I open my hand at her waist. Not releasing her, but offering release. She can step back. She should step back. I need her to step back.
She does not.
“Kavor,” she says.
My name in her mouth is not a warning this time.
“Sera.”
“I know,” she whispers.
“You do not.”
“I know enough.”
“No.” The word tears out low. “Not here. Not with the glow reacting. Not with blood and danger. Not because the cavern is making everything feel bigger.”
Her eyes darken. Human dark. Sera dark. No glow can swallow it.
“You think I can’t tell the difference?” she asks.
“I think I cannot.” That stops her. Good. Truth should stop us. My voice goes rough. “I want you when you are angry, when you are bleeding, and when you tell me no. I want you when the epis glows and when it does not. I want you beyond reason. I do not trust reason right now.”
Her hand tightens on my chest. The sample pulses beneath her palm.
“I am trying,” I say, each word dragged from a place with claws in it, “not to become another thing that takes from you.”
The cavern goes quiet. Blue strands sway. Water drips. Far above, stone settles around the broken signal path.
Sera looks at me like I have opened a wound and handed her the knife. Then she shifts closer. Barely. Enough to ruin me.
“You keep saying that,” she says. My breath stops. “That you won’t take.” Her fingers spread over my chest. “That I have to choose.”
“Yes.”
Her gaze drops to my mouth. The world narrows to that movement. My claws bite into my own palm.
“Sera.”
“I’m choosing.”
The words strike harder than the anchor’s light.
She rises onto her toes, one hand still pressed over the sample between us, the other catching the edge of my harness. I do not move. I do not breathe. I let her come.
Her mouth touches mine.
Soft at first. A question made of heat and trembling defiance. Then not soft.
Sera kisses like she survives. Fierce. Exact. As if every part of her has counted the cost and decided to pay anyway.
The cavern flares blue around us. My control cracks. Not enough to take. Enough to answer.
I cup the back of her head with one hand, careful of her injury, her choice, and the dangerous, impossible truth that she is in my arms because she put herself there.
She makes a sound against my mouth. Small. Hungry. Alive.
The mate pull rises like a zemlja beneath the stone. I hold it back. Barely.
