Chapter 14 NADINE #2
He'd said I brought balance to him. I'd seen the change in his aura.
The gold bleeding through the shadow. If I allowed that premise—if I accepted that this bond stabilized him—then it stood to reason it worked in both directions.
Maybe the part of me that dissected everything into cold equations had been compensating.
Maybe I'd been imbalanced too. The thought irritated me.
But it also intrigued me.
Which made it a dangerous combination.
For now, the bond—the attraction—was… under review.
Acknowledging chemistry did not equal surrender.
Exploring connection did not equal submission.
Working with him did not mean trusting him blindly.
It meant strategy. It meant survival. And if I were being brutally honest—it also meant curiosity.
As much as I hated to admit it, he fascinated me.
Infuriatingly. Relentlessly. Like a theorem that refused to resolve.
I told my ovaries, which were on board solely based on the memory of the kiss and the promise of it, to shut up. I was making a choice based on the available data.
A provisional one. He was on probation. But in the interest of science—and perhaps something more complicated—I was willing to move forward. For now.
Feeling better and lighter, I turned away from the window and activated the palmtop Dravok had grudgingly allowed me to keep.
"Show me the last anomaly sweep," I murmured.
The device responded instantly, projecting layered data into the air in front of me. Gravitational fluctuations. Temporal shear. Background radiation spikes that shouldn't exist in the absence of massive stellar events. My eyes moved over the incidents.
There.
I leaned closer, my fingers moved instinctively through the display, isolating a repeating pattern I'd noticed before but hadn't had context for.
"This wasn't random. It's not noise." I mumbled into the empty room.
It was modulation. Something was tuning the environment around the Dark Abyss. Not enough to be detected by standard scans. Just enough to destabilize perception, to make observers dismiss what they were seeing.
Clever. And familiar.
"Talk to me," I mumbled, half to the data, half to the universe. "What are you hiding?"
"You won't find it that way." Dravok's voice came from behind me, low and irritatingly composed.
I spun around. "Do you enjoy sneaking up on people, or is that just a professional hazard?"
"A necessity," he replied. "And you're wrong."
I crossed my arms. "About?"
"You're looking for a signature," he said. "There isn't one."
"That's impossible."
His mouth curved faintly. "So you keep telling me."
I stepped aside, gesturing sharply at the hovering data. "Look. These fluctuations, they are phased. Not chaotic. Someone is shaping the environment."
"Yes," he agreed. "But not by leaving fingerprints."
I narrowed my eyes. "Then how?"
"By resonance," he said. "The Abyss doesn't impose itself. It harmonizes."
The word sent a chill through me.
"Harmonizes with what?"
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he stepped closer to the display. His presence altered the room in subtle ways I was trying very hard not to notice. His aura—dark red threaded with black—shifted as he focused, and the gold flecks flared briefly.
"With minds," his voice was so close, it felt like a gentle breeze against my skin. "With expectation. With hunger."
I swallowed, forcing myself not to think of an alternative version of the meaning of his words. "That's not science."
"No," he agreed calmly. "It's a pattern."
I hated that he was right.
"Fine," I said. "Pattern it is. Help me translate this."
On a whim, I pulled up several of Nythor's ramblings from a list I had started making, overlaying them with the anomaly data. Streams of fragmented thought spilled across the display, meaningless at first glance.
Dravok watched me work in silence.
Minutes passed. Maybe more.
Then—
"There," I cried sharply. "That sequence repeats every time the background radiation spikes.
" Dravok leaned in. Too close. I was painfully aware of the heat of him, the way my skin responded before my brain could object.
Focus, Nadine. "That's not environmental interference," I shook my head with my eyes still locked on the data. "And it's not random."
Dravok angled his head. "Then what is it?"
I exhaled. "It's Nythor. Not a warning, at least not intentionally. More like… leakage. A constraint he doesn't realize he's imposing."
He frowned. "Explain."
"His mind is fractured," I said. "But parts of it are still performing functions. Pattern recognition. Boundary setting. He's not telling you where to go; he's telling you where not to push too hard. When proximity spikes, the signal destabilizes."
Dravok's jaw tightened. "He never learned subtlety."
"He learned something," I shot back. "You just weren't listening for it this way."
Something flickered in his eyes. It wasn't anger. It was something sharper. Something deeper: Respect. The silence stretched between us, charged and precarious.
"You should rest," he suggested after a minute.
I laughed, sharp and humorless. "You kidnapped me, dragged me into a cosmic conspiracy, and now you want me to nap?"
"I want you functional."
I met his gaze, heart thudding. "Then stop underestimating me."
For a long moment, we stared at each other, the air between us humming like a live wire.
"Fine," he agreed at last. "Show me what else you see."
I lifted a hand between us, holding up two fingers. "A couple of things first." His brow arched. Of course it did. And of course, it looked sexy as hell. "Food and clothes. I need both."
A pause. Then, infuriatingly calm: "Food, I can do now."
He turned without waiting for my response, already moving towards the door, which, of course, opened for him, insufferable man, then he walked down the corridor like the ship belonged to his stride, which, apparently, it did.
I followed, still irritated, still wired, still very aware of him in that way I was trying not to be. And still very hungry.
The kitchen was not a kitchen. It was a recessed alcove that flowed out of the wall as we approached, surfaces unfolding like origami guided by invisible hands.
Panels slid open, revealing interfaces that shimmered with soft light.
No burners. No refrigerator. No recognizable appliances.
Instead, a central platform pulsed once as Dravok placed his palm against it.
"State preference," the ship intoned, not aloud, but directly into my head. Not invasive, just… present.
I flinched. "It talks?"
"It listens," Dravok corrected. "Most of the time."
Figures.
I cleared my throat. "Protein. Carbs. Something warm. And coffee. Real coffee, if that exists in your terrifyingly advanced universe."
His mouth twitched. "It exists."
The platform brightened. Molecules rearranged themselves with unsettling elegance; light bent as matter condensed.
A moment later, a tray rose smoothly from the surface: a bowl of something that smelled like spiced grains and roasted vegetables, a piece of seared protein that made my stomach growl in betrayal, and—miracle of miracles—a steaming mug of dark liquid that smelled exactly like salvation.
I stared at it. "If this is a trick—"
"It's coffee," he assured me. "Drink."
I did. And nearly groaned.
"Oh my god," I muttered. "That's unfair."
He watched me over the rim of his own cup, amusement flickering openly now. "You humans are very attached to stimulants."
"You'd be too if your species had invented deadlines," I shot back, already halfway through the bowl.
The tension eased, just a fraction. Not gone. Never gone. But manageable. When I'd eaten enough to feel human again, he nodded toward the corridor. "As for clothes and the other necessities you mentioned earlier, we'll order them and have them delivered here."
"Good," relief rushed through me. "Because I refuse to wear mysterious alien loungewear for the rest of my life."
He handed me the palmtop as we walked. The interface shifted instantly, recognizing my touch, opening into a sprawling marketplace that made look like a garage sale.
"Oh," I said, delighted. "Oh, this is dangerous."
He stopped, arms crossing. "Pick what you need."
"Need," I echoed, already scrolling. "Sure."
I did not pick what I needed. I picked everything.
Clothes, actual clothes. Dresses that flowed like liquid light.
Boots with adaptive gravity soles. Jackets woven with temperature-regulating fibers.
Undergarments that promised biometric comfort optimization, which I did not want to think about too hard.
I added skin-care modules—nanite-infused facial rejuvenators, dermal hydration veils, something called a stellar resonance massager that claimed to reduce cellular fatigue by harmonizing with local spacetime curvature.
Absolute essentials.
I had to hold up the palmtop once, and it measured me, head to toe.
I kept going.
Hair tools. Portable hygiene fields. A compact personal AI assistant shaped like a bracelet. A sleep cocoon. A personal atmospheric adjuster. Three different kinds of fabric cleanser because I did not trust alien dirt.
I glanced up at him, smug. "You're going to regret this."
He leaned against the bulkhead, watching me with naked amusement. "You should know," he smiled mildly, "that if you think you can make me let you go by spending too much, you're mistaken."
I snorted. "Oh, I don't know. This is a lot."
"I don't use credits." He was unbothered. "My resources are functionally infinite."
I blinked. "That's… gross."
"You could spend the rest of eternity shopping," he added, eyes flicking back to the screen, "and it would change nothing."
I smiled sweetly and added two more dresses.
"Worth a try," I decided.
He huffed—actually huffed—and pushed off the wall. "When you're finished bankrupting no one, come find me."