The word caught.Love.Such a small word for such an impossible thing.
“…at least we’ll still have each other.”
I was offering him an out. A way to bond without the weight of romance, without the expectations that had shaped every other thread in my web. He could take it or leave it.
I hoped—fiercely, selfishly—that he’d take it.
Something shifted in his expression.The wariness didn’t vanish, but it softened—rearranged itself into something quieter. Something that looked almost like relief.
“Friends,” he repeated, testing the word.
“Friends,” I confirmed. “Who happen to be saving each other and the galaxy together.”
The faintest curve touched his lips. Not quite a smile. Close enough.
“I’ve never done this.” His voice dropped. The admission cost him something—I could see it in the way his jaw tightened, the way his runes dimmed for a heartbeat before brightening again. “I don’t know how to…”
He trailed off. His gaze dropped to the space between us, and for the first time since I’d met him, Ryzen looked uncertain. Not afraid. Not unwilling. Just… lost.
Something warm and aching bloomed behind my ribs.
“Most of my mates had never ‘done this’ either.” The words came out gentler than I intended, a small laugh threaded through them. “We figured it out together.”
His eyes lifted to mine. Searching. “You’re not… concerned?”
“About what? Your lack of experience?” I shook my head. “Ryzen, I’ve had a mate who’d never touched a female, let alone holding their hand. I’ve had mates whose biology was so different from mine we had to learn each other from scratch. Trust me—” I held his gaze. “—I’m not concerned.”
The tension between us shifted. Not vanishing—reshaping. Nerves remained, but the weight of the decision had been made. Two willing souls standing on the edge of something permanent.
“So.” I clasped my hands together, because if I didn’t give them something to do, they’d shake. “How does this work? The bonding. What do I need to know?”
Ryzen’s throat worked. “Physical union. The spiritforce responds to… closeness. To trust. It merges when both souls are open and willing.” He sighed. “The Verya texts describe it as two flames learning to share the same hearth.”
Two flames. One hearth.
I could work with that.
I crossed the distance between us.
Two steps. That was all it took to close the gap that propriety and caution had maintained since he’d first set foot on Destima. Two steps, and I was close enough to feel the warmth radiating off his skin, to see the way his runes pulsed faster at my proximity.
He held perfectly still. A warrior’s discipline in every locked muscle.
“Ryzen.” I pitched my voice low. Steady. The same tone I used when approaching something wild and wary. “I’m going to kiss you. If you don’t want that, say so now.”
His breath caught. Just barely—a hitch so slight I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been watching his chest.
“I want that.” Rough. Almost inaudible.
I rose on my toes and pressed my lips to his.
Soft. Slow. Giving him every chance to pull away, to change his mind, to realize this was too much. His mouth was warm and still beneath mine—frozen in that first startled instant where the brain hadn’t caught up to the body.
Then he exhaled against my lips. A trembling, shattered sound.
And kissed me back.
Tentative. Careful. Like he was handling something sacred and terrified of breaking it. His lips moved against mine in a hesitant rhythm, learning the pressure, the angle, the way I tilted into him.
