Chapter 31 Vrok
VROK
The stars slide past the viewport like slow-moving ghosts.
One by one, they drift and shimmer across black velvet, never getting any closer. There’s something about space like that—so endless it makes your bones ache just looking at it. Syfer’s out there somewhere. Still distant. Still waiting.
I sit alone in the command cabin for a long while. Systems humming soft and low. Lights dimmed. The kind of quiet that isn’t really quiet, just full of things you’ve been avoiding.
I’m not good with stillness.
Never have been.
Not when there’s this much inside me clawing for a way out.
Footsteps.
Soft ones.
Not hesitant, just light.
She doesn’t speak when she enters. Doesn’t need to. I feel her before I see her. The bond’s humming low in my chest again—faint, steady, like background radiation I can’t scrub out.
Roxy leans against the opposite bulkhead, arms folded. Hair damp from a sonic rinse. No makeup. No mask.
Just her.
Just us.
I turn the chair slowly to face her.
“I figured this would be where you hide,” she says.
“I’m not hiding.”
She lifts a brow.
I gesture at the chair across from me. “Sit.”
She doesn’t move at first. Then she pushes off the wall and drops into the seat like gravity’s twice what it should be.
I study her for a moment.
“Feels different now,” I say.
“What does?”
“Us. This.”
She watches me carefully, not speaking.
I take a breath.
“The bond.”
She goes still.
Not tense—just alert. Like a switch flipped inside her. I nod, confirming it.
“I know you’ve felt it,” I say. “It’s not subtle.”
“No,” she says softly. “It isn’t.”
I shift forward slightly in the chair, forearms resting on my knees, palms open.
“Jalshagar,” I say, letting the word hang.
She mouths it once, lips moving soundlessly. Like it tastes strange in her mouth.
“It’s old,” I continue. “Vakutan. Doesn’t translate clean, but it means something like… soul convergence. Or tether. The knot.”
Roxy blinks slowly. “Sounds romantic.”
“It isn’t.”
Her brow lifts again. “Okay.”
I lean back and let my head rest against the chair’s edge.
“It’s a biological reality. Not metaphor. Not poetry. When it happens, it’s involuntary. Rare. Unpredictable.”
She’s watching me now the way she watches live feeds before a breach—intent and silent.
“The bond forms in high-stress environments,” I say. “Usually life-or-death. We don’t know why. Some think it’s chemical. Some think it’s ancestral memory. Doesn’t matter. What matters is once it happens, it’s permanent.”
I let that settle before going on.
“It’s not just emotion. Not just attraction. It’s… recognition. Something inside that says: This one.”
She exhales through her nose. Not laughing. Not smiling. Just letting the shape of this reality curl around her like smoke.
“I felt it,” she says after a while. “When you left for the compound. It was like…”
“Like something tearing.”
“Yeah.”
I nod.
“That’s the bond reacting to distance. Danger. Separation. And it’ll get worse the more we ignore it.”
She frowns. “You ignored it?”
I don’t answer right away.
Then I nod.
“I recognized it after Elkaru,” I admit. “When we came out of that collapse together. When I touched your neck and the static hit like a detonator.”
“You never said anything.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
I lean forward again, jaw tight.
“Because in Vakutan culture, the bond is everything.”
Roxy doesn’t move.
I press on.
“When it forms, it’s final. You don’t get to unchoose it. It’s not casual. It’s not dating. You don’t fall in and out of it.”
Her eyes narrow slightly.
“You think I don’t know how to commit?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying, Vrok?”
I meet her gaze.
“I didn’t want to trap you.”
She stops breathing for half a second.
I can see it—the flicker of hurt under the surface. I shake my head quickly.
“Not because I didn’t want it. Not because I don’t want you. I do.”
“Then why—”
“Because you’re human. And this isn’t your world. Your rules. Your biology. And I wasn’t going to use some invisible thread to bind you to me like a leash. You deserve the right to choose.”
Her face softens. Just barely.
I press on, quiet now.
“You’ve had your life ripped apart more times than I can count. I wasn’t gonna be another thing that took your choices away.”
She looks down.
Then she laughs.
Quiet.
Bitter.
“You know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“I thought you didn’t feel it.”
I sit up straighter. “What?”
“I thought it was just me. That I was making it up. That I was losing my mind because every time you got close I could barely breathe, and every time you pulled away it felt like being skinned alive from the inside.”
I swallow.
“And I hated that I couldn’t explain it. That I couldn’t logic my way around it. That my body was making decisions before my brain could catch up.”
She rubs her eyes.
“You think I don’t know how heavy a bond like that is? You think I don’t already carry the weight of every person I couldn’t save?”
My throat’s dry. The ship hums softly around us, indifferent to the conversation tearing open between us.
“I didn’t want to take your freedom,” I say.
“Then don’t,” she snaps. “But don’t lie about it either. Don’t pretend it’s not there just because it scares the hell out of you.”
We sit in silence again.
Breathing.
Existing.
I reach slowly into the side compartment and pull out a small data chip. I slide it across the table between us.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Safe transport. Fresh identity. Full shield profile. If you want to go, no one will stop you. I’ll make sure of it.”
Her eyes flick to the chip, then back to me.
“And if I stay?”
I meet her eyes. “Then we figure it out. Together. No secrets. No martyrdom.”
She leans back, folding her arms.
“I don’t know what I’m choosing yet.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She watches me a long time.
Finally, she reaches out.
Not for the chip.
For my hand.
And this time, when her fingers close around mine, the bond flares warm and steady—not frantic. Not desperate.
Just alive.
She doesn’t say yes.
But she doesn’t let go either.