And then we leave.
No ceremony.
No fanfare.
Just two people, walking forward.
Together.
CHAPTER 31
VROK
The stars slide past the viewport like slow-moving ghosts.
One by one, they drift and shimmer across black velvet, never getting any closer. There’s something about space like that—so endless it makes your bones ache just looking at it. Syfer’s out there somewhere. Still distant. Still waiting.
I sit alone in the command cabin for a long while. Systems humming soft and low. Lights dimmed. The kind of quiet that isn’t really quiet, just full of things you’ve been avoiding.
I’m not good with stillness.
Never have been.
Not when there’s this much inside me clawing for a way out.
Footsteps.
Soft ones.
Not hesitant, just light.
She doesn’t speak when she enters. Doesn’t need to. I feel her before I see her. The bond’s humming low in my chest again—faint, steady, like background radiation I can’t scrub out.
Roxy leans against the opposite bulkhead, arms folded. Hair damp from a sonic rinse. No makeup. No mask.
Just her.
Just us.
I turn the chair slowly to face her.
“I figured this would be where you hide,” she says.
“I’m not hiding.”
She lifts a brow.
I gesture at the chair across from me. “Sit.”
She doesn’t move at first. Then she pushes off the wall and drops into the seat like gravity’s twice what it should be.
I study her for a moment.
“Feels different now,” I say.
“What does?”
“Us. This.”
