Cooper pushes back from the table. “This is a mistake that will haunt you forever.”
“Maybe. But it’s my mistake to make.”
As the councilor storms out, muttering about emergency communications to Earth, I turn to my senior staff. “You have your orders. And if anyone asks, this was my decision alone.”
“Captain,” Williams says with a grin. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing.”
“Even if it kills me?”
“Especially then. Better to die fighting than live as someone else.”
The briefing room empties, leaving me alone with Zylthar. He stands by the viewport, silhouetted against the stars, and for a moment, he looks like something out of a fairy tale—beautiful and otherworldly and slightly unreal.
“Are you afraid?” I ask.
“Terrified,” he admits. “The joining is sacred to my people, but it’s also dangerous. Not everyone survives the process.”
“What are the odds?”
“Unknown. It’s been centuries since the last recorded attempt.”
I move to stand beside him, close enough to sense the warmth radiating from his skin. “Then I guess we’ll find out together.”
He turns to face me, and I see tears gleaming in his lilac eyes. “Selena, you don’t understand what you’re risking. The joining doesn’t just connect minds—it merges souls. You would carry part of me inside you forever, and I would carry part of you.”
“That doesn’t sound so terrible.”
“Even if it means leaving humanity behind? The joined are no longer truly one species or the other. We would be something new, something that belongs fully to neither world.”
I reach out and touch his hand, feeling the familiar electric jolt of contact. This time, I don’t pull away.
“Zylthar, in the last three years, I’ve spent every Christmas alone in deep space, commanding a station full of people who look to me for strength I’m not sure I have. I’ve made peace with solitude, with duty, with the possibility that I might die out here without ever knowing what it feels like to truly belong somewhere.”
His fingers tighten around mine. “And now?”
“Now I’m standing next to someone who makes me feel like home might be a person instead of a place.” I smile, surprising myself with how steady my voice sounds. “If that’s what the artifact showed me, real or not, I’m grateful for it.”
“The joining ritual requires...” He swallows hard. “Complete physical intimacy. The merger happens at the moment of climax, when our psychic barriers are lowest.”
Heat rises in my cheeks, but I don’t look away. “I understand.”
“Do you?” His voice drops to a whisper. “Because once we begin, there’s no going back. Your thoughts will be mine, mine will be yours. Every secret, every memory, every fear and hope and dream—all of it shared.”
“Zylthar.”
“Yes?”
“Shut up and show me how to save my station.”
For the first time since I’ve known him, Zylthar smiles—really smiles, not the diplomatic expression he wears like armor. It transforms his entire face, making him look younger and more vulnerable and absolutely devastating.
“As you wish, Captain.”
Through the viewport, the spatial distortion continues growing, but for the first time since this crisis began, I know something other than fear.
I feelhope.
CHAPTER 6
