I cross-reference three more files before I trust myself to glance in his direction, and when I do, he's watching me with an expression I can't read. Not predatory. Not cold. Something closer to the look he wore when his fingers hovered near my jaw yesterday.
I bury myself in data and pretend I don't notice. Pretend I don't track him in my peripheral vision. Pretend my pulse isn't racing with an urgency that isn’t poison or conspiracy or the investigation that gives us reason to occupy the same space.
The pretending doesn't help.
He owns me. By law and by contract. Whatever is building between us exists inside a framework of captivity and debt and power that tilts in his direction alone. I have no leverage here. No protection. If I let myself want him, I'm handing him a weapon he could destroy me with.
I understand hierarchy. The military built that understanding into my bones during two years of combat deployments. Chain of command. The structures of power that determine who gives orders and who follows. I survived by knowing my place within those structures, by understanding which rules could bend and which would break you if you pushed.
This isn't hierarchy.
Officers couldn't own enlisted soldiers. Regulations existed. Rights existed. Recourse existed if someone crossed lines that shouldn't be crossed. A medic who wanted her commanding officer had options: transfer requests, fraternization policies, the knowledge that the power imbalance came with limits built into the system.
Here, there are no limits. Syndicate law doesn't recognize me as a subordinate with protections. It recognizes me as propertywith a value attached. The distinction matters more than I want it to.
Wanting a superior officer would be manageable. Complicated, against regulations, but navigable. I've seen it happen. I've watched colleagues stumble through the aftermath. Attraction to someone who owns me is something else entirely. The desire doesn't erase the imbalance. It tangles with it, threads through every interaction until I can't separate what I want from what I'm allowed to refuse.
I'm a soldier. Soldiers don't surrender to circumstances; they assess and adapt. Attraction is a fact, not an order. I can acknowledge what I feel without letting it command my actions. I can want him and still protect myself. Feeling doesn't require surrender. Desire doesn't demand obedience.
The decision settles somewhere beneath my ribs, fragile but present. I will not pretend the wanting doesn't exist. That lie would insult us both. I will not hand him my judgment alongside my contract either. I’ve survived worse than wanting the wrong person at the wrong time in the wrong circumstances.
I can survive this.
I keep thinking about his restraint anyway. His hand pulling back when every line of his body screamed forward. The request for help instead of a demand. That silver gaze in the medical bay, holding a hunger that matched the one growing inside me.
He could have touched me. He had every right to touch me, by the laws of this planet, by the terms of my contract. I am his property. He could take whatever he wanted.
He didn't.
That restraint undoes me in ways force never could.
Chapter Eight
DRAZEX
The investigation requires her to be kept close. I have repeated this truth seventeen times since dawn, each iteration an anchor against the current pulling me toward admissions I cannot afford. She notices patterns my enforcers miss, and her medical expertise identified the poison when standard screening failed. Her insights have already narrowed the suspect pool from dozens to seven names, each one a potential knife aimed at the heart of House Draven.
I am exceptionally skilled at lying to myself when the alternative is examination.
Four nights now, I've stood in the corridor outside her quarters like a lovesick fool who has forgotten who and what he is. The first time might have been curiosity, the second a concern for an asset, but the third strained any reasonable justification I could construct. Last night I stayed for an hour, listening to her breathe through the wall until the rhythm synced with the pulsein my chest, and I left only when my legs ached from standing and my fangs had extended from the wanting.
I've endured worse than this. Blades through muscle, plasma burns that took months to heal, the brutal precision of my father's training sessions designed to strip weakness from bone. Physical discomfort is a language I speak fluently, and I've never let it dictate my actions.
Yet this human female has slipped past defenses that held against far more direct assaults, and I can't identify the breach point or understand why my usual countermeasures fail. The not-knowing gnaws at me worse than the wanting itself. I'm not a male who tolerates mysteries.
I'll understand this. I'll dissect whatever flaw in my armor allowed her entry, find the weakness and seal it. Understanding is the first step toward control, and control is all I have.
The compound settles into morning routine beyond my office walls, and I reach for the security controls, temptation overriding common sense. Her quarters appear on the central display, then the medical bay, then the corridor between them. She emerged at 0534, earlier than normal, and walked to the medical bay with that stride that belongs only to her. Spine straight, shoulders back, a soldier's carriage in a body too small for the weight it carries.
She reviews Torvin's toxicology results now, her lips moving as she works through the data in that habit she has of talking to herself when problems resist easy solutions. Questions and answers, a conversation with herself that helps her think, and she doesn't know I've memorized the exact pitch of her voice when she does it or catalogued the way her brow furrows when concentration takes hold.
Love makes you weak,my father told me while my mother's blood still stained the execution platform.It made her betray us. The moment you care about anyone more than you care aboutthe house, you have given your enemies a weapon they will use to destroy you.
What I feel isn't love. I don't care about her. She is an asset, a temporary complication in the ordered structure of my existence, valuable for her skills and nothing more.
The lie sits poorly in my chest, lodged beneath my sternum where truth refuses to be buried.
Samai would laugh himself sick if he could see me now, the brother who has mocked my control for decades finding vindication in watching me destroy it for a human female who has lived in my compound for five days. He would ask what happened to the male who warned him about the dangers of attachment, who counseled distance, who built an existence on the foundation of never needing anyone.
