Page 67 of Reaper Said Mine

Gnash flinches as if my life has struck him.

I see it.

Everyone sees it.

The mighty Warlord of Guyver Station, the Reaper captain every diplomat in the room has spent days trying to move, staggers half a breath under the weight of a human woman’s memories.

A sound passes through the Reapers that is not laughter this time.

It is recognition.

Theryki stands slowly at the high table, her golden eyes suddenly bright with calculation. Gobold looks from Gnash to me with his mouth slightly open and the first honest surprise I have seen from him. Wilcox presses one hand flat to the table, as if steadying herself against the political consequences already unfolding. The Helios proxy looks frightened, and for that alone, some distant practical part of me feels grim satisfaction.

Gnash takes another step.

My heart answers before I can decide what that means.

“Ursa,” Vesk says quietly. “Look at me if you need to break eye contact.”

I try.

I truly try.

My eyes move half an inch and snap back to Gnash as if gravity itself has changed.

The bond does not command me. That is the strangest part. It does not erase me, does not fold my will under his, does not make me suddenly less myself. Instead, it reveals a truth so enormous my mind keeps circling it in disbelief. This man is not safe. This moment is not simple. Nothing about the future has become easier.

Yet some part of me knows him.

Not his choices. Not his politics. Not his temper or his secrets or the blood on his hands. Those remain unknown, and I cling to that distinction because I am still a journalist, still myself, still responsible for asking what must be asked. The bond does not absolve him. It does not excuse me. It does something more frightening than either.

It makes turning away feel like lying.

Gnash stops several paces from the high table, still far from me, though the space between us feels thin enough to tear.

His voice reaches me through the stunned quiet, deep, rough, and stripped of performance.

“Come here.”

The words roll through the hall.

Every eye turns toward me.

My legs tremble beneath the table. Rikka’s hand remains on my elbow, not pushing, not restraining. Vesk stands close enough to protect but not close enough to decide for me. That matters. Every lesson I studied about Reaper power, every warning about force and dominance and appetite, collides with the fact that no one touching me is making me move.

I straighten.

“No,” I say.

The word comes out steady enough to shock several people, including me.

A murmur breaks across the hall.

Gnash goes utterly still.

I lift my chin and hold his gaze across the firelit distance. My body aches to cross the room. My blood feels full of lightning. My lungs work as if the air has thickened. But if I walk to him because he commands it, the first choice between us belongs to his power instead of mine.

That cannot be how this begins.