“Yeah.” I rise from my chair and cross the distance between us. He stands to meet me, and when I wrap my arms around my idiot brother, he crushes me against his chest hard enough to crack ribs.
Years of damage don't dissolve in a single conversation but this is a beginning. The first step toward what we might rebuild from the wreckage of what came before.
“Don't make me regret this,” I murmur against his shoulder.
“I won't.” For the first time since I arrived on Vahiri Prime, I believe him.
? ? ?
DRAZEX
The last one dies quieter than the others. I release his throat and let the body slide down the wall of the holding cell, adding to the pile of males who thought my father's orders would protect them from consequences. Four enforcers. Four males who put their hands on my chosen, who dragged her from my bed, who left bruises on skin that belongs to me.
My father commanded it. They obeyed. Neither fact grants them absolution.
Blood drips from my claws onto stone that has absorbed generations of violence. The holding cells beneath the south wing exist for this purpose, built by ancestors who understood that some lessons require privacy. No witnesses. No records. Only the copper scent of payment extracted and the silence that follows.
I flex my hands, watching the tendons move beneath skin stained darker by what I’ve done. The rage that drove me here has burned to ash, leaving behind the cold satisfaction of debts settled. They touched her, carried her unconscious through corridors I swore would protect her, delivered her to a cage meant to break what lives between us.
Now they deliver nothing. Now they are nothing.
Love makes you weak.
My Father was a liar. Love makes you the strongest version of yourself. He was just too stupid to understand.
I step over the bodies and move toward the door. The corridor beyond leads to washing facilities where I'll scrub their blood from my skin before I find my Chosen. She waits somewhere in the compound, absorbing her brother's gift, adjusting to a freedom she never expected to receive. She doesn't need to see what I've done. Doesn't need to carry the weight of violence committed in her name.
That weight belongs to me. I carry it gladly.
The water runs red, then pink, then clear. I dress in fresh clothes and leave the holding cells behind, letting the silence seal over what happened there. Samai will handle the disposal. He understands the necessity without requiring explanation.
She's not in the medical bay when I check. Not in our quarters. The pull in my blood guides me downward, toward tunnels that once held my secrets and now hold our history.
I follow it. I always will.
? ? ?
MAEVE
The creviks emerge from their hiding places in the maintenance corridors, their small bodies pressing against my legs, soft chittering rising in greeting. They remember me. They remember what we survived together.
Drazex's footsteps reach me before his presence does. He rounds the corner, silver eyes finding mine.
“Tomás came to you.” Not a question.
“You knew.”
“He asked for my approval before approaching you.” Drazex moves closer, each footfall eating distance until he stands near enough for his heat to reach me through the cool tunnel air. “He wanted to earn his own debt. I let him.”
I study his face, searching for the lord who navigated this arrangement without my awareness. The male who understood what my brother needed before I did. “You could have told me.”
“Would you have let him do it?”
The question cuts clean. No. I would have argued. Would have insisted the debt didn't matter, that I'd already chosen, that he didn't need to sacrifice years of his life for a contract that stopped binding me the moment Drazex claimed me as his.
“He needed to give you this.” Drazex’s traces my claiming bite. “I let him.”
I lean into his touch, letting the warmth of his palm anchor me here. The strays press closer, their small bodies witnesses to a conversation they can't understand but somehow belong to anyway.
