Except his marks just pulsed, once, a single bright flare along his temples, when our eyes met across the table. A tell I recognize. A tell that means I'm not the only one remembering.
Except my pulse is hammering in my throat loud enough that I'm half-convinced the whole room can hear it, and I'm fighting the urge to touch my mouth, to check if the evidence of what we did is somehow still visible on my skin.
The kiss is irrelevant.
I'm a terrible liar.
Except everyone in this room can feel that something happened, even if they don't know what.
Zane dismisses us. Talia follows him out. I'm halfway to the door when Dexter's voice stops me.
"Astra."
I don't turn. "What."
"Nothing." A pause. The kind of pause that has weight. "Just... six hours. Don't be late."
Like I've ever been late for an operation.
Like he has any right to worry about my professionalism.
I leave without answering. The door seals behind me with a hiss that sounds like finality.
The training roomis supposed to be empty.
It isn't.
I smell him before I see him. Gun oil and that antiseptic the military issues. Six years and he still uses the same brand. I should have checked the occupancy log before I came here.
I should leave.
I don't.
He's working through combat forms. Hand to hand, no weapons, just his body against imaginary opponents. His movements are precise, beautiful, controlled. Empri grace that looks like performance art. Every strike economical. Every block exactly where it needs to be.
The contrast to my raw human power is infuriating.
I stand in the doorway. Watch him move. His marks glow soft with the exertion, pulsing along his temples, down his spine. Sweat makes his turquoise skin shine.
I watch his shoulders tense, the slight shift of weight that means he's sensed me. Known I was there the whole time, probably felt the spike of my awareness the second I walked through the door.
"I can leave," he says without turning around. Still facing away, still moving through the forms like I haven't disrupted anything. Like my presence doesn't change the air in here.
The word is out before I can stop it. Before I can calculate what it costs to say.
"Don't."
My voice comes out rougher than I meant. More raw. The kind of honesty that draws blood.
He goes completely still. Not the freeze of someone caught off-guard—the stillness of a system cycling down before hard restart. Tension rippling through every muscle,his marks pulsing brighter for just a second before he controls them.
Then he turns.
Slow. Deliberate. Like he's giving me time to change my mind, to take it back, to run.
His electric blue eyes find me across the training room. Lock on. Hold.
The space between us feels charged. Dangerous. Like the air before a hull breach, that moment when pressure differentials are about to equalize violently.
