“Nothing would be easier,” he murmurs. “But I’d carry you in all my wars and regrets.”
His words twist in me. Defensive. Vulnerable. Unbearable.
The door slides open. A Centauri guard enters—nodding at Aebon, keeping silent. He lingers at the threshold, careful studio black, reinforced armor. Impressive. But smaller, somehow, than the man at my bedside.
The guard exits.
CHAPTER 16
ARIA DAWSON
Aebon doesn’t move. I stare at him—the lines of his face softer here, shadowed. The storm of a protector clipped from his pose, replaced by something humble, haunted.
I swallow. Press my hand harder.
“No one asked for your help,” I whisper, voice shaking. “I’m supposed to be the one who saves people, not be saved.”
His arm tightens. He meets my gaze. “Somebody had to.”
I glance down, mind reeling with everything we’ve done—how he bent the law, waged war on the enemy, sacrificed protocol for me.
“You broke rules,” I say. “You?—”
“I’d break the stars themselves to keep you breathing,” he interrupts, voice hoarse.
Time tilts again. The cadence of his heart in my palm. The aftertaste of metal in the air. The weight of everything unspoken between us.
I try to speak but can’t. Instead, I lift my arm and press my fingers into his palm. Hard.
He doesn’t remove it.
Our breaths lock—my pain and his insistence and the ghost of rage and the hum of what could be love.
He exhales low. “Stay.”
I close my eyes. Disbelief warbles in the back of my head as guilt and something raw—acceptance?—coil in me.
The suit fabric shifts against skin—his touch unwavering, quietly fierce.
“Okay.”
In that room—white, silent, fragile as a promise—two warriors wounded and tangled face the reckoning.
He isn’t just my protector.
He’s the only one who ever held my wreckage and didn’t turn away.
The room with its antiseptic white walls feels too small for the weight of what’s left undone. Rain taps a trembling rhythm against the reinforced window—distorted by the storm—and I swallow, pressing tangled sheets to my ribs as I listen.
Aebon stands by the bedside, adjusting the Centauri-grade med scanner with something gentle in his movements I’ve never seen before. There’s no warlord in this posture—only a man who’s carried too much, and is panting under the weight of it.
I shift, summoning breath, and he turns, catching my gaze. His red eyes are dimmed—not by the hospital light, but by something real. Vulnerability. Fear. Regret.
He clears his throat, soft as a closing door.
“I didn’t tell you why I offered the informant’s cube,” he begins, and I feel the hairs on my arm lift. “Because it was leverage. Because if we were going to topple Nar’Vosk, I needed something they couldn’t deny. But I also did it because… because I wanted a bargain with you.”
His words hang in the air, viscous and potent. I hold still, letting them settle.
