Chapter 3 #2
He catches me before I hit the floor, his movements swift despite the bulk of his armor, one arm hooking beneath me with practiced efficiency.
Like he knew exactly when the drug would take hold.
Like he's done this before, too many times before.
The thought should terrify me, should send fresh panic coursing through my veins, but the sedative is already dulling the sharp edges of my fear, smoothing everything into a distant, cottony haze.
"I've got you." His voice comes from somewhere above me, filtered through the growing fog in my mind.
The words are quiet, almost intimate in a way that makes my chest tighten with something I can't name.
A promise or a threat, perhaps both at once, spoken in that same low rasp that seems to bypass my ears entirely and vibrate straight through my bones.
The same words he used before, but different now.
Softer. Almost gentle. His arm slides under my legs, lifting me as if I weigh nothing, as if I'm something precious instead of stolen property.
The armor is still cold, but there's heat beneath it, human warmth that contradicts everything I know about him.
My vision blurs. The edges go soft and dark, tunneling down to just his face. Still scarred. Still harsh. But there's something in his eyes I can't name, something that looks almost like regret.
"Why?" The word slurs. My tongue feels thick, clumsy. "Why me?"
"Because you're the only thing that can save them," he says, and I don't know who them is, don't know if I should care. "Because I don't have a choice. Because—"
He stops. Shakes his head. Starts walking.
I try to hold on to consciousness. Try to catalogue details, mark the route, memorize anything that might help me escape later. But the drug is efficient, clinical, stripping away my awareness layer by layer until all I have left is sensation.
Cold armor against my cheek. The steady rhythm of his stride. The hiss of an airlock cycling open.
New sounds. A ship. Engines humming with barely restrained power, the kind of sound that speaks to velocity and violence held in check.
Metal ramp under his boots, different pitch than station deck plating.
Darker. Everything's darker here, lit in reds and deep blues instead of the station's sterile white.
The Cerberus.
I know the name without knowing how I know it. Ships this size aren't common, and aren't legal in most sectors. This is a warship. A relic. Something that shouldn't exist in an age of treaties and diplomatic sanctions and carefully maintained peace.
My head lolls against his shoulder. I catch a glimpse of monitors as he carries me deeper into the ship, security feeds showing the station exterior. Showing the Star Deck. Showing—
Mother.
She's there. Standing in what looks like her private observation room, the one she uses for "sensitive diplomatic conversations" that I'm never invited to attend.
She's watching a feed of the airlock. Watching him carry me aboard.
Watching her daughter get abducted by one of the galaxy's most wanted men.
And she's smiling.
Not the tight, controlled smile she wears for the Council. Not the warm, fake smile she uses on me when she needs me to perform. A real smile. Satisfied. Pleased. Like a deal just closed in her favor, like she's watching a plan unfold exactly as designed.
Like she knew this was coming.
Like she'd been expecting it, planning for it, orchestrating every careful step that led to this exact moment.
The realization cuts through the sedative haze with the clarity of ice water thrown against bare skin. Sharp. Cold. Absolute. Undeniable. The kind of truth that rewrites your entire understanding of the world in a single, brutal instant.
She let him take me.
More than that. She didn't just let it happen.
She facilitated it. She made it possible.
Every security protocol I'd studied, every defense system the station maintains, every layer of protection that should have made this impossible, all of it under her direct control. All of it answerable to her authority.
And she'd simply... stepped aside. Opened the door. Invited the monster in and pointed him toward my room.
This wasn't an abduction. Not really. This was a transaction.
A deal made in shadows and sealed with my body as the contract, my agency as the price.
She gave him access to the Star Deck, to the restricted maintenance corridors, to me.
She probably disabled the security systems herself, cleared his path, and made sure no one would interfere until it was too late.
She sold me.
I want to scream. Want to fight. Want to demand answers, want to rage against the betrayal, want to do anything except lie here limp in a stranger's arms while my mother watches and smiles and the galaxy spins on without caring that everything I thought I knew just shattered.
But the drug is winning. My eyelids are too heavy. My thoughts scatter like seeds in wind.
The last thing I feel is him lowering me onto something soft. A bed, maybe. A cot. The cold armor retreats, replaced by something warmer. A blanket. Careful. Gentle. Hands that could crush me but don't.
"Sleep," he says, and his voice sounds far away now, muffled by layers of encroaching darkness. "You're safe here. I know you don't believe that. But you are."
I want to tell him he's wrong. Want to tell him I'll never be safe again, not after this, not after learning what my mother is capable of. Want to tell him that safety is an illusion, a comfort for children who still believe the people who raise them have their best interests at heart.
But the words won't come. They catch in my throat, tangled with the sedative coursing through my veins, dissolving before they can take shape on my tongue.
The darkness swallows me whole, pulling me down into depths I've never known, deeper than sleep, heavier than exhaustion. It's like sinking into earth itself, into soil and roots and the quiet spaces between growing things.
My last conscious thought isn't of him, this stranger who now owns me, this armored shadow who carries me with such careful contradiction.
It isn't of the ship around us, all metal and cold efficiency, so different from the green-filled halls I've known my entire life.
It isn't even of my own fear, though that pulses through me like a second heartbeat, steady and insistent and utterly useless against what's already been done.
No.
It's of my mother's smile.
That perfect, practiced curve of her lips as she watched me crumple.
The way it never reached her eyes. The way she stood there in her pristine robes, every inch the High Minister, every gesture calculated for maximum political impact, and didn't flinch as I fell.
Didn't reach for me. Didn't even pretend to care.
And the terrible, crushing certainty that this was always the plan settles over me like a shroud, like the final layer of soil over a grave.
Every choice she made. Every lesson she taught.
Every time she pushed me toward my work, toward perfecting my abilities, toward becoming exactly what someone like him would want.
That I was always meant to be a gift wrapped in flesh and potential, tied with DNA ribbons, presented with a bow made of all the lies she told me about love and family and the future she was building for us both.