Chapter 11
ELLA
The hull screams like it’s mourning its own death.
The sound is metal dragged across the void, low and keening, and it cuts straight through the bones of the wreck. One second we’re lying still, curled up beside the heat coil that’s keeping our blood from freezing in our veins. The next—we’re sprinting for the breach.
A blast panel didn’t seal right. Could’ve been stress fracturing. Could’ve been sabotage from the initial boarding. Doesn’t matter. What matters is the vacuum whistling through a twenty-centimeter tear just aft of the medbay bulkhead. A quarter of our stored oxygen—gone in sixty seconds.
Takhiss reacts first. He always does.
His body slams against the hull like a battering ram, scales flexing as he jams the emergency weld sealant into the tear.
The hiss of plasma glue fills the space.
My eyes burn. I slap my palm over the emergency override to re-engage the atmosphere processor, but the readouts are already flashing red.
I can’t breathe.
Not just from the drop in pressure. From the fear.
I meet his eyes. “We’re under the threshold.”
He grunts, voice low and calm. “I know.”
“We don’t have enough.”
“I know.”
I want to scream at him. Hit him. Cry. But I just swallow and shove the panic down where the rest of the bad decisions live. “What now?”
“Now,” he says, dragging a dead medtech’s gear locker open, “we build a scrubber.”
It sounds so simple, the way he says it. Like he’s asking me to boil water, not defy entropy in a shattered tomb in space.
But I help. Because I always do.
We cobble together coils from the auxiliary medbay, old ventilator hosing, and three O2 filters I pulled out of a sealed storage unit behind the morgue.
I rewire a pressure stabilizer to act as a cycle timer.
Takhiss hauls the power couplings like they weigh nothing, even though each one has to be forty kilos.
We work side by side, not talking. There’s no time for words. Just survival.
The moment we flip the switch, the system kicks to life with a sick little wheeze.
It works. Barely.
Thin air creeps into the room, sharp and sterile. Like licking a scalpel. It doesn’t smell like hope. It smells like waiting to die a little slower.
I slump against the bulkhead. My head swims.
He doesn’t look much better. Even with his physiology, I can see the tension in his jaw, the twitch of his tail like he’s suppressing a fight response he can’t aim at anything.
A minute passes.
Then five.
Then ten.
I start giggling.
It bubbles up out of nowhere, this ridiculous, high-pitched laugh like I’ve just heard the funniest joke in the universe. I slap a hand over my mouth to stifle it, but it doesn’t stop.
Takhiss turns toward me, brow furrowed. “Ella?”
“I don’t know why I’m laughing,” I wheeze, shaking. “I just—do you realize we’re running a scrubber off a dead guy’s respirator? That’s not engineering. That’s grave robbing with extra steps.”
He doesn’t answer.
I start crying.
It’s not gentle or pretty. It’s raw, snot-and-sobs crying, and I hate it. Hate that he’s seeing me like this, small and cracked open and terrified. I slide down the wall and curl in on myself.
A shadow falls over me.
Then his arms.
Warm. Strong. Careful.
He doesn’t say a word. Just kneels and wraps me against his chest like I’m made of something breakable. His scales are cool under my cheek. His heartbeat is a slow, steady drum that drowns out the panic.
“Breathe,” he murmurs. “Just breathe with me.”
I do.
It takes time, but I do.
My fingers curl into the rough weave of his under-armor. His claws stroke lightly down my spine. Every pass leaves shivers in its wake. Not fear. Not anymore.
Gratitude.
Relief.
Something deeper.
Later, we lie together near the heat coil again. The emergency lights strobe dim and red against the walls, casting long shadows. I’m in his lap, cradled like a secret. His tail coils around my ankle without thinking.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
He doesn’t hesitate. “So am I.”
It’s the most honest thing I’ve heard since the world ended.
I tilt my head, looking up at him. His face is unreadable, all sharp lines and shadows, but his eyes burn like coals banked in ash. He’s watching me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear.
He brushes a claw along my cheek. Not hard. Not possessive. Just… soft.
Intimate.
“Why haven’t you kissed me?” I ask.
He stiffens. Breath catches. But he doesn’t pull away.
“Because you’re still choosing,” he says. “And I want it to be a choice.”