He doesn’t answer—just watches, eyes flicking to the camera sphere embedded in the ceiling. Then back to me.
He moves. Fast.
His claws slice through the gel like a blade through silk. Itscreams—that’s the only word for it—the substance reacts, boiling where he touches it. He grips my shoulders andrips.The gel tears apart, hissing, splattering across the walls. I gasp as my legs come free, collapsing forward—he catches me before I hit the floor.
For a second, the world narrows to the feel of his hands on my skin. Warm. Calloused. Alive. Too real for a dream.
“Who—who are you?” I manage, breathless.
His lips curl. His voice is a growl made of smoke and gravel.
“Gyon.”
“Okay,” I pant. “Gyon. What the hell is this?—”
He leans closer, so close I can feel the heat rolling off him, the static hum of restrained violence. His breath brushes my ear when he speaks one word, low and strange.
“Jalshagar.”
The sound of it shivers down my spine like electricity. “What does that mean?” I whisper, before I can stop myself.
His red eyes flicker with something I don’t understand—something raw. “It means you’re mine.”
My brain short-circuits. “Excuse me?”
But before I can shove him away, before I can even process, Dirk’s laughter fills the room. “Aw, isn’t that sweet! Inter-species bonding! Unfortunately, unauthorized contact violates the terms of play!”
The ceiling bursts with blue light.
Energy arcs crash into Gyon’s body, one after another, bright enough to blind. Heroars—not in pain, but fury. The walls shake with it. The air tastes like burnt ozone and blood.
“Stop!” I scream. “You’ll kill him!”
“Oh, don’t be dramatic,” Dirk says. “You can’tkillwhat doesn’t belong to you.”
Another surge hits. Gyon snarls, his muscles locking, every line of his body seared with light. He turns his head toward me, eyes burning, fangs bared—not at me,forme. Like he’s warning the world not to touch what it just claimed.
Then the light cuts out.
Smoke fills the room.
And when it clears, he’s gone.
The gel is gone. The traps are reset. The cameras tilt lazily as if bored.
But I can still feel him. The warmth where he touched me. The echo of that word—jalshagar—still vibrates through my skin like a brand.
I stumble backward, my legs shaking. My pulse refuses to slow. The air smells scorched. I press my hand to my chest, half-expecting to find a mark burned there.
Nothing.
But something in me knows that word changed everything.
Dirk’s voice crackles through the intercom again, dripping amusement.
“Well! Wasn’t that exciting? Let’s give our engineer a round of applause for surviving spontaneous intimacy with the enemy! Stay tuned, folks—next round gets evenstickier!”
The speakers pop and go silent.
