I don’t answer. There’s no need for me to justify myself. I don’t know the name of his brother; he’s only a ghost to Mekkra.
“But you have seen the evidence of my cruelty with your own eyes…”
I can feel his hand hovering over my shoulder.
“I am not safe.”
I tighten my hold; Mekkra’s breath stutters in his chest.
Slowly, as if I were too sacred to touch, his armswrap completely around me. I press my cheek into his abs, the softness of his fur tickling my nose. His body heat flows against my skin, ebbing any chill out of me.
The madness may live inside him, but so does his choice to fight it.
“We will wait,” he says at last, quieter now. Controlled again, but barely. “For our mating ceremony.”
A pause, and he tilts my head up with his thumb. Something softens behind his eyes. Maybe it’s my willingness and knowing that he could soon be free of the madness that threatens him. Maybe it’s seeing his brother’s bones.
“Today, I must honor the dead.”
CHAPTER NINE
I don’t see Mekkra for the rest of the day.
Starcroft brings my meals like I’m some quarantined specimen—quiet, efficient, gone before the steam even finishes curling off the tray. The door seals. The room hums.
That’s it. No conversation. No updates. Just the low mechanical humming of the station and me, lying on the bed pretending I’m not listening for footsteps that never come.
I don’t even attempt to leave my room.
I tell myself the move is strategic. That I’m not about to wander the corridors of a warlord’s ship like I belong there. But that’s not the whole truth. The truth is, I don’t want to intrude on whatever the hell cracked open in him this morning. I don’t want him to have to put the mask back on because I’m standing there watching. So, I leave him to his grief.
I hate that I even care.
I almost wish I could shake myself, to scream he’s not some stray dog on the side of the road that needs rescuing. Is it Stockholm syndrome? Trauma bonding? Or is Mekkra just the first person in years who hasn’t looked at me as if I wasdisposable—and my stupid kindness-starved brain is twisting things all around?
But I don’t get to spiral.
The dim red lights of my room flicker once before they start strobing hard enough to make my vision pulse—and the entire station jerks violently to the right.
I don’t brace in time.
I’m thrown off the bed and slam shoulder-first into the floor. The impact knocks the air out of me in a broken gasp. Before I can even suck in another breath, the ship whips the other direction and I scramble, grabbing for anything solid.
My hand catches a metal seam in the wall just as the station bucks again and hurls me forward.
My mouth smashes into steel.
There’s a sharp crack of pain and then warmth—thick and coppery—floods my tongue.
An alarm wails in the corridor, and I snap my head toward the sound.
The door to my room has jumped its track. It hangs crooked, dangling from the top rail like it’s barely holding on. I drop to my hands and knees and crawl toward it because standing feels like a gamble I’m not winning.
The hallway beyond is chaos—red lights flash, sparks snap from a wall panel, smoke threads through the air. The whole station sways in this sick, off-balance rhythm that makes it impossible to find center.
I have no fucking idea what’s happening.
But I know it’s bad.
