I drag her through the corridors like a man possessed. Maybe I am. Possessed by rage, by terror, by the memory of her facing down that Apex dog with nothing but vines and fury while he held a gun on her.
Guards snap to attention as we pass. I don't acknowledge them. Can't. Every ounce of my focus is split between keeping my grip on Ksara gentle enough not to bruise and not turning around to go back and finish what I started with that spy.
"Haid." She's trying to dig her heels in, trying to slow me down. "Haid, stop. Where are we?—"
"My quarters." The words come out clipped. Controlled. A thin veneer over the violence still churning in my blood. "Now."
I palm the lock. The door hisses open. I pull her inside and seal us in, overriding the system so no one can interrupt. The lock engages with a heavy magneticthunkthat echoes in the silence.
She yanks her wrist free the moment I release her. Backs up three steps, putting space between us. Her eyes are bright withanger, her chest heaving, hair wild around her face from our sprint through the station.
Beautiful. Furious. Alive and vibrating with an energy that makes the air between us crackle like a live wire.
The relief of it, the sheer, overwhelming fact that she's here, whole, unmarred save for the fury blazing in those eyes, nearly drops me to my knees. My chest constricts with something too raw to name, something that makes my hands shake where they hang at my sides. She could have been dead. Could have been bleeding out on those cold station floors while I was too far away to stop it, too late to save her.
But she's not. She's here. Breathing. Fighting.
"What the hell was that?" She's breathing hard, hands clenched into fists at her sides. "You can't just drag me around like cargo! Like I don't get a say in?—"
"You went to the lower levels." I can hear the gravel in my voice, the barely leashed fury. "Alone. Without guards. Without telling anyone where you were going."
"I was distributing the harvest! You know, the reason you kidnapped me in the first place?" She takes a step forward, chin lifted in defiance. "Those people needed?—"
"Those people nearly got you killed!" The shout tears out of me before I can stop it. "Do you understand what I found? What I walked in on? He had agunpointed at your head, and you were alone in a corridor where no one would have heard you scream!"
"I had the situation under control!" Her voice cracks with indignation, with the fierce need to prove herself.
"Under control?" I can't stop the bitter, desperate laugh that escapes. "You hadsecondsleft before he pulled that trigger! Seconds before I would have lost you forever!"
The words hang suspended in the space between us like shrapnel after an explosion, jagged fragments, dangerous anddeadly, each one cutting too close to truths I've spent years burying under layers of ice and iron will.
She's shaking again, her entire body trembling with barely contained emotion. But it's different now. Not the adrenaline-fueled aftermath of near-death, not the shock of violence or the terror of staring down a weapon's barrel. This is something far more volatile, far more combustible. This is rage, pure, incandescent fury that blazes in those eyes and radiates from every tense line of her body. A rage that mirrors my own like looking into a dark reflection of everything I'm feeling, everything I can barely keep chained down.
"I am not some delicate flower you keep locked in a greenhouse, Haid." Her voice drops low, deadly quiet. "I can take care of myself. I've been taking care of myself my whole life while my mother paraded me around like a prize orchid, and I will not, Irefuseto trade one gilded cage for another!"
"This isn't a cage." I'm moving toward her without deciding to, drawn by gravity or madness or something I don't have a name for. "This is keeping you alive."
"No." She holds her ground even as I close the distance. "This is you trying to control something you're afraid of losing."
The accusation hits like a railgun blast. Dead center. Devastating.
"You're damn right I'm afraid of losing you." The confession rips out of my throat, raw and bleeding. "You want the truth? Fine. You are the only thing in this gods-forsaken universe I cannot lose. The only light in decades of darkness. The only?—"
I cut myself off. Breathing hard. Close enough now that I can see the gold flecks in her eyes, can smell rain and soil and something uniquely her that makes my head spin.
"The only what?" Her voice has gone soft. Dangerous in a completely different way. She tips her chin up, meeting my eyes without flinching. "Say it."
I can't. The words are lodged behind my teeth, behind every wall I've built to survive in this brutal corner of space. Admitting it makes it real. Makes it a weapon someone can use against me.
Makes me vulnerable in a way that no armor can protect against.
"Coward." She breathes the word like a challenge. Like she knows exactly what strings to pull to unravel me. "You can kidnap me, threaten empires for me, nearly kill a man for touching me, but you can't say?—"
I kiss her.
It's not gentle. Not careful. It's weeks of wanting and fear and desperate need compressed into the press of my mouth against hers, the slide of my hands into her hair, the way I back her up until she hits the wall and gasps against my lips.
She doesn't push me away.
