“Garokk,” she repeats, rolling the syllables carefully, like she’s testing them for taste. “Kinda sounds like a curse word. I like it.”
“You shouldn’t,” I mutter.
“Why not?”
“Because most who say it are dead.”
She tilts her head. “Yeah, butI’m not.”
That’s when it hits me.
This human—this ridiculous, fragile thing with purple streaks and more courage than sense—isn’t afraid of me.
Not really.
She should be. I’m a monster even my own people stopped naming. I’ve done things—terrible, bloody things—in the Centuries War that make lesser warriors break just hearing them described. But she doesn’t know any of that. Or maybe she doesn’t care.
She leans back, propping herself up on one elbow, studying me with those warm brown eyes. “You’ve got that whole tortured loner vibe,” she says. “Real broody. Real ‘I’ve seen things’ energy.”
I scowl. “Ihaveseen things.”
She laughs. The sound bounces off the steel walls, bright and alive, too loud and too beautiful for this graveyard.
Something inside my chest—something long buried—moves.
I shift uncomfortably. My claws twitch against the floor. The sharp scrape of keratin on metal echoes faintly. My breath comes too fast, and my hearts pound hard enough to make my vision pulse.
This isn’t good.
I don’tdothis. I don’t feel this. Not since before the War. Not since before everything burned.
I stand abruptly, turning away. “I’ll find you food.”
“Garokk—” she starts, but I cut her off with a low growl.
“Stay here.”
There’s more command in it than I intend, but she just raises an eyebrow. “You really think I’m gonna wander off after what just happened?”
“Humans do stupid things.”
She smirks. “Yeah, well. You’d know, wouldn’t you?”
That pulls a grunt out of me—half amusement, half irritation. I push open the access panel, letting the door groan shut behind me.
But even as I walk the dim corridors, scavenging old ration crates and listening to the Hulk murmur through the vents, I can’t stop hearing her voice. It follows me like a phantom in the metal.
She’s too bright for this place.
Tooalive.
And yet… my instincts whisper something older. Deeper. A word in my native tongue that burns at the back of my mind.
Jalshagar.
The fated bond.
Impossible.
