"How..." she whispered, her forehead pressed against mine.
I held perfectly still, giving her time to adjust, fighting every primal urge to thrust into her. Only when she began to move did I allow myself to guide her hips, our bodies finding a rhythm that built gradually from careful to consuming.
For the first time in my existence, I let the boundaries fall. Not just the walls I showed the universe, but the ones beneath them. I felt her, truly felt her, not as a presence brushing my mind but as something interwoven with it. Unfiltered. Brilliant. Fierce. The singular intensity of that moment eclipsed memories of wars and collapses, of eons spent holding reality together through sheer will. When it was over, I stayed where I was, resting my forehead against hers, breath uneven, aura finally quiet. The universe had not ended. The Abyss had not won.
And yet, everything was different.
She laughed softly, a breathless, disbelieving sound, and shook her head. "Okay. I feel like there should've been some kind of warning label."
I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them just enough to look at her. "You survived," I stated gravely. "Thatwasthe warning."
She snorted. "You're impossible."
"I am eternal," I corrected. "There's a distinction."
She shifted, propping herself up on one elbow, studying me like I was a particularly baffling equation. "So, is this the part where you tell me I've just altered the balance of the universe?"
I considered that. Then allowed myself a faint, dangerous smile. "No. This is the part where I admit the universe has been unbalanced for a very long time."
Her expression softened, not in triumph, nor in fear, but something quietly profound. "Good," she murmured. "I'd hate to think I broke it on my first day."
I huffed a low sound that might have been laughter. Might have been surrender.
"You didn't break anything," I corrected. "You reminded it of what it was missing."
She rolled her eyes. "Gods are dramatic."
"Only when they're honest," I replied.
She laughed again, this time warmer, and settled closer without hesitation, like she'd already decided she belonged there.
I usedto think logic was the spine of reality. Not the only structure in existence—emotion, instinct, and chaos all had their place—but logic was the one everything else ultimately wrapped itself around. Strip away superstition, bias, and fear, and you'd find the clean architecture underneath. Laws. Constants. Rules that didn't care whether you believed in them. Now I lay in a quiet room aboard an alien ship, light-years from Earth, skin faintly aglow with something that had no business existing, heart still beating too fast for reasons I refused to categorize as purely physiological.
And logic? It wasn't gone, not entirely. It was just no longer alone.
The storm had passed hours ago. Repairs were underway planet-side, and the ship rested on scorched stone beneath a dullorange sky. The universe had gone back to pretending it was stable. Predictable. Safe. I knew better now.
I shifted, feeling the low hum of the ship through the floor, through my bones. My body still felt… tuned. Like every nerve had been turned a fraction more sensitive, every sense sharpened. It wasn't exhaustion. It wasn't adrenaline. It was aftermath.
Sex with Dravok—with a living god, for fuck's sake—had not fit into any model I'd ever built. It wasn't just physical pleasure, though that alone would've been overwhelming. It was the way my mind had quieted in his presence. The way fear had evaporated during the storm when his arms locked around me like gravity itself had decided I was non-negotiable.
I had never felt that kind of safety before.
If someone had told me a year ago that I'd be having sex in space with a godlike being while fleeing a sentient cosmic phenomenon, I would've laughed until I cried. Then I would've suggested a psychiatric evaluation.
Now?
Now it wasn't funny anymore.
Because, since the god was real, so was the danger, and I was starting to care whetherhelived. I sat up, dragging a hand through my hair, forcing my thoughts back into motion. Caring was dangerous. Attachment distorted judgment. So did denial. And denial had gotten a lot of very smart people killed—historically speaking.
I found Dravok on the bridge, half-lit by shifting holograms, posture deceptively relaxed. Tactical overlays drifted in slow rotation around him, stellar maps, probability arcs, data streams I didn't pretend to fully understand. He looked like he hadn't slept. Or maybe Arkhevari didn't sleep the way humans did. Either way, something in his expression tightened the moment he sensed me. Not alarm. Awareness.
His gaze tracked me across the bridge with unsettling precision, but when our eyes met, the edge softened. Just a little. I crossed the distance without thinking, drawn by that subtle shift, and leaned in to brush a light kiss across his forehead, an instinctive, almost absent gesture.
He caught my wrist. Not hard. Not stopping me. Redirecting.
"No," he murmured, and pulled me closer.
