Chapter 22
MAUG
Ishouldn’t want to touch her.
Not ever.
Not like this.
Not after every vow I ever made was carved into silence and solitude. I’m old enough to remember the faces I’ve lost, the lives I can’t undo, and the cruelty this world trades as currency.
I should not feel this way.
But here she lies, curled beside me, and every fiber of me aches in an ancient, unfamiliar way I haven’t felt since before the war — before the centuries of exile — before the world decided my only place was silence.
She sleeps just a few breaths away, tucked under the shared thermal wrap we’ve learned to share like beaters of hearth-fire in a frozen world.
Her body rises and falls in that slow rhythm that should be mundane, but to me it is hypnotic.
A cadence that draws the eye, demands the breath, holds the space between inhalation and exhalation like a presence in itself.
The dome around us is silent, save for the distant groan of wind as it rattles the outer stone. There’s a hush here — not emptiness, but pressure, like the rocks themselves lean in to listen. I’m beneath the rough blanket of that hush, half-shadow, half-heat, all tension.
I stare at her.
Not out of fear.
Not out of danger.
But out of something far more terrifying: hope.
Her scent — not perfume, not manufactured, but just her — lingers in the air: warm dust and salt and the faint, feral tang of her own body heat. It drives my senses to distraction. Where instinct once screamed threat, now it hums something else, unfamiliar in its intensity and rawness.
I try not to want to touch her.
Gods know I’ve tried.
I tell myself there are rules. Codes. Old words engrained under flesh and bone — that I am not meant to intertwine with another, not meant to share warmth with another soul, not meant to let something as fragile and unpredictable as feeling take root in me again.
But her presence has pulled at something deeper than muscle and memory, something primal and ancient.
Jalshagar.
The word curls in the back of my throat like a knife I cannot unsheathe.
Her breathing changes ever so slightly — softer, deeper — as though she sinks farther into sleep, or perhaps into dream.
Her eyelashes cast tiny shadows on her cheeks, delicate and fragile like the wings of some snowbird I once knew on a world with seasons.
Her lips part a little; I see the faintest hint of vulnerability there — not fear, not hesitation, just ease.
I inhale.
And suddenly that — that ease — is unbearable.
My claws clench against the stone beneath me, not in violence, but in clenched restraint. The need to move — to just reach out, brush a hand lightly across her arm — thrums in my muscles like a pulse I can no longer silence.
Not to harm.
Not to claim.
Just to touch.
To confirm she’s real.
To confirm that I’m real.
My ancestors would call this weakness. A folly. A breach in armor no warrior should allow.
But there she is.
I inhale again — slower this time — and the scent of her overwhelms me. Sand and heat and breath and life. Her presence is warm enough to melt the cold from the rocks under my knees, and I find myself shifting closer before I realize I moved.
Just an inch.
But it’s an inch charged with centuries of denial.
Her eyelids flutter at the sound of that movement. Not open — not awake — but loosening, as though she edges toward consciousness, not away from it. She murmurs something inaudible, a whisper caught between dream and wake.
My muscles tense.
My breath catches.
My mind stops.
And then, she speaks — but she doesn’t open her eyes.
“Maug…”
Just the sound of his name on her lips makes something deep inside me quake. Not shock. Not fear. Not anger.
Something else.
Something unnameable.
I want to reply — to say something measured, calm, logical. Something correct. But the word I want to speak isn’t correct. It isn’t simple or safe. It isn’t calm or logical.
Jalshagar.
A bond forged in heat before death. A tether between souls that should never have touched.
I want to speak it.
But my throat fails me.
I can only watch as her breathing settles again, as though she’s pulled back into sleep without ever waking, and the air shifts — warmer — as though her presence tucks itself around me like a living thing.
I shouldn’t want this.
A voice inside me, older than memory, screams the admonition. A warrior’s instinct, forged in battles long since faded to scars.
“Distance. Always distance.”
But something in the moment refuses to obey that law.
Not when she is here, quiet and vulnerable under the thermal wrap.
Not when her hair, the color of warm dusk, curls against the coarse fabric.
Not when her breath, soft and even, thrums against the back of my hand.
Not when her pulse — her pulse — echoes in the space between us like a drumbeat in empty halls.
I’m not supposed to be this close.
But I am.
And worse: I don’t want to be anywhere else.
The word Jalshagar creeps again into my mind — unbidden, stubborn, elemental. I remember the old teachings. The songs. The rites whispered in basements long buried by time.
Jalshagar does not bind weak hearts.
Jalshagar does not flourish in safety.
Jalshagar rises in storms, in conflict, in the white heat of life and death and choice.
And this — whatever this is between us — feels like heat.
Like fire.
Like destiny.
I wait — still, quiet, anchored by a sense of aching anticipation I cannot explain — until the warmth of the dome eases into dusk and shadows bleed into the corners of rock.
She shifts again in her sleep, and I catch her name once more — whispered, half-formed, softer than a sigh.
“Maug…”
Not a prayer. Not a plea.
Just a name.
Simple, ordinary, holy in its mundanity.
I want to answer.
Not with a ritual word. Not with something old and sacred.
Just with my name.
My self.
My presence.
My choice.
But I remain quiet.
Not because I’ve forgotten how.
Not because I’m afraid.
But because I want her to choose it.
To choose me.
To choose this bond — this impossible, forbidden, untranslatable thing that crawls along my spine and roots itself deep in my bones.
I watch her sleep. Her chest rises once, twice, slow and sure.
Her breath.
Her warmth.
Her scent.
And somewhere beneath muscle memory and old vows and tempest-scarred instincts, I feel the first faint echo of a word I’ve buried for so long I thought it dead:
Jalshagar.
The bond is already there.
And for the first time since my exile, I’m not sure I want it to break.
My anxiety bleeds into the physical realm. I accidentally slice my own thumb trying to sharpen my blade. My use of human curse words is apparently quite amusing.
“Son of a—!”
She laughs.
A real one this time, not the nervous titter she gave when she first landed on this cursed world. It’s low and throaty, unguarded—her head tipped back, red hair spilling like flame over her shoulders, catching in the bioluminescent light bleeding off the ridge.
I feel it in my ribs.
Like a punch. Or a prayer.
That sound wasn’t meant for me. She’s laughing at something she just said—a joke about Earth coffee and how she’d sell a kidney for a cup right now.
But gods, the way it hits me. I want to hoard the sound.
Trap it in a cave and guard it like it’s mine.
Because for the first time in too many cycles, I’m not thinking about how to survive the next hour.
I’m thinking about her.
And that terrifies me.
She doesn’t flinch when I sit beside her. Doesn’t edge away. Just… shifts slightly so our shoulders brush, and lets her head fall soft against my arm like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
I could feel the shift in her days ago, after the second rescue. After the sunside run, when I carried her blistering body back through hell because she was too stubborn to wait for me. After she saw my back melt and watched it stitch itself back together while she whispered, “What are you?”
That night, she didn’t look away.
She still doesn’t.
Her warmth bleeds through the patch of her jacket pressed to my skin. Her scent’s close now—salt, dust, minerals, and the faint sweetness of something I can never place, something that doesn’t belong to this world. I breathe it in and grind my molars together, forcing control.
Because if I lean into her… if I answer the bond that howls in my blood like a beast clawing at its cage…
I’ll never let her go.
She points at a constellation above us, squinting. “That one there? We called it The Archivist back home. See how it curves, like a hunched back and the little stars are scrolls?”
I nod, even though I don’t see it. The stars shift too much through Purgonis’ haze. Patterns don’t stick. But she talks like they do, like her memories can anchor the sky and make it still.
“You think your planet names mean anything out here?” I grunt.
She huffs and pokes me in the side. “They mean something to me. Besides, you Odex never name anything. You just call stuff ‘the jagged thing’ or ‘the red cave’ or ‘the death pit that swallowed Garok.’ You’re like if dwarves got drunk and took up cartography.”
“I don’t know what a dwarf is.”
“It’s a short angry guy with a beard.”
I glance down at her. “So… me, but small?”
That earns another laugh. Not the belly-deep one from earlier, but still. It scrapes something raw inside me.
She looks up at me and for a moment, her smile falters.
And I know she sees it. The way I’m clenching my jaw. The way I haven’t taken a breath in a full minute. The way I’m barely holding still under her touch.
“I’m not scared of you,” she says softly.
And that—that breaks something in me.
I jerk away. Not violently. Not enough to frighten. But enough that her head slips from my arm and her expression shutters.
I stand. Pace. My claws flex and retract as I walk to the edge of the rock shelf. The night air is thin, sharp. I stare out at the vast black plain below, where the ridge drops into a canyon lit by ventlight and the ghosts of broken magma veins.
“You should be,” I rasp. “Fear keeps you alive.”
“Maybe,” she says, still seated. “But it also keeps you alone.”
I laugh, low and bitter. “Better alone than broken.”
“Then why haven’t you left?” she fires back.
I freeze.
The wind picks up, dust scraping over my shoulders like teeth. I can smell the night predators out there—sting tail traces, ash-wolf musk. The planet’s usual chorus of misery. But none of that matters compared to the burn in my chest.
She doesn’t stop.
“You could’ve stayed hidden. You wanted to. But you came back for me. Twice. And now you hang around like some shaggy guardian angel. Don’t act like you don’t care.”
“You don’t understand,” I snarl. “You think I’m here because I care? I’m here because I can’t not be.”
She stands now, brushing the dust from her suit. Steps toward me until we’re an arm’s length apart. The wind plucks at her curls. Her cheeks are flushed. Her eyes are steady.
“Then why?”
I bare my teeth. “Because the gods—if they even exist—thought it would be funny to make you mine. Because every time I hear your voice, I forget I’m supposed to be alone. Because you looked at me and saw a man instead of a monster, and that… that hurts worse than any sting tail bite.”
She blinks. “Wait—what do you mean, yours?”
“I mean you’re my jalshagar,” I growl. “My bonded mate. My soul’s other half. We don’t choose it. It just is. And once it starts, it never stops.”
She sways slightly. “But… you didn’t tell me. Why not?”
I stare at her like she’s cracked. “Because it’s a curse. You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to burn every time you smile? To ache when you laugh at some old Earth joke I don’t even understand? To need you like breath?”
She steps closer. “You think I don’t feel it too?”
My voice dies.
She’s looking at me like I’m the only thing that matters. Like the sun’s rising behind my eyes and she doesn’t care if it burns her.
“You think I’m scared because you’re big and dangerous and grumpy?” she says, voice trembling. “I’ve seen sting tails, fungus zombies, and Ciampa in the morning without his hair serum. You don’t even crack the top five.”
I huff. “You’re insane.”
“And you’re in love.”
That stops the world.
I can feel my heart pounding in my ears. The canyon below could open up and swallow us whole and I wouldn’t move.
“I don’t deserve you,” I whisper. “I got people killed. I let vengeance steer me and innocents died because of it.”
She shakes her head. “That was then. This is now.”
“I’m still the same creature,” I growl.
“No,” she says, stepping close, laying a hand over my chest. “You’re not. The monster would’ve left me on the sun-baked ridge to die. The monster wouldn’t have cooked sting tail meat just to make me feel comfortable. The monster wouldn’t stay, even when it hurt.”
My chest tightens. Her hand is warm. Small. Brave.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I say. It’s barely a breath.
She smiles. “Then stop running.”
I reach for her before I realize I’ve moved. My hands span her waist like she’s made of spun glass. She tips her face up, eyes shining, lips parted like she’s waiting for me to kiss her. I don’t.
Not yet.
I press my forehead to hers instead. Close my eyes. Breathe her in. Let the bond settle between us like a third heartbeat.
“I still don’t know how to be what you need,” I murmur.
“Good thing you don’t have to figure it out alone.”
Her fingers curl into the fur at my chest. And I know, in that moment, that I am no longer in exile.
I am home.
And gods help me…
…I will burn the galaxy before I lose her.