Chapter 2 #3
God, I could still see her so clearly. The way she'd looked at me that first time in the coffee shop near the base—skeptical, amused, completely unimpressed by the uniform or the swagger I'd thought was charm.
She'd called me out on my bullshit within five minutes, and I'd fallen for her right then.
Twenty-three years we'd had together. Twenty-three years of her laugh in the kitchen while she made terrible coffee, of her hand finding mine in the dark when nightmares from deployment woke me at 3 AM, of her voice on the phone saying "come home safe" every single time I left.
She'd been my anchor. The one who grounded me when the violence and chaos of Navy operations threatened to consume everything human in me.
When she got sick—when the cancer started eating her alive from the inside—I'd watched her fight with the same fierce stubbornness she'd brought to everything else.
And when she finally let go, when she'd squeezed my hand one last time and whispered "it's okay, you can let me go now," it had felt like losing half of myself.
That love had been real. Deep. The kind you built a life on, brick by brick, year by year. Steady. Certain. Safe.
But this—whatever this was with Serna—was nothing like that.
This was a wildfire. This was standing too close to an explosion and feeling the shockwave hit your chest before the sound reaches your ears.
When I looked at Catherine, I'd seen home.
Stability. When I looked at Serna, I saw annihilation.
I saw the kind of need that didn't ask permission, didn't follow logic, didn't care about consequences.
It bypassed every rational thought and went straight to something primal and terrifying in my chest—something that wanted to claim her, possess her, lose myself so completely in her that I'd forget where I ended and she began.
And that scared the hell out of me.
Because I'd loved Catherine with my whole heart, but I'd never felt this—this consuming hunger that made my hands shake when Serna was near.
This electric charge that ran through me every time she said my name.
This absolute certainty that if I let myself have her, really have her, I would never be the same.
I would be fundamentally altered. Unmade and remade into something I might not recognize.
With Catherine, I'd been a better version of myself. With Serna, I wouldn't be myself at all. I'd be hers. Completely. Irrevocably.
The distinction terrified me because it felt like a betrayal—of Catherine's memory, of the life we'd built, of the man I'd been with her.
How could I feel something this intense, this all-consuming, when what I'd had with Catherine had been real love?
What did it say about me that I could want someone this badly, this desperately, when I'd already had my great love story?
But sitting there in the dark, feeling my heart race just from the memory of Serna's hair falling loose, I had to face the truth.
These weren't the same thing. What I'd felt for Catherine had been love—deep, abiding, the kind that built families and weathered storms. What I felt for Serna was something else entirely.
Something older. More primal. The kind of pull that didn't care about logic or propriety or the careful life you'd constructed.
And that was exactly why it could never happen.
She was the Prime. Not just a leader—the leader.
Billions of beings across hundreds of worlds looked to her for guidance, for strength, for the kind of unwavering certainty that held civilizations together.
Her position demanded absolute dedication.
It demanded sacrifice. I'd watched her bury a mate she'd never truly loved because duty required it.
I'd seen her stand at that funeral with perfect composure while her heart broke for the woman who should have had him.
I'd heard the exhaustion in her voice when she admitted she didn't know how to be anything but the Prime anymore.
And I was supposed to what—add to that burden? Become another complication in a life already stretched too thin?
The Council was already questioning her judgment because of her family connections to humans.
They were using her daughter-in-law and grandson as evidence that she was compromised, that her personal feelings were clouding her leadership.
What would they say if she took a human mate?
Not just any human—a temporary observer from Earth with no political standing, no family connections, no strategic value whatsoever.
They'd tear her apart. They'd use it as proof that she'd lost perspective, that Earth's influence had corrupted her judgment.
Every decision she made would be scrutinized through that lens.
Every policy regarding human integration would be dismissed as favoritism.
Her enemies—and she had plenty—would have exactly the ammunition they needed to undermine her authority.
I couldn't do that to her. Wouldn't.
So I would maintain distance. I would be professional.
Respectful. Competent. Whatever she needed me to be in my official capacity.
I would not touch her again. Would not let myself imagine what her skin would feel like under my hands, what sounds she'd make if I kissed that spot where her neck met her shoulder, what it would be like to wake up next to her and see her face in the morning light.
I would not let myself want what I couldn't have.
Honor demanded sacrifice. Always had. I'd learned that in the Navy, had it beaten into me through years of service and loss. Sometimes doing the right thing meant giving up what you wanted most. Sometimes it meant walking away from the person who made you feel alive for the first time in a decade.
Sometimes it meant sitting alone in the dark, feeling your heart break, and accepting that this was how it had to be.
It was the only honorable choice.