“You would’ve tried to follow.”
He’s not wrong.
My heart kicks, angry and aching all at once. “So what now, Valtron? We share war stories until morning? Pretend this is just nostalgia night in a bomb shelter?”
“No,” he says. “We survive.”
“And then?”
He looks at me. Really looks at me.
“I don’t know,” he admits.
That scares me more than any bounty hunter.
I sit again, slower this time. The blanket’s back around my shoulders. I huddle in it like it’s armor and glance at him through strands of hair that have fallen in my face.
“You ever get tired?” I ask quietly.
He leans back against the wall with a grunt. “Of what?”
“Being right all the time.”
A corner of his mouth tugs upward. “Never.”
I grab the pillow from the cot and chuck it at him. He catches it one-handed.
Silence again. But this time, it’s not sharp.
I curl onto the cot, turning away. I don’t hear him settle, but I feel it—the shift in the air, the subtle creak of the wall under his weight. He’s on the floor near the door, back to me, just like I’m facing away from him.
But I know he’s awake.
I am too.
My fingers curl into the edge of the blanket. My skin remembers his touch. My lips remember his taste.
The past presses in, thick and hot.
And in the dark, I hear his voice.
“If I’d had the choice…”
He stops.
I wait.
But that’s all he gives.
Still, it’s enough to burn.
The first tremor snaps me out of half-sleep like a slap. The cot groans beneath me as I bolt upright, heart jackhammering in my chest. My ears are ringing—not from an explosion this time, but from adrenaline, from that bone-deep instinct that something’s about to go sideways.
Before I can get a word out, Valtron’s already moving.
He’s all motion—silent, lethal grace for a man built like a dreadnought. His weapon’s in hand, his scanner out, and those golden eyes glow like predator fire in the low light. He doesn’t speak until the walls shake again, this time with more authority. Dust rains from the ceiling. My nerves fray further.
“Seismic activity,” he says, scanning. “Localized. Not natural.”
