Soulmates burn in both directions.
I want so badly to believe we are destined. That this — this heat and ache and scent — isn’t appetite. Not hunger. Not lust. But something older. Ancient. True. jalshagar — the bond of fire, of flesh, of soulbound pairing.
I stand, fist slamming on the desk. Holopad rattles. The room stutters in response — a faint light flicker, as if startled by the weight of my will.
“No more hiding,” I murmur. To the holopad. To myself. To the memory of that human girl who out-burned ten thousand suns within my skull.
I leave the comm link open, the screen dimming but alive, radiating that soft azure glow across the stone-carved walls.
I walk to the armor rack. Fingers trace over the heavy plating, the spiked gauntlets — weapons of bone and steel I’ve carried all through blood and conquest. I lift one, turn it in my hand, then lay it back down. I don’t want to kill. Not right now.
No. I want to protect.
My lips part. I speak aloud — though the quarters are empty. “I am Vokar, Warlord of the Scarred Foot. Slayer of the Black Nebula Raiders. Commanded five moons. Seen death carve more souls than starlight. But I don’t want another body. I want her.”
The echo of my voice slides across the walls like a blade drawn over bone.
Then — careful, deliberate — I walk to the small sink in the corner. Water clicks on. Cold. I splash it on my face, let it trickleover my cheekbones. I scrub the sweat and the stain of garlic and oil from dinner. Something deeper. The ghost of her scent.
But it doesn’t wash off.
Because it’s not on my skin. It’s in my blood.
I look up into the small mirror over the basin.
Black skin. White bone spurs. Red eyes dull in the pale reflection. I see war. I see death. I see moonlit moons burned down to ash.
And at the center of it — a face. Hard, cold, jagged. But longing in the eyes. Something soft that’s never been there before.
I press my fingertip to the glass. A smear. Something unsteady. Human.
I think of her.
Parfi’s voice returns — distant now, but alive. “You know the path of fire, Vokar. Choose with your soul.”
I nod.
I close my eyes. And I swear it — not as warlord, not as killer, but as man carved from bone and flame.
“I will claim her.”
Duty calls,and once again I must fight my Reaper nature. I only want to go to Freya, tear her clothing off, and take her until she begs me to never stop.
Instead, I attend the next round of negotiations. Perhaps my underlings are right. Perhaps this is not the way. But I must persist, if our people are to have any hope of being more than simple raiders. Reclaiming the Ishani’s lost glory is probably out of reach. But we can be…more…than we are now. I know it.
The light in the negotiation chamber is harsh — sterile. White. Cold. It slashes across metal walls and holographicdisplays, and yet I feel only one warmth: the ghost of her scent lingering on my skin.
I stand at the head of the table, shoulders back, spine straight. My bone-spurred armor feels tight, familiar — a second skin I’ve worn for years across war-torn moons. But now, it acts like a cage. I shove the feeling down. Nothing, I tell myself. Nothing but control.
Around me, humans and Reapers alike shuffle papers, argue over allocations, mineral yields, shipping corridors. The same old dance of power and greed.
General Hugh Rection is droning on — high-pitched, nervy, insistent about IHC demands. Storium… credits… rights to asteroid belts hearken to nothing but war. Each word grates behind my ribs. I almost laugh.
I don’t hear him. I’m too busy hearing her — the soft scratch of her breath, the warmth of her skin under my palm, the way her eyes looked up at me across that bed, full of fire and surrender and fear.
I breathe.
Slow.
