The warlord doesn’t need to be told twice. He’s already charging, his warriors flowing in his wake, tearing through the gap she created.
I push up from my dive, and the wound in my ribs screams protest. Blood soaks through my ruined shirt, hot and wet. The edges of my vision blur.
Not now. Not yet.
Polly’s rifle thunders above me, keeping the elites back, buying Henrok time. I grab a fallen grenade, throw it blind toward a cluster of Meridian soldiers, and the explosion buys another three seconds.
The charges. We have to reach the charges.
I’m halfway to my feet when the fortress speakers crackle to life.
The sound that blasts through the generator chamber is—
There is no word for it.
No, that’s not true. There are words.Terribleis a word.Screechyis a word.Assault on the eardrums of any sentient being with functioning auditory systemsis a phrase.
That song. Thatgods-forsakensong.
The one she played on the Pink Slip during our first flight, volume cranked to maximum, while I tried to maintain diplomatic composure and failed so spectacularly that she caught me wincing.
Fringe pop at its absolute worst—upbeat, chaotic, synthesized within an inch of its life, sung by someone who appeared to believe that enthusiasm could substitute for talent.
It blasts through the speakers at a volume that makes my enhanced hearinghurt, and the effect on the Meridian forces is immediate.
Their comms collapse into chaos. The frequency overlap shreds their coordination, turns their perfectly synchronized assault into a scattered mess of soldiers shouting at each other, clutching their helmets, completely unable to hear orders over the sonic catastrophe pouring through every speaker in the sector.
I know immediately.
Her.
Through the bond: fierce satisfaction. Tactical brilliance wrapped in chaotic joy.Zip’s hooked into their comms frequency. Thought they could use some culture.
She weaponized terrible music.
Sheweaponized terrible music.
I’m bleeding. I’m exhausted. I’m standing in a war zone surrounded by death, and she’s just crashed the enemy’s communications network with a song so bad I once seriously considered the merits of deafness.
I laugh.
It hurts. Everything hurts. But I laugh anyway, because this is so perfectly, impossibly,wonderfullyPolly that I cannot do anything else.
And somewhere in that laugh, somewhere between the pain and the chaos and the terrible, terrible music, something crystallizes.
I hate this song. I have always hated this song.
But right now, hearing it blast through a generator chamber while Meridian elites stumble around like confused children, unable to coordinate because a Fringe courier decided to turn their own frequencies against them with the worst pop song in three sectors—
I love it.
I loveher.
Not because the bond demands it. Not because my biology imprinted on her scent and declared her mine. Not because ancient Valorian instincts recognized her as mate.
I love her because she’s brilliant. Because she’s chaotic. Because she uses music as a weapon and flies like she’s dancing with death and refuses—refuses—to let me face anything alone.
I would choose her without the bond.
