It’s beating. Fast.
“Because I’m not glass, Vokar. But I’m not yours to shatter either.”
I turn and walk away.
His voice follows, low and reverent. “Then teach me how to hold you.”
CHAPTER 8
VOKAR
The quarters lie dark around me — the pale glowpanels dimmed, the ambient hum of the ship’s engines soft, almost meditative. But inside me, everything roars.
I pace. One heavy boot after another across the cold floor tiles. The bone-spurs along my spine click softly with each step — a metronome of unrest. My fists clench, unclench. I taste static on my tongue, the tang of fear, or need, or something older than either.
Her scent — Freya McDonnell’s scent — hangs on my skin. Soft linen under my palm from her towel. Warm, musky, like the hush before the kill. I can’t scrub it off. I don’t want to. Because the fragrance isn’t just smell. It’s promise.
My mind drums:She is human — fragile. This is fool’s blood. A warlord and a ghost maid. You are not soft.
But another voice — deeper. Older. A whisper under the iron. A pull.
She is yours.
I stop pacing. My gaze drifts to the window port. Storder lies beyond — swirling mists, dark forest canopy, jagged mountains bleeding into the clouds. A wild world. A world I claimed. A world screaming for blood.
And yet — at this moment — that wild world means nothing. Because the only thing I want to claim is soft. Warm. Alive. Fragile.
I reach down, pick up the holopad lying on the small carved-stone table. The blue light flickers, then stabilizes. I open the comm-link. Not to a war-chief. Not to a raider captain. To someone who sees more than muscle and bone. Someone older. Wiser.
Parfi. Adviser to the clans, though not Reaper. Alzhon.
The comm buzzes once. Then resolves.
Her voice — gentle, measured, soft as wind over moss-trees.
“Warlord Vokar,” she says. “You summoned.”
I clear my throat. Even communication systems feel thin compared to this craving.
“Parfi,” I begin. “I need your counsel.”
Silence on her end. Then — a sigh. “Your tone speaks more than your words,” she says quietly. “The clan notices, though you claim solitude.”
Good. Let them.
“I… I met a human.” I draw the word out. Human. Not enemy. Not prize. Human. As if the syllable bleeds something sacred.
Parfi’s pause is like winter wind. Then: “Human. Not easy. Not wise by many standards.”
I shut my eyes. I can almost smell the antiseptic of her quarters, the tang of her fear, the salt of her skin. “I don’t want easy.”
“There’s fire in you, warlord. Fire that built walls—and fire that burns them down. You know this better than I.”
I snort, bitter. “I kill men for pleasure. I carve bones into statements.”
“Which is why you know.” Her voice softens. “You know what it costs to wield power. But power without control is chaos. If sheis yours — claim her. But do not forget: soulmates burn in both directions.”
I press the edge of the holopad against my thigh, feel the hum of circuits under the metal plating of my armor rack. But her words — that warning — echo deeper, in bone and blood.
