Chapter 3
FREYA
The ship hums like a beast trying to hold its breath.
I swear I can feel the vibration in my molars.
We’ve just dropped into orbit around Storder — at least, that’s what the bridge chatter said as I passed by with my cleaning cart half an hour ago.
Storder. The name's got bite, doesn’t it?
Sounds like a place where bones get broken and left for the moss.
I smooth my palms over my apron, even though it's already flat and starched to high hell. The soft gray cloth sticks a little to my thighs — static from the ship’s recycled air, probably — or nerves. Yeah, probably nerves.
Because of course they assigned me to the conference room.
Not the barracks. Not medbay. Not even Officer’s Lounge Three, where the worst you might overhear is Lieutenant Serrek grumbling about her foot fungus cream going missing again.
No. They want me prepping the room for the negotiations.
The room where Ambassador Kintar and General Rection will sit across from the Reaper warlord.
Vokar.
I don’t even have to pretend I haven’t heard the stories.
They pass around the crew like forbidden candy.
Big as a shuttle door. Strong enough to rip a man in half.
Laughs while he bleeds you. Has an entire moon under his heel, and rumor says he sleeps under the stars like a beast. Others say he reads poetry in six languages and sings his kills into a bone altar.
I mean… probably nonsense. Still. The thought of being in the same air as someone like that? It makes my heart flutter like a caught moth.
I unlock the conference room and push inside, the door hissing open with the usual pneumatic wheeze. It’s cooler in here. Too quiet, too clean. The air’s been ion scrubbed recently; it smells faintly metallic, like hospital-grade antiseptic and silver polish.
My boots echo on the polished floor tiles as I step in. Long, shiny table in the middle, chairs with high backs and the IHC seal embossed in the headrests. Overhead lights set to warm white, though it still feels cold somehow.
I park the cart by the side wall and stare down the lineup of drink dispensers, trays, and glasses. My job’s simple. Serve beverages. Keep things tidy. Don’t trip over your own damn feet and spill hot karka root across an ambassador’s crotch.
I take a breath. I can do this.
I start arranging the glasses — tall, narrow ones for the humans, squat and ridged for the Reapers, who apparently have different jaw structures or something.
One of the science officers once tried to explain it to me.
I didn’t retain a damn word. I was too busy watching how his nose twitched when he talked.
“Okay, Freya,” I mutter, lining up a coaster just so. “Deep breaths. No squeaking. And for the love of all things holy, no staring. Even if he’s got tusks or glowy eyes or whatever.”
My hands are shaking.
God, my hands are shaking.
I frown and press my palms down flat on the cart. The cool metal grounds me for a second. The tremor quiets. But it’s not just nerves — it’s that weird hum again. The subtle vibration that tells you something’s coming. Something big. Something that changes things.
I glance toward the viewport.
Storder looms out there. A pale green marble wreathed in mist and storm bands.
It’s not beautiful — not in the way Earth was, with her cerulean oceans and perfect clouds.
Storder’s got a primal edge to her. Forests that go on forever, broken mountains, dark scars across the equator where meteor storms hit and never healed.
I get it. I get why a man like Vokar would make that place his own.
There’s a strength in things that look ruined but still stand.
I glance down at the tray I’m polishing — an old one, reflective, a little scuffed around the edges.
I catch my own eyes in it. Green. Bright.
Too bright in this sterile light. I look like a ghost wearing skin.
My face is pinched, tired, cheeks a little hollow.
That long blonde braid I spent ten minutes fussing with this morning already looks limp. And my eyes…
God, I hate how uncertain they look.
I shake my head, force a little breath through my nose, and keep polishing. The motion helps. Wax on, wax off, like one of those old martial arts vids the orphans used to sneak.
“Think you’ll go unnoticed like always,” I murmur. “Just a little whisper with a mop. Nobody sees the mop girl.”
But I’m lying to myself and I know it.
Because part of me — the tiny stupid part I try to keep buried in my sock drawer — wants to be seen. Wants one of those terrifying, gorgeous alien warlords to stop mid-sentence, look up, and notice me. Not for the mess I might've made or the way I’m careful and silent, but because he wants to.
Ridiculous. Infantile.
Still.
I wipe another glass with a linen cloth, trying to calm the blush creeping up my neck. My thoughts are spiraling and I don’t have the time. The meeting starts in under an hour and I still haven’t aligned the beverage dispensers or calibrated the temperature for the karka carafe.
Footsteps outside the door snap my head up.
Not heavy enough to be Reaper boots. Probably Kintar’s assistant.
I move fast, grabbing the jug of mineral water and slipping it into the fridge slot to chill it to precisely 9°C — the ambassador’s preference. My hands are steady now, but only because I’m making them be. My stomach’s still a mess of knots.
The door hisses again, just enough to let in the low murmur of military personnel setting up perimeter protocols. I hear Jorko’s voice through the wall — he’s barking at someone about floor wax and boot scuffs. I bite back a smile. He means well, even if he hovers like a broken hoverdrone.
“Almost done,” I whisper to no one, reaching for the last piece — the decanter for the Reaper bloodfruit liquor. It’s thick, syrupy, and smells vaguely like motor oil and cinnamon. It stains like hell. My grip tightens around the crystal handle as I set it on the tray with exaggerated care.
Then I freeze.
Out the viewport…a dot moves across the face of Storder.
A ship.
Sleek, black, and mean-looking. Like a predator in the high atmosphere.
The Reapers have arrived.
And suddenly my palms are sweating again. My legs feel shaky all the way to the reception room. I operate on auto pilot, my instincts taking over. Good thing I’ve done this job a million times.
Still, it’s difficult to do much of anything right now.
I’m gripping the tray like it’s the only thing tethering me to the floor.
My knuckles are white, and I’m positive if I loosen even a millimeter, I’ll drop the whole damn thing — glasses, decanter, bloodfruit syrup and all — straight to the polished deck in front of a warlord.
Because he’s here.
The delegation enters, and the atmosphere shifts like pressure before a storm. It’s not just the sound — though their footsteps hit hard, measured, echoing. It’s presence. Like they bring gravity with them.
Vokar steps in first, and every molecule of air in the room seems to go still.
Sweet stars above.
He’s… huge.
I mean, I knew he would be. I’d heard the rumors, the way soldiers and dock workers talked about him with reverence and fear.
But nothing prepared me for seeing him in person.
Vokar doesn’t walk — he moves, like tectonic plates shifting beneath mountains.
Towering. Broad. The lights overhead catch along the edges of his bone spurs — white and jagged like armor carved from frozen lightning.
His skin is jet-black, not just dark but impossibly matte, like the void between stars. And those red eyes…
They find me.
Like a scope on a rifle. Hot, pinpointed, deliberate.
I swallow. The tray tilts slightly in my grip. One of the glasses clinks.
He stops. Dead center in the doorway. And just stands there, staring.
The others behind him — Reapers in various armor types, some scarred, some regal, all imposing — pause behind him, clearly waiting. But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Just looks at me like I’m the only thing worth noticing in the entire damn galaxy.
Heat climbs my neck, crawling across my cheeks like a shameful brand.
I can’t look away.
I should. But my body won’t obey. My knees are locked. My throat dry.
And the tray — the tray is about to betray me.
He starts toward me.
Three steps and I swear the floor groans under his weight. My breath catches when he closes the distance between us, until he’s towering over me — his massive frame blotting out half the room behind him.
His eyes rake down, slow and invasive, over the line of my braid, the curve of my hips under my apron, the way my hands tremble. I’m wearing the standard-issue jumpsuit, but under that gaze, it may as well be spun glass.
“You’re not Reaper,” he rumbles. His voice is smoke and gravel, low enough that I feel it in my ribs more than I hear it. “You’re not IHC command. You’re… soft.”
His hand moves — fast, but not sudden. His palm lands on my hip, engulfing it. Heat blooms where he touches me, all the way through the cloth. I squeak — an undignified, too-high sound — and nearly drop the tray. One of the glasses wobbles, but I manage to catch it with my wrist.
His grip tightens.
“Whose little toy are you?” he asks, tone almost lazy. But there’s an edge. Like a knife playfully pressed to a throat.
My lips part, but no sound comes out.
“General Rection’s staff are not toys,” Ambassador Kintar snaps from behind him, voice tight. I hadn’t even noticed him walk in. “And I would thank your Excellency not to touch the personnel.”
Vokar doesn’t turn. Doesn’t flinch.
His thumb strokes once along my waist. I shiver. Not from fear. From something worse. Something dangerous.
Possibility.
Then — just like that — he releases me. The absence of his hand feels like ice water dumped down my back.
As he steps past me toward the table, one of his lower bone spurs catches the hem of my dress.
Rrrrrip.
A tearing sound too sharp, too loud in the suddenly silent room.
My skirt splits up the side, the fabric parting like tissue until the waistband of my undergarments flashes stark white against my thigh.
Oh God.
My breath hitches. My hands fly down, trying to pull the fabric closed. But my apron’s too narrow, and the tear’s too long. Heat floods my face. I want to disappear. To fold in on myself and vanish through the floor.
Nobody says anything.
Not Kintar. Not Rection. Not the Reapers.
Vokar turns his head just enough to look at me again. A flicker of something dark in his eyes.
“I see what’s been hidden,” he murmurs. And then he smiles — a slow, razor smile — before taking his seat.
I barely manage to set the tray down without shaking the table. I can’t feel my legs. My hands are still trembling, and my heart is slamming so hard against my ribs it feels like it might leave bruises.
General Rection clears his throat pointedly. “Let’s begin.”
The meeting starts.
I stand to the side, hands clutched behind my back, my face burning. Kintar launches into his usual diplomatic spiel — trade routes, resource allocations, mutual benefit, cultural exchange. His voice is measured and smooth, like he’s practiced it in front of a mirror a hundred times.
But I don’t hear most of it.
I feel him.
Vokar keeps glancing over at me. Not subtle. Not accidental. Like he’s marking me.
I don’t understand it.
I’m no one. I’m a girl with a mop and a busted skirt and scars under her sleeves she won’t show to anyone. I’m not tall or fierce or the kind of beautiful that makes men stop in their tracks.
But he saw me.
And now I can’t look at anyone else.