The St. Laurent girl.
The realization should be analytical. Should file itself neatly into the category ofEthan's information was usefuland nothing more.
Instead, my feet are moving.
"Zane." Ethan's voice, sharp with something I don't stop to identify. "That's not protocol. Zane!"
The processing floor opens around me. Bodies pressing back as I cut through the lines, my presence parting the crowd of the terrified and indebted like a blade through tissue. The fear spikes around me, people recognizing a predator in their midst.
Talia doesn't look away.
I stop in front of her. Close enough to smell the recycled ship air still clinging to her clothes, the salt of fear-sweatbeneath it, something else underneath that. Something warm. Human in a way that doesn't register as prey.
Her eyes meet mine.
Grey. Blue. Either colour depending on the light. They are dark, however, dark despite their light nature. Dark enough to swallow light. Flat with a terror I can taste on the back of my tongue, her heart hammering fast enough that I can feel each beat pulsing through the emotional static between us.
She doesn't look away.
"This one." I hear my own voice as if from a distance. "She's been reassigned."
The processing officer blinks at me, caught between protocol and the reality of who's giving orders. "Sir, the debt transfer documentation requires…"
"Did I ask about documentation?"
The silence stretches. My bioluminescence holds steady through sheer force of will, betraying nothing of the chaos beneath my ribs. The girl watches me with those darkened eyes, calculating, measuring,seeingin a way that makes something in my chest crack open.
I take her arm.
Her skin burns against my palm. Not with fever but with life, with the simple biological reality of her existence, with a frequency I have never felt from another human being. Her fear spikes, that copper-lightning taste flooding my senses, but she doesn't flinch.
Doesn't pull away.
Doesn't break eye contact.
"Bring her processing files to my office." I don't look at the officer. Can't look at anything but her. "Now."
I pull her from the line. My grip on her arm is harder than necessary, hard enough that she'll bruise, and somedistant part of me recognizes this as violence I'll need to examine later. But that part is very quiet, very far away, drowned out by the frequency of her presence resonating through my carefully constructed walls.
Ethan falls into step beside us. I feel his questions like pressure against my shields, the calculated curiosity of a half-blood trying to read someone who's stopped making sense.
"The St. Laurent girl." He keeps his voice light, professionally interested. "Should I cancel the standard processing protocols?"
"She's leverage." The lie emerges fully formed, smooth enough to pass inspection. "Her father was a courier. She might know something about the supply routes father disappeared on."
Ethan's smile says he doesn't believe me.
I don't believe me either.
We reach the lift. I push her inside, crowding her against the wall because I can't seem to stop touching her, can't seem to create the distance that protocol demands. She's breathing faster now, her pulse visible in her throat, her defiance cracking at the edges as the reality of her situation settles over her like a shroud.
But she still doesn't look away.
The lift doors seal. The processing floor disappears. In the sudden quiet, her terror tastes almost sweet, almost like something I want to consume.
"If you're going to kill me," she says. Her voice is steady.
Steady.Despite the galloping of her heart, despite the fear I can feel pressing against my shields, despite the impossible situation I've dragged her into. Her voice holds together like structural steel.
