Chapter 6
TATEK
Iknow something is wrong before I have language for it.
It starts as pressure—low, constant, like the station’s artificial gravity has been dialed a fraction too high.
My awareness stretches ahead of me without conscious intent, mapping corridors before we reach them, cataloging sounds that haven’t yet occurred.
I register a raised voice two levels down, a lift arriving late, the subtle harmonic distortion in the lighting grid that tells me maintenance rerouted power less than an hour ago.
None of that is unusual.
What is unusual is that I feel her react to it too.
Mara doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t even glance up, but her shoulders tighten a breath before a group of civilians spills out of a side passage, loud and careless and too close.
She shifts left automatically, and I shift with her, our steps syncing without discussion.
The sensation hits me like a physical thing—recognition, mirrored and instantaneous.
I do not like it.
Vakutan discipline teaches us to separate instinct from emotion, to interrogate impulse before allowing it authority. This—whatever this is—doesn’t ask permission. It moves through me like a current, anticipatory and intimate, and it is accelerating.
That is not possible.
Jalshagar forms slowly. Years of proximity. Ritual acknowledgment. Mutual alignment under controlled conditions. It does not ignite in days. It does not sharpen perception to the point where I can taste the copper of Mara’s anxiety before she names it herself.
I slow my pace deliberately.
She notices immediately.
“You’re brooding again,” she says, glancing back over her shoulder. “Try not to look like you’re calculating the structural weaknesses of the floor. People get nervous.”
“I am not brooding.”
She snorts. “Sure. And I’m not being escorted through a civilian district by an Alliance commander who looks like he’s one inconvenience away from starting a war.”
“That is inaccurate.”
“Uh-huh.” She gestures ahead with two fingers. “Market’s through here. If Jax is still on-station, he’ll be nearby.”
My focus snaps to the name before I can stop it.
“Jax,” I repeat.
She nods, distracted, scanning the crowd. “Jax Ren. Used to run procurement audits for off-books humanitarian shipments. He knows how to make things disappear without actually losing them. Or how to find things people have tried very hard to erase.”
I don’t respond. I don’t trust my voice.
The civilian district is a controlled chaos of color and noise—fabric stalls hung with shimmering polymer cloth, food vendors venting spiced steam into recycled air, music bleeding from mismatched speakers.
It smells like oil and citrus and overheated circuitry.
My senses strain, sharpened past utility into something almost painful.
And then I see him.
He sees her at the same moment.
“Mara?” His voice cuts through the din, warm and surprised, and before I can reposition, he’s already moving toward us. Tall. Confident. Too familiar in the way he says her name, like it’s something he’s tasted before.
She smiles.
It is not the smile she gives me.
It’s looser. Easier. The kind that carries history I am not part of.
“Jax,” she says, genuine pleasure lighting her expression. “I didn’t know you were still hopping stations.”
“Wasn’t planning to,” he replies, pulling her into a brief hug. “But the universe hates a straight line.”
My hands curl before I realize I’ve moved them.
The contact is brief. Innocent. And yet something in my chest flares hot and sharp, an instinctive rejection so strong it startles me. My posture stiffens, every muscle coiling as if preparing for impact.
This—this—is not tactical.
Jealousy is not a Vakutan concept. We are taught possession only in terms of duty and protection, never desire. And yet as his hand lingers at her shoulder a second too long, something ugly and territorial twists through me, demanding proximity, demanding claim.
“Relax, Commander,” she says lightly. “I don’t kiss and conspire at the same time.”
Jax laughs. “You pick up a bodyguard or something?”
“I pick up trouble,” she replies. “He just follows.”
I don’t laugh.
I step closer instead, my presence deliberate, unmissable. Jax’s gaze flicks to me, reassessing. Measuring.
“Commander,” he says, respectful now. Cautious. “Didn’t mean any offense.”
“None taken,” I answer. My voice is even. Cold. “Your business with her?”
Jax lifts a brow, glancing at Mara. “Still sharp, I see.”
“Still alive,” she says. “Which is why I’m asking you a question.”
They talk shop then—quiet, quick exchanges layered with implication. I listen without interrupting, but my attention keeps sliding back to the space between them, the ease of their familiarity. It shouldn’t matter. It does.
When Jax finally gives them a lead—an encrypted node, a name whispered like a secret—the tension eases marginally. He squeezes her shoulder once before stepping back.
“Be careful,” he says. “You’re stirring things that don’t like being stirred.”
She smiles, softer this time. “When have I ever been careful?”
When he’s gone, the air feels different. Thinner.
We walk in silence for several meters before she speaks.
“You’re glaring holes in the bulkheads,” she says. “Care to share what that was about?”
“I was assessing a variable.”
She stops. Turns to face me fully.
“No,” she says quietly. “You weren’t.”
The truth sits heavy and undeniable between us.
“I am… adjusting,” I admit.
Her eyes search mine, something vulnerable flickering there. “To what?”
“To you.”
The words feel dangerous the moment they leave my mouth.
Later—back in the quiet of her quarters, the door sealed, the noise of the district reduced to a distant hum—she sits on the edge of the bed, hands clasped tight enough to whiten her knuckles.
“I’m scared,” she says.
Not dramatic. Not pleading. Just fact.
“Of death?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. I’ve made my peace with that.” She swallows. “I’m scared of being erased. Of vanishing so completely that it’s like I never existed.”
I move closer without thinking.
“If I disappear,” she continues, voice steady but thin, “I want someone who remembers me for who I am. Not who they turned me into on paper.”
The room feels impossibly small.
I reach out.
Just once.
My fingertips brush hers.
The contact is electric—sharp, grounding, unmistakable. She doesn’t pull away.
And in that moment, with the station humming around us and the universe pressing close, I know with absolute clarity:
The bond is real.
And she feels it too.