Chapter 22 Orion
orion
Down and Blacked Out
The closet is stifling. There’s barely enough room for the two of us to breathe, let alone think. My back is pressed to the cold inner wall, and Lyra is flush against me—every inch of her body molded to mine like we're melting into each other’s personal space.
Her leg’s hooked over mine, her hip wedged hard into my thigh, and her breath comes in short, shallow bursts against my collarbone.
My synesfores pulse in time with her heartbeat—the mating instinct buzzing beneath my skin practically singing at her proximity.
The only thing keeping me from ripping her pants off and sinking into her warm, wet cunt is sheer restraint, and even that’s wearing thin.
Outside, the world flickers in and out of existence.
The compound's lights stutter violently—emergency systems glitching in waves as Ada dutifully rolls the blackout through each sector. One second it’s pitch black, the next it’s a seizure-bright pulse of crimson and yellow that slices through the slats in the closet door, casting fractured shadows across her face.
Kraxis has returned.
I feel Lyra tense when we hear him barking orders—his voice hard and clipped, hunting.
“Sweep the north corridor. Scan every panel, every seam. She’s here somewhere. Find her, and Brill pays a million. You know what’s at stake if we don’t find her,” he rages at his crew.
Every few seconds, his boots echo too close. Muffled voices ricochet off the concrete and carbon steel walls. Something mechanical groans nearby—maybe one of the compound’s retractable hangar arms trying to reboot.
But all I can think about is her.
Lyra. In my arms. Alive.
And more dangerously—close.
Ever since Vega’s plan came together, I haven’t been able to shake the vision of her broken in some dark corner of this compound—stripped of her fire, hollowed out by Brill’s cruelty. And now she’s here—trembling against me, dirty and exhausted and still the most exquisite thing I’ve ever seen.
She’s so stars-damned beautiful, I ache with wanting—burn with it, like she’s a star and I’m about to be incinerated by drifting too close.
She tilts her face up. Her violet eyes meet mine, wide and wary in the dark. There’s a smear of grease across her temple, a gash half-healed on her jaw. Her full lips are cracked but parted slightly, and when she exhales, it ghosts across my skin like a drug.
“You almost didn’t make it,” she whispers, voice ragged.
I swallow the knot in my throat. “I would’ve ripped this place apart to get to you.”
Her fingers curl against the stretchy black fabric of my shirt. “I’m not sure there’d have been anything left of me to find.”
My hands move without thinking—one sliding around her waist, the other cradling the back of her head. She arches slightly, just enough for her body to press closer. Just enough that the thin barrier of clothing between us feels like an insult.
I lean down slowly, touching my forehead to hers. And because I can’t seem to resist any of my buried impulses when it comes to her, I let my lips trail down her hairline, curling around the shell of her ear. Almost gone. She was almost gone.
“You don’t know what you are to me,” I murmur, peppering soft kisses down her ear, trailing down her neck.
Her breath hitches and she shivers, her pulse fluttering beneath my lips.
“Then tell me,” she challenges.
Stars help me. The sound of her voice wrecks me. I’ve spent my life believing control was strength—precision, order, duty. But there’s nothing disciplined about the way I need her. I’ve never wanted anything I couldn’t earn, and yet every cell in my body is begging to be hers.
“On the ship, I never got the chance to explain to you, Lyra…You’re my mate,” I say, and the words leave me raw. “In every way that matters to my kind. My biology…my instincts…they’ve all chosen you. Duty kept me alive. You make me want to live.”
The words tear out of me, raw and reverent.
For so long, I’ve carried the weight of my parents’ legacy—their devotion, their sacrifice, the duty that killed them.
I thought upholding it was my purpose. But this—her—it’s something deeper.
I want to protect her not out of obligation, but because I can’t imagine the universe without her in it.
Because I don’t know how to breathe if I’m not breathing her in.
Because my whole damn life, I’ve been trying to prove myself worthy of something—and she’s the first thing that’s ever made me believe I already am.
She stares at me, stunned. “Uh, come again?”
I chuckle, because she’s not pulling away, which means maybe, maybe this won’t ruin us.
“It’s a biology thing. My body—my instincts—recognize you as a perfect match for me.
I started feeling it back on Xylothia and I wondered…
but the more time has passed, the more certain I’ve become.
After we had sex, my mating nodes changed.
The next time—if there is a next time—it means knotting,” I murmur.
“Knotting,” she echoes, eyes wide. “Like, you’d…”
Her hand snakes down to rub my cock through my pants, and it’s already hard thanks to her extreme proximity.
“Yes,” I hiss when she grips me through the fabric. “The nodes—stars, Lyra, you’re going to kill me if you keep doing that—swell inside you. It’s to increase the likelihood of conception. The heat lasts for hours, but every Xylothian is different. I’ve—I’ve never knotted anyone before.”
“Conception?” her firm strokes slow infinitesimally.
“Not if you don’t want it,” I practically whimper. “Kids, I mean. I can take the pill.”
Her hand resumes the torturous movement, and she reaches up to ghost her lips across the line of my jaw.
“Matehood. That’s not just…a metaphor?” she whispers.
“No. It’s chemical. Semi-permanent. Sacred.”
She pulls back and blinks up at me, lips parting further, and for a second—for one burning, perfect second—I stare at her lips like I can will them to meet mine. The corners of her mouth turn up, and she makes the move.
Her mouth crashes against mine like she’s drowning and I’m the last breath she’ll ever get. Her hands fist in my shirt, yanking me closer, and I’m lost. Her taste is fire and sweetness and everything I’ve been aching for since she was taken.
My hips rock forward before I can stop them, my body responding to hers like it’s instinct. I want her. I need her.
And stars save me, she wants me, too.
She grinds once—just once—and it nearly undoes me. Her legs tighten around my thigh, and a low, involuntary sound tears out of her throat, muffled against my mouth.
I’m drowning in her heat, her scent, the heady rush of her skin pressed to mine. My fingers slip under her shirt, tracing the line of her back, the curve of her waist. She gasps when I find bare skin.
But then—BANG! A sharp noise explodes from outside our hiding place. There’s an angry din of voices, cut through with Kraxis’s shouting.
We freeze. In the stifling heat of the closet, we’re both panting, mouths inches apart, hearts slamming in sync. I press my hand gently to her lips, stilling her, and she nods.
Outside, boots stomp past and a door slams. The silence that stretches between us crackles with energy. My forehead stays pressed to hers, and I can still feel her trembling. Not from fear now—from restraint.
“I almost didn’t get to you in time,” I whisper. “And the thought of that—of never holding you again—it nearly broke me.”
She presses her mouth to my jaw again, soft, reverent. “We’ll get out,” she murmurs. “You and me.”
I nod. “But when we do—Lyra, you need to know. I’m not letting you go again. I can’t.”
The flickering outside slows. The blackout’s entering its final cycle. It’s almost time to move, but for now, we stay pressed together in the dark.
It’s probably only a few minutes that we’re stuck in the closet, but it feels like both an eternity and no time at all.
When Lyra finally moves, unwinding her limbs from around me, my mating instincts rage and I’m forced to fist my hands at my sides to keep from reaching forward and pulling her back to me.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that she hasn’t said anything about my confession, but when we’re safe and back on the ship, we can talk it out.
Work through it. I’m determined not to try and stifle her, despite my hormones clamoring for me to chain myself to her feet and worship her with my entire body.
I pause at that—the thought eerily similar to my response the very first time she demonstrated the power of her vellia. This time, however, I know it’s not her biology at the root of it.
She tugs at my wrist again, pointing outside our cramped hiding space. Some of the activity has died down, and we both seem to be of a mind that it’s safe to slip out and meet up with Vega for our rendezvous.
As I’m about to open the door, Lyra stops me—her hand on mine.
“Before we go,” she whispers. “I—thank you. Thank you for coming. I know I said I wanted you to go, but…I’m really glad you came back.”
“I meant what I said, Lyra. I will always come for you,” I say. There’s a faint lift to her lips and a glint of heat in her eyes—I can tell she wants to make a prurient joke at the phrasing, but she seems to think better of it.
The lights stutter off again, and we use the opportunity to slip out of the closet and head out through the corridor.
We’re meant to meet Vega in the lower levels of the compound that are just above these maintenance floors.
Ada is managing to keep the rotating blackout pattern in an effort to give us bursts of cover, but it means we have to time every movement precisely.
We make it halfway through the corridor when I hear it—a low, rumbling hiss and heavy boots. Lyra freezes beside me, whirling around.
Kraxis.
Lyra’s eyes dart across the dark hallway for an exit, a duct, anything, but it’s too late.