I do not say the word aloud. Not even in thought. To speak it is tocallit. And I do not want it called.
Vakutan mythology tells us that jalshagar is not a bond. Not as humans conceive of it. It is not comfort. It is not love. It is a fracture in the soul that opens only once—when the other half is near enough to bleed into you.
It is not gentle.
I have seen it. Twice. Once in an elder warrior who burned his own hands to keep his bonded from walking into fire. Once in a pilot who severed his link to command mid-battle just to save a voice he hadn’t even touched. Both ended badly.
It makes us reckless.
It makes us real.
And I cannot afford either.
Her body shifts beneath the sterile sheet. Her breath catches and resets. No distress. A minor dream state. I do not move. Ifeelher instead.
The tension beneath her surface. The grief in her muscle memory. The precision in her movements—even unarmed, even trapped. She calculates exits the way I do.
She has learned survival.
I wish she hadn’t had to.
I adjust my stance to redistribute weight. My right shoulder stiffens—an old wound. Bio-gel healed the flesh but not the memory. This posture reminds me of that loss. I welcome it. Pain is clarity.
Her voice earlier, sharp and barbed:"You're waiting. You want to see what I'll do."
She is not wrong.
I am waiting. I am watching. But I am also something else.
Drawn.
Not by weakness. Not by beauty—though her face holds angles that disrupt my pulse in ways I do not prefer to name. It is thepresence. The rootedness. The defiance that coexists with exhaustion. The way she looked at me when I mentioned war—like she knew the taste of it but called it by another name.
Humansromanticizesurvival. She does not.
She catalogues it.
The door behind me beeps a low tone. Proximity alert—someone approaching.
I turn just enough to scan the hall. Sergeant Korl. Human. Young. Too eager.
He stops when he sees me. Smart.
“Commander,” he says, voice lower than usual.
I say nothing.
“She… still under watch?”
“She is under consideration.”
He shifts, uncomfortable. His gaze flicks toward the door behind me. “Orders from above say she’s flagged red now. Full override request pending.”
“By whom?”
He swallows. “I don’t know. Came through sealed. Coalition clearance stack.”
Which means political. Which means she’s not just a civilian with inconvenient truths. She’s become anarrative liability.They don’t want her questioned. They want her forgotten.
