“You think I don’t know what that looks like?” she asks. “You think sacrifice only counts when it is small and quiet and ration-shaped? You think throwing yourself at danger because you’re larger and harder to kill is morally different?”
“It is tactically different.”
“It’s the same lie wearing claws.”
I have no answer, which is answer enough.
Her chest rises and falls too quickly. Her hand presses over her bandage, not because she is weak. Because she is furious enough to forget pain until the body reminds her.
“I need you alive,” she says.
The words are sharp. Angry. Dragged out of her. The cavern seems to catch them before I do.
Need. You. Alive.
My lungs seize. Sera hears what she has said after she says it. I see that in the way her face changes. It is not regret that I see. It is fear of truth in the open.
I should give her somewhere to hide, but I cannot move.
“You need my tracking,” I say.
Coward.
Her eyes flash. “Yes.”
That is safer. Not now. Not here. Back away from the truth pounding between us.
“And your claws. And your deeply annoying ability to hear rocks thinking. And your bad answers. And your face when you’re trying not to smile,” she says.
That is not safe. My chest opens around each word like stone cracking under pressure.
“Kavor,” she says, lower. “I need you alive.”
No mission added after it. No explanation thrown over the truth like dust.
The sample pulses hard against my chest. Her bandage answers. The hanging epis around us brightens.
I cannot breathe through this. The red edges my sight. Not rage. Not only desire. Need.
The mate pull rises from somewhere older than thought, catches her words, and makes them into law. She needs me alive. Mine to protect. Mine to feed. Mine to hold. Mine to answer.
No. Not mine. Chosen. Choice.
The red deepens and Sera sees, but she does not step away. That is worse. She sees me fighting myself and does not flee.
“Sera,” I say, my voice almost a growl.
A warning. A plea. Both.
“I see you,” she says.
No. She cannot. If she sees, she will know how close to danger I am.
How every breath of her scent, pain, and courage has become command. How badly I want to take her face in my hands, press her back against the glowing stone, and make the whole cavern understand that she lives. She is wanted. She is fed. She is mine.
No. She is Sera. Sera, who chooses. Sera, who says no. Sera, who saves me. Sera, whose hunger is not permission for me to become another mouth to feed.
I turn away so sharply my wing scrapes the ridge wall. Pain clears enough space for thought. Good. Pain is clean.
