Chapter 3
JAELA
The prosthetic recalibration interface is blinking at me like it wants to pick a fight.
“No, you smug little bastard,” I mutter, tapping the edge of the console with my stylus. “We’re doing this my way.”
The system beeps a protest. I override it, code sliding under my fingers in smooth, efficient strokes. The Alzhon patient I’m adjusting this for has four knees and the patience of a hornet, so I’ve got to get this kinetic script right or I’ll be dodging angry chitin limbs for the rest of the week.
It’s not working.
Not the code. The distraction.
I shove back from the workstation and exhale hard. My breath fogs the panel, which is a stupid thing because it's climate-controlled and shouldn’t fog at all. But here we are. Fogging and flustered like a rookie tech on her first trauma rotation.
Because I can’t stop thinking about the way Kyldak said my name.
Like it tasted wrong in his mouth, but he still wanted another bite.
Damn him.
I turn away from the console and head toward Bay Four. Talia’s session is next. She’s fifteen, fused spine, recent cybernetic install. Sweet kid, all legs and bright eyes and a stubborn streak that makes her refuse to use her walker even when she’s clearly hurting. We get along.
She’s already waiting when I get there, perched awkwardly on the edge of the medbed like it’s going to bite her.
“Morning, Talia,” I chirp. “You planning to walk or are we staging a dramatic fainting spell today?”
She grins, but it’s a little forced. “Depends. Will there be snacks?”
“Only if you count dignity as a snack.”
She snorts. I help her up, guide her through her weight shifting protocol, tweak her spinal stim thresholds. We banter. We laugh. But my head’s somewhere else.
Somewhere golden and angry and tall enough to blot out the damn sun.
“Is it true?” Talia asks mid-drill, voice a little breathless. “That you’re working with a Vakutan?”
I blink. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Rumors,” she says. “And one of the nurses said you came out of his room looking like you’d seen a ghost. Or punched one.”
I sigh. “That’s not far off.”
“Is he huge?”
“Yes.”
“Scary?”
“Depends on your definition.”
“Yours.”
I pause. “He’s intense. And very loud. Also stubborn. Very, very stubborn.”
She giggles. “Sounds like your type.”
“Focus on your rehab, you little gremlin.”
After her session, I file records, calibrate a neural scanner, fix a brace for a bored Alzhon who keeps trying to use his fourth elbow to text while in motion—which is just as bad as it sounds—and somehow, through all of it, my thoughts keep sliding back to one particular image.
Kyldak, upright.
Kyldak, focused.
Kyldak, smirking like he’s got secrets he intends to use against me.
I hate it. I really do.
So when 0600 ticks around again, I stride into the session room expecting another storm. Another fight. Maybe a tray thrown at my head for old time’s sake.
Instead, I freeze in the doorway.
He’s already there.
Standing.
Not steady, but not slumped either. His cybernetic leg is engaged, weight distributed unevenly but purposefully. His balance algorithm is compensating, which means he’s been practicing. A lot.
He’s also shaved. And wearing a shirt. A tight one. I look away too quickly and then immediately hate myself for it.
“You’re early,” I say, because it’s the only thing my traitor brain lets out.
“I’m Vakutan,” he replies coolly. “We’re never late. You’re just human and slow.”
I raise a brow. “Did you come here to train or flirt with death?”
He shrugs one thick shoulder. “Depends. Are you finally going to kill me?”
I smirk and circle around him. “No. That would be too easy.”
His gaze tracks me as I grab the resistance bands and start setting up. I can feel the weight of it on my back—heavy, scorching, unblinking.
“You look... rested,” I say without looking at him.
“I dreamt of war,” he replies, voice low and gravelly. “And woke up with your voice still echoing in my skull.”
I pause. Just for a breath. Then I toss the bands at him, and he catches them with a grunt.
“Yeah, well, my voice tends to haunt the wounded. Comes with the job.”
He chuckles. “You wear cruelty like armor.”
“No,” I say, stepping close. “I wear professionalism like armor. Cruelty is just the color I paint it.”
We start the drills. I walk him through balance exercises, basic strength conditioning. He obeys, mostly, with little grumbles and muttered swears in a language I don’t know but absolutely want to learn just so I can yell back.
At some point, we’re moving together—me bracing his back while he shifts weight, him gripping my wrist when his core wobbles. It’s technical. It’s rehab.
But it’s also not.
Because every time I touch him, he stiffens like it matters. Like I matter. And every time he looks at me, there’s something in his eye that makes my stomach flip.
“Shift right,” I say, brushing his hip. “Engage core.”
“Touch me again and I’ll think you like me.”
I don’t flinch. “If I liked you, I’d be laughing right now.”
“I don’t hear you laughing.”
I bite back the grin and push against his shoulder. “You’re not that funny.”
He shifts wrong. The leg slips.
I react fast—years of training making my arms move before my brain does. I catch him, hard and fast, braced against his chest, his hand grabbing my waist as we stumble together.
He’s warm. So warm.
We’re breathing hard. Inches apart. His scaled chest rising under my palm. His eye locked on mine.
“I don’t need saving,” he growls.
“I didn’t save you,” I murmur. “I stabilized you.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. I feel it like a pulse.
Then I step back. Just a little too quickly. I turn around to grab the next drill, hiding my face.
“Back to work, soldier,” I call over my shoulder.
I hear the smirk in his voice before he says it.
“Yes, Commander.”
And damned if I don’t smile.
There’s a metallic tang in the back of my throat I can’t quite swallow down.
Even after scrubbing my hands, my palms still smell like his sweat.
Sharp, earthy, tinged with the faint ozone crackle of power cells and exertion.
I’ve worked with plenty of cybernetic patients—hell, I’ve had clients cough blood on me mid-stretch—but none of them linger like Kyldak does. Not in the room. Not in my head.
I punch the access panel to my apartment and kick off my shoes like they insulted me. The place is a cramped, boxy rental with exposed conduits and exactly one working vent that sounds like it’s coughing up bolts. But it’s mine. Mostly. The lights hum awake.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I flick on the holoterminal. My sister picks up on the second ring.
“Jaela!” Vira sings, lounging somewhere tropical if the glint of sunlight on her shades is anything to go by. “Still alive? Or have the cyber-vets finally staged a coup?”
I groan and flop onto the couch. “Barely. One of them tried to kill me with his charisma today.”
“Ooooh?” She perks up instantly. “Do tell.”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. That tone? That’s your ‘I’m secretly turned on and annoyed about it’ tone.”
I glare at her pixelated smirk. “I don’t have that tone.”
“You so do.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “It’s nothing. I’ve been assigned to a high-priority case. Vakutan male. War vet. Classic overcompensation. Big scales, bigger temper. He’s a logistical nightmare wrapped in titanium and trauma.”
“So basically your dream man.”
I make a strangled noise. “Vira, I swear—”
She holds up her hands. “Hey, no judgment! Some people like fluff. You like scars and towering rage monsters with daddy issues.”
I throw a pillow through the holo. It passes right through her head.
She cackles. “Wait, wait—tell me about the tension. Is it growly? Is it smoldery?”
“It’s professional,” I snap.
She fake-gasps. “He’s not smoldering at you?”
“He tried to kill me with a tray yesterday.”
“Foreplay.”
“Oh my god.”
“Jaela. Sweetie. Sis.” She leans in like she’s delivering state secrets. “Please tell me you’re at least thinking about climbing him like a jungle gym.”
I hang up on her.
I mean to, anyway. Instead, I just slam the mute button and stare at the dark screen, her frozen laughing face stuck mid-giggle.
And I do think about it.
About the way his eye tracked me today, like he was learning the map of my body for future battle. About the way his breath hitched—not when he stumbled, but when I caught him. The heat in that tiny space between us, like if we both inhaled too hard, we’d end up kissing out of sheer accident.
I curse under my breath and head to my workshop.
Sleep’s not happening. Might as well build something.
By the time I reach the rehab wing the next morning, I’m jittery from caffeine and my fingers are nicked from soldering. But I’m holding the result of my insomnia in one hand.
A stability bar—recalibrated to his specs. Taller grip height, flexible core, internal resistance compensator. The grips are textured with carbon filament to account for his clawed hands. I even stenciled a Vakutan insignia along the side, though I won’t tell him that.
When I step into the training room, he’s already there.
Early again.
I freeze.
He’s at the far end, stretching. Shirtless. Of course.
His back is a map of scar tissue and cybernetic seams, the gold of his scales glinting where synthetic plating ends. One shoulder is tense, twitching slightly, but he doesn’t falter.
“Looking for a mirror?” I call out, trying not to let my voice crack.
He glances back, unbothered. “You brought a stick.”
“It’s a bar,” I correct. “To help you not eat the floor during lateral motion.”
“I don’t need it.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, fine. I’ll use it.”
His smirk fades when I slide into stance. I grip the bar overhead and shift into a one-leg squat, slow and deliberate. The bar wobbles slightly—damn, I am tired—but I hold.
He watches. No snark. Just quiet focus.
I finish and toss him the bar. He catches it.
“Your balance is shit,” I inform him.
“So fix it.”
And then we’re moving again. Together. Like yesterday but tighter. More fluid. He mirrors my stances, his bar never dropping. Our eyes meet often—not on purpose, not really—but each time it jolts something in my chest.
Eventually, we collapse on the side bench. Breathing heavy. Silent.
Softly, like it’s been scraped raw before reaching his throat—he asks, “Why do you do this?”
I look at him. Really look.
“My dad was a soldier,” I say. “Ground unit. Took shrapnel during recon. Got new legs but… no support. Nobody helped him adjust. Nobody cared. He… didn’t make it.”
Kyldak says nothing. Doesn’t move.
I shift. “So I do this. So no one else has to disappear the way he did.”
He still doesn’t speak. But when he sits, it’s slower. Calmer. Less fury in the movement.
Like he’s hearing me, even if he’s not ready to respond.