leather, but his eyes were sharp as he watched them approach. A mechanical bird—not the same one from her childhood, surely, but similar enough—clicked and whirred on a perch beside his display of roasted nuts and candied fruits.
“Two bags of the honey-spiced,” she said, already reaching for her credit chip.
The old man’s gaze lingered on her face. “You look familiar, miss.”
“I have one of those faces.”
“Mmm.” He handed over the bags, his weathered fingers brushing hers. “Enjoy your day.”
They moved on as she pressed one of the warm bags into his hands. The nuts were sweet and sharp with spices he didn’t recognize, each bite releasing a small burst of heat on his tongue.
“Good?”
“Strange.” He took another one anyway. “But good.”
She laughed again, that same startled sound, and he realized how rarely he’d heard it in the past two weeks. The tower had swallowed her joy along with her time, demanding everything she had to give and then demanding more.
She needed this, he thought. We both did.
They wandered for nearly an hour, stopping when something caught Ember’s interest, moving on when the crowd grew too thick.
She showed him the fountain where she’d thrown coins as a child, making wishes she no longer remembered.
She pointed out the building that had once housed her favorite bookshop, now converted into something called a “sensory experience lounge.” She bought them both cups of something called kava from a stall run by an elderly couple who argued good-naturedly about the proper brewing temperature.
He watched her come alive. The tension bled from her shoulders. The lines around her eyes smoothed. She smiled easily, laughed often, and looked at him with an openness that made his beast purr with satisfaction.
This is what I’m protecting, he realized. Not just her life. This. Her joy.
They were examining a display of hand-carved wooden figures—alien designs that she said reminded her of something from an ancient text—when the scent hit him.
Vultor. Male. Familiar.
He went still, every muscle locking into alertness. He automatically reached for her wrist and drew her closer.
“What is it?”
“Someone I know.” He scanned the crowd, searching for the source. “Or knew.”
The crowd parted and the Vultor emerged.
He was larger than Rykan, but only marginally, with the broad shoulders and long limbs characteristic of their kind.
His dark hair was cropped close to his skull in a warrior’s cut, and silver scars traced patterns across his exposed forearms. His eyes were amber rather than gold, and they widened with recognition the moment they landed on him.
“Well.” The voice was low, rough. “Look what the mountains dragged down.”
“Baylin.”
The name tumbled out before he could stop it, carrying with it a flood of memories he’d spent years trying to bury. Training matches in the dawn light. Hunting runs through the mountain forests. The silent understanding of two warriors who knew each other’s movements as well as their own.
Baylin had been his second. His closest friend. The one who’d offered to leave with him when everything fell apart.
“The pack needs you,” he’d told him instead. “Stay. Keep them safe from my brother’s weakness.”
Baylin had stayed. And he had walked into the mountains alone.
Now they stood facing each other in a Port Cantor market, surrounded by humans who had no idea what they were witnessing. The recognition between them was palpable, heavy with years and distance and everything that had gone unspoken.
“I thought you were dead,” Baylin said finally. “When you didn’t come back. When no one heard anything for years. I thought the mountains had finally taken you.”
“They tried.”
Baylin’s gaze shifted to Ember, and his expression flickered. Curiosity. Assessment. The careful evaluation of a warrior measuring a potential threat.
“And who’s this?”
She had tensed beside him, uncertain of her role in this unexpected reunion. He tightened his grip on her wrist—not restraining, but reassuring—and met Baylin’s eyes squarely.
“My mate.”
The words hung in the air between them. Baylin’s brows rose, and something that might have been amusement flickered across his scarred features.
“Your mate.” He tilted his head, studying her with renewed interest. “A human?”
“Does that matter?”
“No.” Baylin’s voice was thoughtful. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.” He inclined his head towards her in a gesture of respect that surprised him. “I am Baylin. I had the honor of serving as your mate’s second, in another life.”
Her gaze flicked to Rykan, and he could see the questions forming behind her eyes. But she simply nodded, her composure flawless.
“I’m Ember. It’s a pleasure to meet someone from Rykan’s past.”
“I imagine there’s much he hasn’t told you,” Baylin said dryly. “He was never one for words.”
“He’s mentioned a few things.”
“The broad strokes, I’m sure. Never the details.” Baylin looked at him again, his expression shifting to something more serious. “We should talk. Properly.”
He hesitated. The market wasn’t the place for this conversation—too public, too exposed. But Ember deserved to know who Baylin was and why his sudden appearance mattered.