Dani’s symptoms, laid out in neat columns of text. He cross-referenced treatments and outcomes as he read, evaluating options he had no business evaluating.
She brought medicine with her,he reminded himself.The treatment her sister obtained. This is not your concern.
But his eyes kept moving across the pages. Kept cataloguing possibilities, weighing interventions, and considering the specific conditions of this planet and how they might affect a child’s recovery. The healer’s instinct that he’d tried so hard to bury was stirring again, awakened by a blue-eyed girl who’d asked if he was staying.
Stop,he told himself.This is not who you are anymore.
But he had already dredged up memories he’d spent five years trying to forget. Memories of the home world he’d left behind, and the people he’d failed. He closed his eyes and let himself remember.
The transport ship had been cramped and dirty, filled with the dregs of a dozen worlds—criminals and refugees and the desperate poor, all seeking a new life on some backwater planet. He’d stood out amongst them like a hunting cat in a herd of prey animals. Too large and too dangerous. The other passengers had given him a wide berth, crossing to the far side of the corridor when they saw him coming and falling silent when he entered a common area.
He hadn’t minded. He’d even welcomed it.
What are you doing here?one of the crew members had asked him, near the end of the journey. A grizzled human female with suspicious eyes and a plasma burn scar across her jaw.Your kind don’t leave home without a damn good reason. Most of your kind don’t leave home at all.
Most of my kind,he’d replied,have something worth staying for.
She’d looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged and moved on, leaving him alone with his bitterness and his regrets.
Cresca had turned out to be exactly what he’d expected. Sparsely populated outside of the spaceport, with a mixture of small human villages and scattered Vultor enclaves. Perfect for someone who wanted to disappear. He’d taken one look at the distant mountains and known exactly where he would go.
The first year had been the hardest. Not because of the physical challenges—he’d been trained for survival, and the Vultor were built to endure—but because of the silence, the endless, echoing silence of existing utterly alone. He’d filled it with work: carving out his den, building furniture, establishing the routines that would keep him sane. He’d told himself he preferred it. That solitude was what he’d wanted. What he’d deserved.
And slowly, painfully, he’d started to believe it.
The second year had been easier. The third, easier still. By the fourth year, he’d stopped counting the days between contact with other beings. By the fifth, he’d stopped caring.
Or so he’d told himself.
I came here to be alone, he thought now, staring at the medical text in his hands.I chose this. I wanted this.
But that was before a human female had looked at him without fear. Before her sister had trusted him to stay. Before his beast had started wanting something other than the hunt.
He set the book aside and rose to check the fire. It didn’t need checking, but he needed something to do with his hands. He needed some way to occupy the restless energy that was building inside him.
Through the archway, he could hear the soft sounds of breathing. Two heartbeats, slightly out of sync. Two lives that had stumbled into his territory and shattered the careful isolation he’d built.
They’ll leave,he told himself again.When the storm passes, when the danger is over, they’ll return to their village. To their lives. And I will be alone again.
It was the right outcome. The safe outcome. For them and for him.
So why did the thought leave him feeling so hollow?
He sank back into his chair and picked up the medical text again. He wouldn’t use the information, but reading it was better than pacing. Better than listening to the storm and thinking about tomorrow. Better than going into the sleeping chamber and watching over them like he had the right.
The words blurred before his eyes. He wasn’t reading anymore, just staring at the page while his thoughts spiraled.
You’re here now.
Dani’s voice, soft and trusting. As if he were something safe. Something good.
Thank you. For everything.
Jessa’s voice, roughened by exhaustion but sincere. Looking at him like he’d given her something precious instead of just basic shelter.
She’s strong. Fierce. A worthy m?—
No.He wouldn’t finish that thought, not when every instinct was already straining towards her like a plant towards sunlight.
