Chapter 9
ARIA DAWSON
The sheets are too crisp, the lights too soft, and the quiet hum of the monitoring drones far too loud.
The infirmary has always unsettled me—something about its sterile mercy, the way everything smells like citrus and antiseptic, like a lie that tries too hard to be clean.
But this morning, none of it registers. Not really.
Because the first thing I feel isn’t pain.
It’s warmth.
Not in the room. Not even in my skin. It’s a memory—of arms like iron wrapped around me, a heartbeat that felt more like a war drum, low and steady and impossibly soothing under that grotesque, lethal exterior.
Aebon.
Damn him.
I sit up too fast. The world spins. The datapad beside the bed blinks to life and shows stable vitals. I ignore it.
My mind’s a minefield.
I tell myself it was shock or gratitude. The aftermath of trauma can do strange things—people bond to their rescuers, cling to familiar touches. It's a textbook. It’s psychological noise.
But my pulse betrays me. It flutters like wings in a bottle.
And just as I’m trying to force it down, the door slides open with a gentle hiss.
He walks in.
Aebon Rexx. Seven feet of calm menace and feral seduction.
Today he’s dressed almost casually—soft black shirt, open at the throat, sleeves rolled to expose forearms etched in scars and shadow.
In one hand, he carries a paper-thin tray with two cups of Vakutan coffee steaming, rich and dark. In the other… flowers.
Not the synthetic kind. Not the diplomatic-bouquet kind. These are real. Hand-cut. Vivid blue and silver, native to Glimner’s southern continent. They smell like stormwinds and crushed sugar.
“You’re awake,” he says, voice honeyed gravel.
I hate how much I like that voice.
“Unfortunately.” My throat is hoarse. I hate that too. “What happened? I remember you saving me, and then we were walking…”
I try to recall what came next, but it’s just blank.
“I was careless,” he growls, his brow knitting into a roadmap of concern. ‘I failed to finish my foes, and one of them nearly…” he shakes his head. “I am glad you are all right. I had one of the Family bonesaws look you over. He said there was no permanent damage.”
“So you carried me here?” I ask.
“Indeed,” he replies. “The Family owns many properties…some registered and some not, if you catch my drift.”
His odd juxtaposition of swaggering gangster and unstoppable rabid beast is getting familiar. Maybe even growing on me. I can’t help but feel gratitude, even as he is clearly riddled with guilt.
“At least I’m not dead,” I say. “Don’t beat yourself up too bad”
He raises a brow, saunters closer, and sets the coffee down first. Then the flowers, angled just right on the side table like he’s staging a holodrama.
“Brought you something,” he murmurs, gesturing lazily.
I give him a look. “Is this supposed to be some kind of apology?”
“No,” he says. “This is me trying not to piss off the woman who files legal injunctions for a living.”
I huff. That damn smile—devilish today, cocked to one side with a flash of teeth. Not all of them human.
I should throw the flowers at him.
I should tell him to leave.
Instead, I take the coffee. The heat sears my palms, and I sip anyway, letting the bitter edge cut through the fog in my head.
He watches me like I’m a puzzle he wants to solve, not break.
“You didn’t have to stay,” I mutter. “Or bring… all this.”
“I didn’t have to take a plasma blast for you either. But here we are.”
I meet his eyes then. Red, simmering, and so goddamn intense. There’s no mockery in them now. Just focus. Hunger, maybe. For what—I’m not brave enough to name.
“It was shock,” I say, mostly to myself.
“Sure.” He leans back in the chair he pulls up, long legs splayed, arms folding like the throne suits him. “Tell yourself that.”
I take another sip, even though I’ve stopped tasting anything but him.
I’m screwed.
His silence stretches long enough that I start to think he might leave without another word. But then, just as I reach for the blanket to shift away, his voice cuts through the air like velvet over a blade.
“I could’ve escaped, you know.”
My hand freezes mid-motion. I blink at him, caught off guard. “What?”
“The Archives. When it went down. That corridor wasn’t locked. The blast panels hadn’t dropped yet. I could’ve phased through the shield before it sealed.”
I stare at him, the full weight of his words hitting like a dropped stone in the pit of my stomach. “But… you didn’t.”
He tilts his head, eyes narrowing slightly. “Because you were there.”
The silence that follows is not empty. It’s thick. Viscous. Pressing against my skin and mind like some kind of invisible pressure front. I can’t breathe around it.
“That’s—” I start, then stop. What do you say to something like that? “That’s insane.”
“Is it?” he asks, calmly, like he’s asking the time. “Or is it the only sane thing I’ve done in a decade?”
I can’t look at him. Not directly. Instead, I focus on the flowers. Still bright, still wild. Too beautiful to be real. Like him.
“That’s not how people like you think,” I whisper.
“People like me?”
I force my gaze to meet his. “You kill people, Aebon. You order executions. Run rackets. I’ve seen the footage. I’ve seen what your boys leave behind. You don’t—”
“—care?” he finishes for me. He’s not angry. Not even defensive. Just… steady. Unapologetic. “You’re wrong.”
“About what?”
He leans in, elbows on knees, voice low. “I care a lot. I just don’t regret. There’s a difference.”
The floor beneath me feels less certain. Like everything’s tilting.
“You risked your life,” I say, “to save mine.”
“I didn’t risk it,” he replies. “I spent it. Deliberately.”
My breath catches.
This is madness.
But then why is my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest?
“You should’ve left me,” I murmur.
“I couldn’t.”
I close my eyes. “Why?”
The pause is long. When he finally speaks, his voice is so raw, I almost don’t recognize it.
“Because you’re the only thing in that whole godsdamn Ministry that isn’t corrupt or bought. And I’ve bled for less noble things.”
I don’t know how to process that. I don’t want to process that. I’ve built my entire life around certainty. Around rules and punishments and the false clarity of law.
But here he is.
This man who maims without blinking, who speaks violence like a native tongue… also shielded me with his own body.
And that contradiction is maddening.
It’s confusing.
It’s all-consuming.
When I finally speak, my voice is barely a breath. “You don’t make sense.”
“I’m not trying to.”
And for once, I believe him.
To sleep, perchance to dream…
Yeah, right.
It starts in silence—like all my worst dreams. No sirens, no gunfire, no trial-room tension. Just a space. Dim. Warm. The kind of warmth that seeps into your marrow and makes you forget what cold ever felt like.
I’m standing in it. I know it’s a dream. I always do. But I don’t care.
Because he’s there.
Aebon.
Not cloaked in gore. Not brandishing weapons. Just… present. Dressed in that black silk shirt again, sleeves rolled to his elbows. He’s leaned back against a pillar that doesn’t exist anywhere I know, smirking like the devil who knows exactly how the story ends.
“Aria,” he says, and the sound of it is ruin.
My name, shaped in his mouth like something sacred and sinful all at once.
I don’t move toward him—but I want to. Gods help me, I want to.
He does, though. One step, then another. Fluid. Slow. His eyes, that impossible molten red, lock onto mine, and it’s like gravity resets. I’m no longer in control of my own axis.
“You dream about me now,” he says. “I should be flattered.”
“I don’t,” I lie, even as heat pools between my thighs.
He smiles, close now. So close I can feel the warmth of his breath ghost along the curve of my jaw. “Liar.”
His voice isn’t loud. It doesn’t need to be. It slides under my skin like velvet-coated wire, tugging at the rawest parts of me. His hand—calloused, massive, not gentle but not cruel—tips my chin up. And his mouth doesn’t take. It claims.
When I wake, the sheets are tangled and damp. My skin slick with sweat, my pulse frantic. I’m flushed. Aching. And ashamed.
The shame burns the worst.
I press the heel of my hand against my mouth like that’ll keep it in. The memory. The need.
It doesn’t.
I bury my face in the pillow and scream.
Quietly. Feral.
Because I’m losing grip on the lines I’ve drawn. The moral walls I’ve built.
And somewhere deep down… I think I want to.