Chapter 6
Cullen
The jungle wanted to kill us.
That became clear within the first hour of our trek.
Every step was a battle—against the vegetation that grew so thick it formed walls, against the heat that pressed down like a physical weight, against the humidity that made every breath feel like drowning.
Sweat soaked through my shirt within minutes and never stopped.
My shoulders ached from swinging the crude machete I'd fashioned from a piece of the ship's hull plating.
It wasn't much—just a length of metal I'd bent and sharpened against stone until it had something resembling an edge—but it was enough to hack through the vines and branches that blocked our path.
Serna had one too, and she wielded it with the effortlessness of someone who'd trained with bladed weapons her entire life.
Every swing was precise, economical. No wasted movement.
I tried to match her pace, but Christ, it was hard.
The terrain was uneven, roots and rocks hidden beneath layers of rotting vegetation.
The air was thick with the smell of decay and growing things, and every surface was slick with moisture.
Insects swarmed around us in clouds, biting any exposed skin they could find.
We'd loaded up with what we could carry from the ship—two blasters, a survival kit with water and rations for three days, a med kit, and a scanner Serna found that could test whether local water and plant life were safe to consume. It wasn't much. It wasn't a vacation. But it was survivable.
That's what I kept telling myself. Survivable.
We moved in silence for the most part, saving our breath for the work of cutting through the jungle. But after a few hours, when we stopped to rest and drink from our dwindling water supply, I found myself watching her.
She sat on a fallen log, her dark hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, her chest rising and falling with exertion. But her expression was distant, her gaze fixed on something I couldn't see. She'd been like that since we'd buried Kalipuk—present but not quite here, her mind somewhere else.
I knew that look. I'd worn it myself often enough.
"Serna," I said quietly.
She blinked and looked at me, and I saw her pull herself back to the present with visible effort.
"I'm sorry," I said. "About Chavon. I know I said it before, but... I know what it's like. To lose someone. To have to keep moving when all you want to do is stop and fall apart."
Her expression softened slightly, though the grief didn't leave her eyes. "Thank you, Cullen. That means more than you know."
I hesitated, then pushed forward. "When my wife died, I thought I'd never be able to function again. But you do. You keep going because you have to. Because people are counting on you. It doesn't make it easier, but... you're not alone in it."
She studied me for a long moment, her golden eyes searching my face. "Your wife," she said quietly. "What happened to her?"
The question shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. Maybe because no one had asked me about Catherine in years. Most people who knew me knew the story, and those who didn't know better than to bring it up.
But Serna wasn't most people.
I took a breath and let it out slowly. "Her name was Catherine. I met her when I was finishing my Navy SEAL training—she was a nurse at the base hospital. She was beautiful and bright and funny, and she... she didn't take any of my shit."
A faint smile tugged at my lips despite the ache in my chest.
"Most women I met back then either wanted nothing to do with a guy in the military, or they romanticized it—thought it was all heroism and glory.
Catherine saw right through me. She told me I was an arrogant asshole who thought he was invincible, and if I didn't get my head out of my ass, I was going to get myself killed. "
"She sounds wise," Serna said, and there was the ghost of a smile on her face.
"She was. She was the smartest, toughest, most no-nonsense woman I'd ever met." I paused, the smile fading. "She died over ten years ago. Cancer. It was... fast. Too fast. One day she was fine, and six months later she was gone."
I looked out at the alien landscape around us—the twisted trees, the strange sky, the pale green sky that told me I was light-years from Earth.
"You know what the really fucked up part is?
You have medical technology that could've cured her in an afternoon.
Cancer is nothing out here. It's like... like treating a cold back on Earth."
The bitterness in my voice surprised even me.
"I watched her waste away. Watched the chemo destroy her almost as fast as the disease.
Watched her lose her hair, her strength, her hope.
She was in so much pain at the end that she begged me to...
" I stopped, my throat tight. "And the whole time, somewhere out here in the galaxy, was technology that could've saved her with a fucking scan. "
Serna's eyes found mine, sad and empathetic.
"It makes her death feel like such a waste," I continued, the words pouring out now. "Like she died because humanity was too primitive, too isolated, too ignorant to know there was help out there. If I'd known then what I know now..." I shook my head.
Serna's expression shifted, sympathy and understanding flooding her features. "I'm so sorry, Cullen."
"Yeah. Me too." I looked down at my hands, at the dirt and blood caked under my nails. "The worst part is, I don't think I was a good husband. I was gone too much. Always deploying, always chasing the next mission."
The words came out harder than I'd intended, rough with guilt I'd carried for a decade.
"When she got sick, I tried to be there. I took leave, I stayed by her side, but by then it was too late. Not just for her—for us. I'd spent so many years putting the job first that I didn't know how to be what she needed. And then she was gone, and I never got the chance to make it right."
Silence settled between us, heavy with shared grief.
"You carry that guilt," Serna said softly. It wasn't a question.
"Every day." I met her gaze. "I tell myself she knew I loved her, that she understood, but... I don't know if that's true or if it's just what I need to believe to keep going."
Serna was quiet for a moment, her expression thoughtful. Then she said, "I carry guilt too. About Chavon."
I waited, giving her space to continue.
"He wasn't my true mate," she continued, and there was something raw in her voice, something vulnerable I'd rarely heard from her.
"We were a political match. An alliance between families.
We were friends—good friends. We had children together, built a life together.
I loved him, but I never loved him the way a mate should be loved.
Our hearts never beat in sync the way true mates do. "
She looked away, toward the dense jungle around us as though trying to make out what hid in the shadows.
"The female you saw at the funeral—Ilayta.
She was Chavon's true mate. The one he should have been with.
But he was already bound to me by custom and politics, and true mates can't fully bond if one is already mated to another in our laws.
So they loved each other from a distance, and I... I was the obstacle between them."
"That wasn't your fault," I said immediately. "You didn't choose that situation."
"No. But I benefited from it. I became Prime because of that marriage, because of the alliances it created.
And Chavon spent his entire life bound to someone who could never give him what he truly needed.
" Her voice cracked slightly. "I hadn't even seen him in seven years before he fell ill.
Seven years, Cullen. Our lives had become so separate, so divided by duty and distance. He deserved better. They both did."
I moved closer, closing the distance between us. "You can't carry that, Serna. You did what you had to do. What your position demanded. That doesn't make you responsible for his happiness."
"Doesn't it?" She looked at me, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "I knew what I was taking from him. I knew, and I did it anyway because duty demanded it. Because the Alliance needed it. How is that any different from what you did—putting duty before the people you love?"
The parallel hit me like a punch to the gut. She was right. We were both carrying the same burden—the weight of choices made in service to something larger than ourselves, choices that had cost us the people we cared about.
"Maybe it's not different," I admitted. "Maybe we're both guilty of the same thing. But that doesn't mean we have to keep punishing ourselves for it."
"Don't we?" Her voice was barely a whisper.
I reached out and took her hand, feeling the warmth of her skin against mine. "No. We don't. Because at some point, we have to forgive ourselves. We have to accept that we did the best we could with what we knew at the time. And we have to let ourselves... move forward."
She looked down at our joined hands, then back up at me. "Is that what you've done? Moved forward?"
"I'm trying." The words felt inadequate, but they were true.
"For the last year, I thought Chloe was dead." The words came out rough, scraping against my throat like broken glass. "I thought my daughter was gone, and it almost completely broke me. There were days I couldn't get out of bed. Days I couldn't remember why I was supposed to keep breathing."
Serna's hand tightened around mine, but she didn't speak. She just listened.
"It was one of the reasons I agreed to come to space, to work with you," I continued.
"I needed something different. Something other than grief.
Something that would force me to think about anything except the empty space where she used to be.
" I swallowed hard. "And then I found out she was alive.
That she'd been alive this whole time. And it meant everything, Serna. Everything."