Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Jaz.
Her name echoed through Adjar’s mind as her mouth moved against his, soft and warm and perfect. This was not an act he had experienced before, at least not that he could remember, but he was instantly and totally certain that nothing in his long existence had ever felt this right.
His hand tightened on her jaw, not to restrain her but to hold her in place as he learned her shape, her taste, and the way her breath mingled with his. She made a small sound against his lips and the vibration traveled through his body like lightning, waking every nerve ending.
She was smaller than he’d fully realized, even when she’d been standing in front of him with the top of her head barely reaching his shoulder.
Her body was slight compared to the females of his kind who were built for battle and endurance, but she felt perfectly sized in his arms, as if she’d been crafted to fit precisely there.
His tongue brushed against her lips, seeking, and she opened for him without hesitation.
The first taste of her was intoxicating—sweet and spicy and utterly perfect.
He explored her mouth with deliberate care, memorizing the texture of her tongue, the shape of her teeth, the way she responded to each stroke of his tongue.
Her hands had found their way to his chest, her fingers splayed across the scales there.
The contact was tentative at first, but as he continued the kiss, her touch grew bolder, exploring the contours of his body with growing confidence.
When they traveled lower over his abdomen, he finally drew back, fighting for control.
The sensations she was producing threatened to overwhelm him, dragging him towards something urgent and instinctive.
Her eyes opened, dark and deep and slightly dazed. Her lips were redder than before, swollen from his kiss, and the sight sent a surge of primitive satisfaction through him.
“Is this… okay?” she asked, her voice husky.
“Yes,” he assured her. “Very okay. But if we continue, I will want more.” She didn’t pull away, but he caught the flicker of doubt in her eyes, and he gently shifted her away from him. “We will talk.”
“Really? That’s what you want to do?”
No. He wanted to claim her as his mate in the most ancient of ways. He wanted to strip away the ridiculous garments she wore and taste every part of her until she cried out his name. But he also wanted her willing and certain of her choice. “Yes. Tell me more. I want to know you.”
She hesitated at first but eventually she began to talk again, and he listened. Her words washed over him like water—some he caught and held, turning them over in his mind until their meaning clicked into place, while others slipped past too quickly to grasp.
But it didn’t matter that he missed pieces. The shape of her story was clear enough.
She had built this life deliberately. The isolation, the distance from her kind, and the endless work that filled her days—all of it was by design.
She spoke of choices and freedom and independence, and her chin lifted with pride when she described her claim and the years of planning that had led her here.
But beneath all of it, threaded through every word like a vein of ore through rock, was loneliness.
She didn’t name it. Perhaps she didn’t recognize it, or perhaps she had grown so accustomed to its weight that she no longer felt it pressing. But he heard it in the pauses between her sentences and felt it in the careful distance she maintained even as she let him hold her hand.
I know this, he thought. This ache. This hollow place.
His own memories were still fragmented things—shards of ice and shadow, faces that dissolved when he tried to focus on them, duties he remembered the weight of but not the shape. He knew he had not always been alone. There had been others. But they were gone now. All gone.
The knowledge sat in his chest like a stone, cold and heavy and inescapable.
He did not remember how they had been lost. He did not remember choosing the long sleep.
But he remembered pieces of the before—brief flashes of warmth and connection, of voices raised in song and council, of wings brushing against wings in the endless polar dark.
And then nothing. Centuries of frozen nothing, until a small, fierce female had dragged him into her dwelling and fought to keep him alive.
“Adjar?”
He blinked, realizing he had drifted into his own thoughts. She was watching him with concern creasing her brow, her eyes searching his face.
“You disappeared,” she said. “Where did you go?”
The question was simple, but the answer was not. How could he explain the fragments? The loss that he felt but could not name? The terrible suspicion that he had been preserved while others had perished, and the guilt that accompanied it?
“Remembering,” he said finally. “Trying to.”
Her expression softened. “The others? Your people?”
“Yes.” The word came out rough. “I remember… connections. Voices. Then cold. Then nothing.” He met her eyes. “Then you.”
“I’m not sure I’m much of an improvement over nothing.”
“You are wrong,” he said forcefully, and her eyes widened. But he did not take the words back. She needed to understand that whatever she believed about her own worth, she was everything to him in this moment.
“Before you,” he said, choosing his words with care, “I was… lost. Cold.” He pressed his free hand to his chest. “Empty here. Then I wake, and there is pain, and fear, and a female who fights to save me even though I give her no reason.”
“You were dying. I wasn’t going to leave you to freeze.”
“Others would.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.” He held her gaze steadily. “I remember enough to know. Not all beings risk themselves for strangers. Not all beings look at something unknown and choose… mercy.”
She looked away, but not before he caught the flush spreading across her cheeks. Her hand tightened briefly around his before relaxing.
“I’m not merciful,” she muttered. “I’m practical. A dead alien in my drill field would have been a bureaucratic nightmare.”
A rough, unfamiliar sound escaped him and it took him a moment to realize he was laughing. The sensation was strange, rusty from disuse, but it felt good. Right.
Her head snapped back towards him, her eyes wide. “Did you just—”
“Laugh.” He tested the word. “This is the word? When something is… unexpected. Amusing.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“I know.” He smiled, and felt something warm bloom in his chest when her blush deepened. “This is why it is funny.”
She made an exasperated sound, but he could see the corner of her mouth twitching. “You’re picking up more than just vocabulary. You’re picking up sarcasm.”
“I have good teacher.”
This time she laughed, the joyous sound he wanted to hear again and again. He wanted to be the one who caused it, who drew it from her despite her walls and wariness.
He knew these feelings were dangerous, but he had been cold for so long. And she was so warm.
The storm maintained its assault on the dwelling throughout the day, winds screaming against the reinforced walls, but inside their small shelter, a fragile peace had settled.
She continued to talk—about her work and the rare minerals she sought beneath the ice—and he continued to listen, filing away each new word, each piece of information.
She showed him her console and explained the data to him, and he was surprised by how much he understood because of his own familiarity with the ice.
She was brilliant. That much was clear even through the gaps in his understanding.
The way she described her work revealed a mind that saw patterns others missed, that could look at raw data and extract meaning from chaos.
Her hands moved as she spoke, tracing diagrams in the air, and he found himself watching those hands with increasing fascination.
Small. Callused. Scarred from years of labor. Strong.
Like her.
“Sorry,” she said eventually, cutting herself off mid-sentence. “I’m rambling. You probably understood about half of that.”
“More than half,” he said. “Your work is… important. To you.”
“It’s my life.” She shrugged, but he heard the weight behind the words. “Out here, it has to be. There’s nothing else.”
There could be.
He didn’t say it aloud. He had no right to imagine himself as part of her future. Not yet.
She showed him how to heat the emergency rations, and he noticed once again that they were growing scarce. She tried to insist she wasn’t hungry and he tried to insist that she take half, and they eventually compromised on sharing the meal but giving him the larger portion.
After they ate, she started yawning, catching herself too late to hide it, and he felt a sudden surge of protectiveness. How much sleep had she had? How much had she given of her food and her warmth and her energy to keep him alive?
“You need rest,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You are tired. Your eyes…” He searched for the word. “Dim. Heavy.”
“That’s a polite way of saying I look like hell.”
He didn’t know what hell was, but he understood her meaning. “Rest,” he repeated. “I will watch.”
“Watch what? The storm?” She gestured at the window. “It’s not going anywhere.”
“I will watch,” he said again, and something in his tone must have conveyed his meaning, because her expression shifted. He would watch over her. Guard her sleep as she had guarded his.
“I don’t—” She started to protest, then stopped. Her gaze moved to the small bunk, then to the chair, then to the floor where he sat. “You take the bunk,” she said finally. “You’re still healing.”
“I am healed enough.” It was true. His wounds had closed with a speed that still surprised him, flesh and scale knitting together as if eager to repair the damage. The ache remained, but it was manageable. “You have given much. Take rest.”
“And where will you sleep? That chair can barely hold a standard human, let alone…” She gestured at the size of him.
“Floor is adequate.”
“The floor is metal and freezing and there’s barely room for your wings.”