Chapter 9 #3
“No mate,” she said firmly, ignoring the way her body reacted to the word.
“And my parents are gone. They… it was a long time ago.” She stood abruptly, needing to move, to put distance between them and the direction this conversation was heading.
“I came out here because I wanted to be alone. I wanted to build something that was just mine. No partners, no investors, and no one else to answer to.” She laughed, and it came out more bitter than she’d intended.
“I was so focused on being independent that I isolated myself completely. Most days I go weeks without talking to another person.”
“But this is what you want?”
“I thought it was.” The caveat surprised her. “I thought I wanted to be alone. To not need anyone.”
“And now?”
She looked at him—this impossible being who’d crashed into her carefully constructed solitude and upended everything she thought she knew about herself.
“Now I’m not sure.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he reached across the space between them, his hand hovering in the air near hers, his claws retracted. Offering contact but not demanding it.
“Alone is… cold,” he said. “I remember cold. Many years of cold. Sleep without dreams, without others.” His eyes met hers. “Not want to be alone again.”
Something ached in her chest, and she placed her hand in his.
His scales were warm against her palm, smooth and textured at once, and his fingers curled around hers with a gentleness that made her throat tight.
They sat there—human and not-human, woman and ancient being, two people who had been alone for far too long—and for a moment, the howling storm outside seemed very far away.
“Teach me more,” he said quietly. “I want to understand you.”
And despite every wall she’d built, every defense she’d constructed, every carefully cultivated habit of solitude and self-reliance—
She began to talk.
She told him about the mining claim. About the years of saving and planning that had gone into it, the bureaucratic nightmares of getting licensed for independent prospecting, and the backbreaking work of setting up the habitat and equipment by herself.
She told him about the polar ice and the way it sang during temperature shifts, and the strange beauty of the aurora that sometimes danced across the Martian sky. She told him about the silence and how she’d grown to crave it, and she saw a matching light in his eyes.
She told him about her parents and how they’d only ever needed each other.
How her father had died in a transport accident and her mother had followed him because she couldn’t survive without him.
How she’d taken their small repair shop and sold it to fund her trip to Mars instead of continuing the family business.
She didn’t talk about the guilt that still surfaced sometimes, but she felt it nevertheless, and wondered if he could sense it.
Through it all, he listened. Not just with his ears but with his entire being, his attention fixed on her like nothing else existed.
His vocabulary expanded in real-time as she spoke, his mind making connections she could almost see forming behind his eyes.
And when she finally ran out of words, he was quiet for a long moment.
“You are afraid,” he said.
“What?”
“Of needing. Of being needed.” He squeezed her hand gently. “You build walls. Make yourself… small. So no one can see what you want.”
The accuracy of the observation felt like a blade slipping between her ribs.
“That’s…” She tried to pull her hand back, but he didn’t release her. “You don’t know me well enough to—”
“I know,” he said. “Because I am same.”
She stopped struggling.
“Keepers do not need,” he continued, his voice soft. “We protect. We preserve. We do not ask for ourselves.” Something dark moved through his expression. “I was taught this. Before the cold. My purpose was others, never self.”
“And now?”
Those ice-blue eyes traveled over her, leaving an almost palpable heat behind it.
“Now I want,” he said. “For first time in… very long. I want.”
The air between them seemed to thicken. His thumb stroked the back of her hand, and she felt the touch all the way up her arm.
This is a terrible idea, some part of her brain insisted. I don’t know what he is. I don’t know what he’s capable of. I don’t—
But she was tired of being afraid. Tired of walls and solitude and the quiet voice that told her she wasn’t built for closeness.
“What do you want?” she asked.
His eyes held hers.
“This,” he said. “Here. With you.” His free hand rose, hesitated, then touched her cheek with a gentleness that made her breath catch. “I want to not be alone.”
It should have been a simple statement, but she heard the deeper meaning beneath it, the loneliness that stretched back into centuries she couldn’t imagine.
She leaned into his touch, her eyes closing.
“Me too,” she whispered.
The admission cost her some of her precious independence, some of the carefully maintained distance she’d always thought defined her. But she felt lighter for it, like she’d set down a weight she’d been carrying so long she’d forgotten how heavy it was.
His hand moved to cup her jaw, and she opened her eyes to find his face impossibly close.
“Jaz,” he said, and her name in his rough, otherworldly voice was the sexiest thing she’d ever heard.
Before she could overthink it, she closed the final distance between them and pressed her lips to his.