CHAPTER 8
ARIA
Something’s different this time.
Not just in the way the Meld clicks into place—clean, seamless, like slipping on gloves that were made for your fingers—but in the way I feel when it happens.
Warm.
Steady.
Safe, and yet... exposed.
I’m not used to this part. The letting go.
I always thought opening my mind to someone would feel like drowning—like watching my thoughts unravel while someone else picks through them, judging, mocking, maybe even weaponizing what they find.
But Naull doesn’t do that.
He doesn’t barge in, doesn’t pull or prod or press.
He just... lets me be.
And in that stillness, I find him waiting.
Not charging ahead. Not standing over me.
Just beside me.
“Feels good,” I murmur, surprised by how true it is.
“Yeah,” his voice rumbles beside me, lower now through the Meld than even his real-world growl. “Like finally turning on the damn lights.”
Whiplash thrums under our skin. Every system responds like we’ve been piloting together for years instead of days. The mech doesn’t just move—it flows. Every movement, every input, comes from both of us at once. It doesn’t feel like I’m sharing control. It feels like I’ve found the part of me I didn’t know was missing.
“I didn’t know it could feel like this,” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to.
But I feel it in the echo of his presence—the surprise, the wonder, the fragile hope.
I lean into the Meld further, stretching my thoughts toward him—not just logic and calculations and strategy, but memories. A flicker of a sunset over Baja. The smell of oil on my grandmother’s workbench. The hollow ache of the first time I buried a friend.
He lets them in. Doesn’t recoil. Doesn’t try to fix or soothe or smooth them over.
Just… accepts.
And then he gives me his.
A battlefield soaked in green light. The crunch of sand beneath his boots. Laughter from a voice I know is long gone. The terror of a command issued too late.
A name carved into the side of a pulse rifle in blood and flame.
His father’s name.
The Meld pulses. My throat tightens.
Naull doesn’t look at me, not directly, but his grip tightens on the control rig. “You still with me?”
