“Maybe send out a distress beacon?” I ask, hopeful.
“Maybe,” he says. But he doesn’t sound like he believes it.
I nod anyway. “Worth a shot.”
We stay quiet for a while. Long enough that I start to feel the weight of all the air between us, thick with tension and not enough answers.
“So,” I say finally, voice soft. “This place. You really lived here? All this time?”
He doesn’t answer right away. But then: “Fifty-three years. Nine months. Seventeen days.”
I blink. “You’ve been counting?”
“I do not sleep well.”
My chest tightens. I try to imagine what that kind of solitude does to a person. To a warrior. Aman.
“You didn’t go crazy?” I ask, only half-joking.
He glances at me sidelong. “Define crazy.”
That makes me laugh, quiet and warm. “You know, for someone who acts like a walking death threat, you’re weirdly good company.”
“I am not company.”
“Right. Loner. Brooder. Beast of the Hulk.” I nudge his arm gently. “You’re terrible at branding, by the way. Needs work.”
He exhales—short, amused. Then his head tilts again, and he watches me. Thatlookreturns. Not hungry. Not threatening. Just... intense.
“You are strange,” he says.
“Tell me something Idon’tknow.”
“You... don’t smell afraid.”
I pause. That’s not something I expected to hear. “Should I?”
He doesn’t answer. But his gaze softens. Almost imperceptibly. Like a storm pulling back before it hits.
“No,” he murmurs. “Not anymore.”
We listen as the footsteps fade. Then Garokk gestures for me to follow again.
And I do—because whatever this is between us, whatever it means—I know one thing for sure:
If Meyer’s crew thinks I’m easy prey, they’re not just messing with some influencer anymore.
They’re messing withhisinfluencer.
CHAPTER 7
GAROKK
This ship listens to me.
It always has, in strange, silent ways. Doors don’t just respond—they anticipate. Bulkheads whisper warnings. Systems that lie dormant for years crackle to life when I pass. It isn’t magic. It’s recognition. A deep, buried familiarity like blood memory. The Hulk may be old, drifting, and broken in more places than it’s whole—but it still knows me.
It doesn’t know her.
