Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The warm air pressed against Adjar’s skin like a fever.
He lay motionless in the darkness, Jaz tucked against his side, her breathing slow and even.
His wings were spread over them both—a protective canopy that should have brought comfort but instead felt like a trap.
The room was too small. The walls too close. And the temperature…
Wrong. Everything about this place is wrong.
His body understood polar cold. The sharp bite of arctic wind, the crystalline silence of deep ice, and the way frost formed patterns that whispered secrets to those who knew how to read them.
His scales were designed to conduct and retain heat with brutal efficiency, to thrive in environments that would kill lesser creatures within minutes.
This warmth made him feel like he was suffocating.
He turned his head fractionally, listening to the sounds of the settlement beyond their quarters. Footsteps in a distant corridor. The hum of environmental systems cycling through their endless work. And somewhere, too close for comfort, the unmistakable presence of another male.
Rhyx.
His claws extended involuntarily, scratching against the bedding.
He had thought that his reaction to the other male had eased.
Rhyx had his own mate, he had shown no interest in Jaz, and they had spent most of the day discussing alliance and cooperation.
But now that Jaz was asleep—vulnerable—the ancient programming buried in his bones was reasserting itself.
Another male. In my territory. Near my mate.
He forced his claws to retract. Forced his breathing to remain steady. Forced himself to lie still when every fiber of his being wanted to challenge.
This is not my territory, he reminded himself. I am a guest here. Rhyx is an ally, not a threat. Control yourself.
The self-admonishment helped, marginally. But sleep remained elusive.
Instead, he found his thoughts drifting to the conversation they’d had earlier. The emergence sites. GenCon’s potential ability to trigger awakening events. The possibility that others were waiting beneath the Martian surface—more fragments of a civilization he barely remembered.
He should want to find them. He should want to stay here, in this settlement where information flowed freely and allies gathered.
Rhyx understood things about their shared past that Adjar’s fragmented memories couldn’t provide.
Alina had scientific knowledge that could help them understand what was happening to Mars.
R-339 and his cyborg network offered protection and resources beyond anything he could secure alone.
Staying here was the logical choice. The strategic choice.
And yet the polar ice called to him like a song he’d forgotten the words to but still knew by heart.
The vast white expanses. The crushing silence.
The way sound traveled differently through frozen air, carrying information across impossible distances.
That was his territory—not this cramped settlement with its recycled air and artificial warmth and too many bodies pressed too close together.
Jaz will want to stay, he thought. She was practical, his mate.
She would see the value in remaining close to their allies, in building the network they needed to protect themselves and others.
She would recognize that her mining claim was gone, her equipment destroyed, and her carefully constructed independence shattered beyond repair.
She would want to rebuild. And rebuilding meant staying here, where the resources were.
He stared at the ceiling and tried to imagine adapting to this place.
Learning to tolerate the warmth, the dryness, and the constant presence of other beings.
Perhaps he could adjust his internal temperature regulation, force his body to accept conditions it found inherently hostile.
Perhaps the discomfort would fade with time, the way his initial hostility towards Rhyx had softened into something approaching respect.
Perhaps.
Or perhaps he would slowly go mad, his instincts warring endlessly with the demands of civilization, until he became a danger to the very mate he was trying to protect. The thought sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with temperature.
She shifted beside him as her breathing changed, the rhythm of sleep giving way to something more alert, more conscious. She was awake.
He remained still, not wanting to disturb her if she was simply adjusting position before falling back into slumber. But she remained awake and eventually her voice came through the darkness—soft, barely more than a whisper.
“You’re not sleeping.”
It wasn’t a question.
“No,” he admitted.
She turned in his arms, her face finding his in the dim light filtering through the window. Her amber eyes were luminous in the darkness, watching him with an intensity that made his chest ache.
“The warmth?” she asked.
“Partly.” He hesitated. “Also the… proximity. To Rhyx.”
“The male thing.”
“The male thing.” He couldn’t quite keep the frustration from his voice. “I know it’s irrational. I know he poses no threat. But knowing something and feeling it are different matters.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, very softly, “I can’t sleep either.”
Something in her tone made him look at her more closely.
Even in the short time since they’d found each other, he had learned to read her expressions and the subtle shifts in her scent that betrayed emotions she tried to hide.
She was worried. And beneath that, something that felt almost like… longing?
“What troubles you?” he asked.
She bit her lip—a nervous habit he found inexplicably endearing. “I’ve been lying here thinking. About what comes next. About where we go from here.”
“And?”
“I know this is the smart place to be.” The words came slowly, as if she was choosing each one with care.
“Alina and Rhyx know things we need to learn. The rangers have resources we can use. If we’re going to help others who might emerge and stay ahead of GenCon, we need allies.
We need infrastructure…” She trailed off.
“But?” he prompted gently.
“But I hate it here.”
The admission seemed to surprise her as much as it surprised him. Her eyes widened slightly, as if she hadn’t meant to say it quite so bluntly.
“Not hate,” she corrected quickly. “That’s too strong.
I just… I don’t belong here, Adjar. I spent years building a life in the polar regions specifically because I couldn’t stand places like this.
Too many people. Too much noise. Too many expectations and social obligations and…
” She made a frustrated gesture. “I chose solitude for a reason. I was good at solitude.”
“Until I destroyed your equipment and forced you into this situation.”
“Until you exploded out of the ice and gave me a reason to be not-alone.” She reached up to touch his face, her fingers tracing the line of scales along his jaw.
“That’s different. You’re different. With you, the solitude doesn’t feel like…
like hiding anymore. It feels like a choice.
A real choice, not just an excuse to avoid everything I was afraid of. ”
He caught her hand, pressing his lips to her palm, a small intimacy that carried more meaning than words.
“I thought you would want to stay,” he admitted. “This settlement has everything you need to rebuild. Equipment, supplies, connections to the wider economy. Your claim may be destroyed, but with Alina’s resources and the support of the rangers—”
“I don’t want to rebuild here,” she said fiercely. “I want to go back. To the ice. To our ice.”
Our ice.
A warmth that had nothing to do with the uncomfortable temperature of the room filled his chest. She wasn’t just talking about returning to familiar territory. She was talking about claiming it and making it theirs.
“You’d leave all of this?” He gestured vaguely at the room, the settlement beyond, the alliance they’d spent the day forging. “The safety, the resources, the—”
“I’d leave it in a heartbeat.” She sat up, her hair falling loose around her shoulders.
“I’ve been lying here trying to convince myself that staying is the right choice.
That it’s selfish to want to go back when there’s so much work to be done here.
But I can’t… I can’t breathe here, Adjar.
Everything is too close. Too warm. Too…” She searched for the word. “Too much.”
He sat up beside her, his wings folding against his back as he processed what she was saying. Not just the words, but the deeper meaning beneath them. She was choosing him. Choosing them. Choosing a life that made no practical sense because it was the life she actually wanted.
“I feel the same,” he said quietly.
Her eyes snapped to his. “You do?”
“The warmth is… difficult. And Rhyx’s presence…
” He shook his head. “My instincts are constantly at war with my rational mind. I was trying to imagine adapting to this place, learning to tolerate it, because I thought you would need it. But the truth is, I belong in the polar regions. My body was designed for that environment. Everything about me is optimized for deep cold and vast spaces and the kind of silence that settles into your bones.”
“The silence,” she echoed. “Yes. I miss the silence.”
“The silence that isn’t empty anymore.” He reached for her hand. “The silence that has you in it.”
She gave a soft, surprised laugh. “When did you become so good with words?”
“I am a Keeper. Words are my domain.”
“I thought your domain was ice and ancient knowledge.”
“Those too.” He squeezed her hand. “Jaz, if you want to return to the polar region, I will go with you. Gladly. But we must be practical about what that means.”