Chapter Twenty-eight #3
I gave her time to take me, one careful movement after another, until the tension left her body and her hips rose to meet mine. The sound she made against my mouth stripped the last coherent thought from my head.
There was no lesson after that. We found our rhythm together.
Avena was a quick study, of course, and learned what drew pleasure from me, using it without mercy.
I learned how her breathing changed before she moved, where to touch her when the intensity became too much, and how quickly too much became not enough.
The cabin filled with the soft collisions of breath and skin. Her light moved over both of us now, pink and gold spilling across my chest wherever she held me and flickering against the walls. I kissed her throat, her shoulders, every place I could reach without letting distance return between us.
“Declan.” My name broke in her voice.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
She had me, too. Her legs tightened around me, pulling me deeper into the choice we had made.
I stopped thinking about glass above my face, procedures and the Dominion counting seconds outside our door in the ‘real’ world.
For those moments, no one owned either of us and this place was as real as it got.
Pleasure overtook her in a rush of white-gold light.
Avena arched beneath me and held on, my name lost against my shoulder.
The sight of her surrendering control because she trusted me undid what remained of mine.
I followed with my face buried against her neck, holding her while the cabin dissolved into brightness.
For a while neither of us moved. Her heartbeat slowed beneath my palm. Mine took longer.
Avena brushed damp hair from my forehead. “Your historical reproductive method is extremely inefficient.”
“You complaining?” I wheezed.
Pink shimmered lazily beneath her skin. “No.”
I kissed her, slower now. “Good.”
We did not dress. We stayed tangled together while the sharp edge of desire eased into something I could survive. Her fingers traced my spine. Mine followed the bands of light over her skin. Nothing about what waited outside the cabin had changed, but this belonged to us now.
Whatever happened when we woke, this choice had belonged to us alone.
The cabin shifted hard enough that I rolled from the bed and caught the table with both hands.
Avena sat up. Her light snapped blue-white.
“What is it?”
“I do not know.”
“—Serath. Consciousness verification required.”
It came through the ceiling, the walls and the table under my hands. Not Avena’s voice. Not Vaeron’s.
The technician.
Avena’s image flickered.
“They’re waking you,” I said.
“Secondary review may be calling me in.”
“How long?”
“I cannot determine—”
Her hand went translucent inside mine and returned.
Every instinct I had shouted to hold on to her tighter. I couldn’t let her go. Not now.
“We need a decision,” she said.
“We have one.”
“Declan, the review authority may authorize transfer or direct calibration before I can return here.”
“Then give them my answer.”
“They do not recognize—”
“Make them hear it, Avena.”
The pressure deepened. Grandpa’s legal pad shivered against the table. The pencil rolled toward the edge, and Avena caught it with her free hand.
“Exact words,” she demanded.
“I refuse direct calibration, suppression, transfer for invasive testing, and any attempt to activate Janus with an incomplete procedure.”
She repeated it without changing a word.
“I authorize passive environmental audio and another structured response test if it doesn’t alter either baseline.”
“Janus stays off until we know the activation sequence, the physical cost, the survival risk to both of us and what counts as a voluntary return signal.”
“Anything else?” she asked.
So much. Too much.
Tell Selari I’m a person. Tell Vaeron to find the missing page. Tell the technician I know exactly what he means when he calls me a source. Tell the Dominion I’ve been awake through every year they stole.
None of it would fit into whatever seconds we had left.
“Tell Vaeron he has to let us make the choice,” I said. “He can only find the information. We get to decide.”
“I will.”
“And tell them the proof they want depends on keeping us both unchanged. If they touch either brain, they’ll be destroying their own evidence.”
“I must wake.”
“I know.”
She didn’t disappear. Not yet.
“Declan.”
“Go.”
Her eyes widened.
“I’m not sending you away,” I said. “I’m sending you back with my answer.”
“I will state it exactly.”
“I know.”
But I trusted her with this.
“Come back when you can,” I said. “Avena! I lo…”
She was gone before I could finish the words, her fingers sliding through mine as the cabin lost its hold on her. In the next breath, the chair beside me was empty.
The voice outside vanished with her. The fire straightened. The pressure in my ears eased, and the clock stayed at 6:14 as if nothing had happened.
I put my hand on the legal pad over the words she was carrying into the waking world.
This time Avena hadn’t exactly left me behind. She had taken my voice with her.