Chapter 15
JAELA
Iwake with his arm heavy across my waist—golden scales catching the faint pink of dawn filtering through the canvas slats.
The tent is warm, too warm, thick with the scent of sex and blood and metal.
My thighs ache. My throat’s raw. There’s a smudge of dried blood on my shoulder—his or mine, I don’t know.
I should feel safe.
But I don’t.
His breath ghosts over the back of my neck, even and deep. His grip slackens in sleep but still holds. Always holds. Like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.
I slip out from under his arm like I’m defusing a bomb. One inch at a time. I roll off the cot, land barefoot on the warm steel floor, and don’t breathe until I’m out from under him.
The camp’s still asleep. For once, it’s quiet. Just the distant clink of an oil chain swaying in the wind and the occasional low rumble from an engine beast dreaming in its cage.
I move fast.
His clothes are too big on me, but I steal his jacket anyway. Not because I want to smell like him. Because it has knife sheaths sewn into the lining.
I make my way past the outer barracks, ducking between tents, avoiding the patrol routes I memorized the night before.
Kel.
Every time my heart beats, it whispers his name like a metronome.
There’s no time.
I reach the comms tower—if you can even call it that. It’s a graveyard of parts: half a relay dish, a rusted out antenna, broken transmitter plates. I curse under my breath and start sifting.
There has to be something.
I find a busted solar flare transmitter under a pile of junk.
It’s missing a capacitor, but I can rig that.
I’ve done worse with less. My hands work fast, like they remember who I used to be—before diapers and nightmares and nights pacing the floor with a feverish child whispering, “Please, just one more day.”
I gut a defunct power cell, slice the casing, cannibalize a voltage converter from a drone’s targeting rig. I burn my fingers on the heat coil but I don’t stop.
The transmitter blinks.
Alive.
Now I just need range.
I spot one of Kyldak’s scout drones perched on a rigging line, its undercarriage smoking from yesterday’s skirmish. It’s still got flight power.
I jack in the uplink cable.
“Come on, baby. Just hold together long enough to scream.”
I start the upload.
A flicker. A hum.
The message is short. Coded. Buried in a weather ping, masked in static.
SISTER. STATUS: CRITICAL. TREATMENT NEEDED. LOCATION: JURTIK. COORDINATES EMBEDDED.
The drone lights red halfway through.
“Shit.”
“Jaela.”
My heart drops into my feet.
I spin.
Kyldak stands in the shadow of the tower—shirtless, sweat-slick, bruised from the pit fight. His red eye glows faint in the gloom.
“How long have you been—”
“Long enough.”
His voice is quiet. He walks toward me slow, like I’m something wild.
I shift my body between him and the drone.
“Scavenger relay,” I lie. “Old habit. I always scan for tech I can sell.”
He doesn’t blink. “You always rig scavenger relays with solar pulse encryption and Alliance weather codes?”
I open my mouth. Close it.
The upload completes.
The drone lifts off with a whine and vanishes into the haze.
He watches it go.
I brace.
But he doesn’t stop me.
He just stands there, bare-chested, battle-worn, and unreadable.
“Thank you,” I say softly.
He doesn’t move.
After a long moment, he says, “Whatever this is—you can tell me. I’m not the same man they locked up.”
I swallow.
Hard.
My throat burns with everything I want to say—He’s yours. He’s dying. I need your blood to save him.
Instead, I say, “I know.”
And lie.
The sun bleeds out slow across Jurtik’s sky, painting the dunes in bruised orange and ash-gray. Smoke from the engines curls into the air like prayers the gods forgot to answer. I sit alone on the edge of Kyldak’s warcamp, hands raw, nerves shredded, stomach a tight knot of guilt and dread.
But when the drums start—metal on bone, timed with the distant roar of returning scouts—I force myself to stand.
Tonight’s a celebration. A convoy raid came back heavy.
Supplies, water cores, engine fuel, even a half-box of real protein bricks.
A miracle haul for this wasteland. The crew hoots and hollers, passing jars of something that smells like engine degreaser and tastes worse. Laughter echoes off the canyon wall.
And in the middle of it all, him.
Kyldak stands near the main fire pit, shirtless again, warcoat slung loose on his shoulders, armor plating reflecting the flames like shattered gold. His red eye glows dull tonight—less predator, more wounded king.
He sees me the second I step into the light. Doesn’t say anything. Just... softens. Like something in him unclenches when I’m near.
I walk slow, careful, every step feeling like I’m walking toward a cliff’s edge.
He pats the stone beside him.
I sit.
Close. But not close enough to touch.
For a long stretch, we just watch. Warriors drink, slap backs, retell the same stories louder every time.
One of them tries to reenact Kyldak’s pit fight with Riven using two bits of bone and a tent peg.
Everyone howls when he gets the arm-breaking part wrong and nearly knocks himself into the fire.
I expect Kyldak to laugh.
He doesn’t.
He looks up at the stars.
In a low voice I’ve never heard him use before—soft, unarmored—he starts to sing.
The crowd goes still. Like someone hit pause on the entire damn world.
It’s not in Standard. Not even in Alliance-accredited dialects.
Vakutan.
Deep, low-vowelled, rich with grit and echo. Like stone being smoothed by centuries of wind.
The melody is simple. Slow. Something about it hits behind my ribs, like a memory I’ve never had. Warm and dangerous.
And the way he sings...
It’s not the voice he uses when barking orders or breaking bones. It’s not Red Eye. It’s not the monster the war reports painted.
It’s him. The man I met on Earth. The one who slept on the couch because I had nightmares. The one who never touched me without asking first. The one who read medical reports out loud like bedtime stories just to keep me calm.
My throat closes.
He glances at me mid-verse. And doesn’t look away.
He sings the next line like it’s meant for me and me alone.
I forget how to breathe.
My hand curls tight around my thigh. The fire cracks and pops beside us. Someone weeps openly on the far bench. Another mutters a quiet bless him in some dialect I can’t parse.
He finishes the last line. Lets the silence breathe for a beat.
Then the camp erupts.
Cheers, whoops, even a few half-drunken warriors thumping fists to their chests.
Kyldak just sits there, calm and still, like the song pulled something raw out of him and left it at my feet.
I whisper it before I can stop myself.
“He’d be a good father.”
And immediately wish I could rewind time and chew my own tongue off.
I flinch. Eyes wide.
Kyldak doesn’t react—not right away.
But he turns. Slowly. Looks at me with that unreadable face of his, the firelight dancing across his golden skin and glowing eye.
“What was that?” he asks.
I fake a cough. “Said you got a good voice.”
His gaze lingers. Too long.
I don’t blink. Don’t dare.
After a moment, he nods once, just barely, like he’s filing something away. Storing it for later.
Then he leans in. And kisses me.
Not rough. Not needy. Not like the night before when we broke against each other like waves on jagged rocks.
This one’s... reverent. Careful.
Like I’m something sacred. Something breakable. Something he doesn’t trust himself to want this much.
I melt against him before I can stop it. His hand slides up my back, the pads of his fingers finding the bare skin under the jacket I stole. Our mouths move together like we never stopped. Like the time between Earth and here was just a bad dream we both woke up from.
When we part, I can still taste him—salt and ash and blood and fire.
My chest heaves.
He touches my cheek with the backs of his knuckles, eye searching mine for something I hope to hell he doesn’t find.
I drop my gaze.
Can’t hold it. Not now. Not when the lie’s choking me from the inside.
He watches me.
Says nothing.
But his jaw tightens. His fingers twitch like they’re resisting the urge to grab me, shake the truth out of my throat.
He knows something’s wrong.
I feel it in the air between us.
But he doesn’t press.
He pulls me closer until I can feel the heat radiating from his massive body.
Kyldak’s shoulders are a landscape of golden scales, each one catching the light like a small, angry sun.
Where the blast took parts of him, the replacement prosthetics are a different rhythm—matte alloy and jointed filaments that flex when he breathes.
I can see the scar where his left eye used to be, the ridge of healed tissue and the faint web of silver that hints at the trauma beneath.
His remaining red eye—so alien, so bright—studies me the way a hunter studies wind: looking for something it recognizes and calculating whether to move.
“You’re shaking,” he says softly, his voice a low rumble in his chest. It vibrates through me like a bassline.
“Not from the cold.” My answer is a whisper and the lie tastes metallic in my mouth.
He laughs—short, incredulous. “Always evasive with words. You learn that on Earth?” He smiles, so small and private I almost forget how enormous he is.
“I learned it on patients.” I try a teasing edge because I don’t want him to see the quaver under the surface. “You’d be surprised—humans hide everything with small talk.”
Kyldak’s gloved fingers—augmented pads that mimic skin—trail down my arm, then settle at the hem of my shirt where the jacket has slipped. He pauses like he’s checking the world, then his thumb brushes the soft curve of my hip. Electricity sparks behind my ribs.
“Tell me then,” he says, “what are you hiding, Jaela?”