Just sits there, across from me, breathing hard. His chest rises and falls like he just sprinted a mile in fifty pounds of gear. His eyes—those impossible gold eyes—are locked on mine.
We’re not in battle anymore.
We’re in something else.
Something worse.
Or maybe better.
The Meld is gone but I stillfeelhim. Not his thoughts, but the echo of them. His presence is like gravity in my bones, some magnetic pull in my chest that won't let go.
“...You okay?” he asks.
His voice is quieter than usual. Not cocky, not joking. Just… careful.
Like he knows one wrong word will shatter whatever fragile thing we just built.
I don’t answer right away. Because the honest answer is complicated.
Because I don'tknow.
I turn my face toward the forward display. What’s left of the kaiju lies spread across the ravaged plain—its twisted limbs slack, its chest cavity caved in where our final strike landed. Glowing ichor leaks out in slow, pulsing waves, already evaporating into the wind like the planet’s trying to erase the memory of it.
The sight should make me feel victorious.
It doesn’t.
It makes me feelexposed.
I finally whisper, “That was too close.”
“You mean the kaiju?”
“No,” I say. “That.”
I glance at him.
He understands. I can see it in the shift of his expression, in the way his gaze softens but doesn’t look away. HeknowsI’m not talking about the fight.
I’m talking about theMeld.
Because I didn’t just see battle data or system feedback or projected strike vectors.
I saw him.
I let out a brittle laugh. “Well. You make a hell of a therapist.”
He snorts. “I’m serious.”
“I know.”
And I do.
There’s a tenderness in him I wasn’t prepared for. Buried under all the bravado, the recklessness, the bare-chested swagger—it’s there. A truth. A vulnerability.
And it’s terrifying.
Because I don’twantto need that. I don’t want to rely on anyone.
