“I’m not leaving,” he breathes against my lips. “Not until I get you to Dowron. Not until I know you’re safe.”
My breath shudders.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Okay.”
We don’t move quickly.
We move like we have all the time in the galaxy.
His fingers trace my jaw. My cheek. He brushes my hair behind my ear and presses his forehead to mine. I close my eyes. Let the moment wrap around me like a blanket that still smells like home.
There’s no bed in this rustbucket. Just a patch of half-clean floor near the core shielding, covered with a thermal blanket and whatever padding we could scrape from the medbay.
It doesn’t matter.
He lays me down like I’m something precious. His lips find mine again, slower now, softer. His hands map my body like it’s the first time all over again.
We don’t rush.
Weache.
There’s no desperation here. No panic.
Just the quiet ache of two people trying to hold onto something real before the universe rips it away again.
His body is heavy against mine, but never crushing. I trace the ridges of his spine, the heat of his scales, the sharp edge of his jaw as he dips to kiss the hollow of my throat.
He moves like prayer. Like penance.
Like maybe he believes this can redeem him somehow.
And I let him.
Because for a few stolen hours, we aren’t soldiers or targets or pawns in someone else’s endgame.
We’re just Rhea and Valtron.
Just two stupid, stubborn people who found something rare in the middle of a war and decided to keep it.
For as long as the stars allow.
CHAPTER 12
VALTRON
The Helix Mist Cluster is beautiful.
At least, that’s what the galaxy’s travel pamphlets would say if anyone could get within ten clicks of it without scrambling their nav data or ending up with half their ship systems fried from ionic interference. Ribbons of pearlescent gas stretch like slow lightning across space, bleeding lavender and gold through the viewport. Beneath it, distant stars pulse behind the clouds like gods watching from behind a curtain.
It’s the kind of place you’d take someone if you were trying to convince them the universe still held some wonder.
It’s also the kind of place you hide when you want the galaxy to forget you exist.
Dowron always was a romantic bastard.
I keep one hand on the manual thruster override as the ship shudders through the mist. The junk freighter we’re flying isn’t built for this kind of drift—its shielding’s about as trustworthy as a pirate’s handshake and half the steering input has to be guessed from vibration alone—but she’s holding.
Rhea’s beside me, face half-lit in the glow from the nav console. She’s quiet. Not calm—she’s too smart for that. She knows the same thing I do.
