Measured.
And I wait.
The meeting continues. More charts, more figures, more human impatience. I drift through it like I drifted through other battles — with steel, with blood, with roaring ships. But this time my target isn’t a blockade, a cruiser, a raider fleet.
My target is a promise. A claim.
The conference room doors hiss and swing open. A short break is called. The diplomats shuffle. I remain.
They stare at me — a black-skinned Reaper w/ bone armor at the head of a human negotiating table. Some with anger, some with calculation, some with fear. Few with respect. None with understanding.
I watch them shift. I smell their sweat, the lingering tang of stale coffee, the doppler-hum from the cooling vents.
And I think of her.
The emptiness of my quarters before her. The silence that still echoes. The scent of her sheets on my skin.
Nothing but gravity stars in my veins.
I rise.
I step forward.
My voice — calm. Controlled. Deadly.
“This talk of allocations and credits…” I say, loud enough for every so-called diplomat and petty desk-rat to hear. “This meeting has confused purpose with profit, blood with trade.”
They blink. Papers snap. Eyes shift.
My next words are soft — but they carry. “She will be mine.”
A silence cuts the room in half.
The lips of a human delegate curl — uglily. The bone-spurred Reaper lieutenant glances at me, eyebrows raised.
Ambassador Kintar shifts in his seat. His polished features sharpen. “That is… an irregular demand,” he says, carefully. “Our talks are about resources. About trade. Not?—”
“Not what?” I lean forward. The lights glint off the bone ridges of my armor. The ebony of my skin becomes a threshold between calm and storm.
I savor the shift. The discomfort. The flinch.
“This is not a request.” My voice drops low. Smothering. “This is the condition.”
Even the air tastes cold now — the stale plastic of the chairs, the recycled ventilation, the sweat-tinged breath of ambitious men. I can smell fear. Pity. Surprise. Pride. All mixed in one bitter tang.
I turn slightly — enough for them to catch the scars along my forearm. Old scars. New scars. Stories written in bone and blood.
“My terms stand.”
I pause. I watch.
In the back of the room — near the door — she sits. Freya McDonnell. Her hair tied back. Her uniform tidy. Clean. Her shoulders squared. Eyes on me. Calm.
Quiet. Defiant.
I see the flush on her cheeks. The tension in her jaw. I see how small she is — human, fragile, and yetfierce.
Kintar opens his mouth — but no words come. Instead, the room exhales a breath it didn’t know it was holding.
