He grabs my hand and pulls me toward the emergency access panel hidden behind a tactical display. His armored fingers move with practiced efficiency across the biometric scanner, bypassing security protocols that should take minutes in mere seconds.
The panel slides open, revealing a maintenance shaft barely wide enough for his shoulders.
"Go," he commands, already lifting me toward the opening despite the weightlessness making leverage nearly impossible. His hands span my waist, solid and sure even as we drift. "Follow the yellow markers. They lead to docking bay seven."
I twist to look back at him, panic flaring hot in my chest. "What about you?"
"Right behind you." Through the neural link, I feel his determination, his absolute refusal to let anything happen to me.
Also his lie, because even through the bond's crystalline clarity, I can sense the edges of his deception, the way he's already calculating trajectories and outcomes that don't include both of us making it to that docking bay.
"Haid—" I start, his name catching in my throat like a prayer or a curse, but I don't get to finish the protest forming on my lips.
The door explodes inward in a shower of molten metal and sparks that light up the darkness like dying stars. Apex guards pour through, weapons raised, and Haid shoves me into the shaft with enough force to send me tumbling backward through the weightless tunnel.
"Go!" he roars, and this time there's nothing human in his voice, only the Warden of the Void unleashing himself on anyone foolish enough to stand between him and his mate.
So I go.
I scramble through the maintenance shaft, using handholds designed for zero-gravity repairs, pulling myself forward while behind me the sounds of combat echo through the metal walls. Energy weapons discharge with sharp cracks. Something heavy slams into bulkheads. A man screams, the sound cutting off abruptly.
Through the bond, I feel Haid's cold rage, his brutal efficiency, his absolute focus on clearing a path.
The yellow markers blur past as I move faster, trusting him to follow, trusting the connection between us that pulses stronger with every meter of distance I put between us. It shouldn't work like this. The neural link should weaken with separation.
Instead it grows more insistent, more demanding, a silver thread that winds tighter and brighter with each passing second,tying us together across space and violence and fear. The neural link thrums in my mind like a living thing, pulsing with information I barely understand, his location, his intent, his absolute determination to follow. It shouldn't be possible. Every text I've ever read about mate bonds says they attenuate over distance, that separation weakens the connection. But this feels like the opposite, like stretching a cord until it vibrates with tension, until the resonance becomes impossible to ignore.
My hands find another grip, pull, propel me forward through the narrow tunnel. The yellow markers continue their steady progression, counting down the distance to docking bay seven.
I drop out of the shaft just as gravity stutters back online, the transition jarring and abrupt. One moment I'm weightless, the next I'm falling through suddenly heavy air, my stomach lurching with the change.
The sudden return of weight sends me crashing to the deck, knees hitting metal hard enough to bruise. I bite back a cry and force myself upright, scanning the bay for threats. Empty. The Cerberus waits thirty meters away, ramp already descending, Thanatos visible in the doorway with a plasma rifle raised.
"Move!" he shouts, laying down covering fire as Apex guards pour into the bay from the opposite entrance.
I run.
Energy bolts scream past close enough to feel the heat, close enough to smell ozone and burned air. One catches my shoulder, glancing off but still searing through fabric into skin. Pain lances white-hot down my arm and I stumble but don't fall, don't stop, just keep running toward the ship and safety and?—
Haid erupts from another access shaft behind me, his armor scorched and dented but intact.
Relief floods through me so powerfully my knees almost buckle. Through the bond I feel his matching emotion, fierceand possessive and edged with violence that hasn't quite burned itself out.
We made it up the ramp together.
Thanatos seals it behind us, already shouting coordinates to the pilot, and the Cerberus lurches into motion before we've even reached the bridge. I crash into a bulkhead as the ship banks hard, artificial gravity struggling to compensate. Haid catches me against his armored chest, one arm banding around my waist to hold me steady.
"Status," he barks into the ship's comm, still holding me close.
"Apex defenses are crippled," comes the response, crackling with static. "Fleet Admiral Nyx reports seventy percent of their gun platforms offline. The Tartarus fleet is breaking off, regrouping at rally point sigma."
Through the viewscreen, I watch the golden hulls of Apex cruisers listing in space, venting atmosphere and debris. Smaller Tartarus ships dart between them like sharks, sleek and dark and devastating.
We did this.
The thought should horrify me. I was raised to value peace, to see violence as failure, to believe in negotiation and diplomacy and the fundamental good of the Apex Collective.
But all I feel is savage satisfaction that my mother's forces are bleeding.
