I smile, tight and aching. “Yeah, baby. I see that.”
His eyes glow gold for a heartbeat, then fade.
I don’t breathe easy for hours.
He’s changing too fast. Growing like something forged, not born. It’s not unnatural—it’s justnot human.And it’s starting to show.
I’ve cloaked his scans, rerouted every traceable biometric. But even Oxford’s aging systems will eventually flag anomalies. Kids aren’t supposed to lift furniture with one hand. They’re not supposed toglow.
My palms sweat just thinking about it.
I sit up that night long after he’s asleep. Naull’s voice echoes in my head like a pulse:You’re not alone in this.
But he doesn’t know. Not really.
Not what it means to carry fear in your blood. Not what it costs to lie every day just to keep your child safe. He says he’s here. Says he wants this. But wanting something andbearingit are different beasts.
I find him in the east wing. An old lab annex we used to test simulated Meld transitions. It smells like ozone and soldered wire. Dusty glass walls catch the moonlight. Empty workbenches line the room like forgotten altars.
Naull’s hunched over a terminal, shirt wrinkled, brow furrowed. I don’t say a word.
I just lock the door.
His head jerks up. “Aria?”
But I don’t answer. I step into the shadows and pull him to me. My fingers curl in his collar. My mouth finds his like it remembers the path by instinct. He groans—low, hungry—and I press him back against the counter, all breath and need and fire.
“Here?” he manages, voice already wrecked.
“Yes.” I push his shirt off his shoulders. “Now.”
His hands roam—ribs, hips, the back of my neck—and then he spins us, lifts me like nothing. My legs wrap around his waist. My back hits cold wall. I gasp.
“I missed you today,” he mutters into my throat.
“You saw me twice.”
“Not like this.”
It’s frantic. Clumsy in a way only desperation can be. I kiss him like I need to forget. He holds me like I’m the answer to a question he doesn’t know how to ask.
Clothes half-on, half-off, lost to the floor like they never mattered.
His skin is all heat and tension and reverence. My name breaks from his lips like a vow. I bite his shoulder. He swears.
“You ruin me,” I whisper against his ear.
“Then let me ruin all of you,” he growls.
And he does.
Over the desk. One hand buried in my hair. The other gripping my hip like he’s anchoring himself to the now. My breath stutters. His body moves like a hymn. A storm. A promise he’s been aching to keep.
It’s not pretty.
It’sreal.
And when it’s over, we collapse onto the floor in a tangle of limbs and sweat and silence. The kind of silence that feels like church.
