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He looked once more at the door—a flicker of assessment—then slowly stretched out on his back beside me, boots still on, one hand resting near the weapon at his hip.

Not relaxed. Not yielding.

But horizontal.

Progress, in pieces so small they were almost insulting.

I lowered myself to the mattress beside him, a careful handspan of worn fabric between our bodies. The silence stretched, measured only by the faint hum of the climate control. Then his hand shifted—a slow, deliberate turn of his wrist until his palm lay open between us. I watched the faint silver light pulse once beneath his skin before my gaze lifted to his face. His eyes remained fixed on the ceiling, giving me this: a choice.

My fingers settled against his palm. His hand closed around mine—not gripping, just holding. The warmth of his skin seeped into mine, and beneath it, that strange silver light glowed softly where our hands met. We didn’t speak. My head found the cool wall behind us while he kept watching the ceiling tiles as if mapping escape routes.

His breathing deepened first—the sharp, controlled rhythm giving way to something slower, more even. When I turned my head, his eyes were shut, the tension finally gone from his jaw. Actually asleep.

The tight furrow between his brows smoothed out into nothing. His fingers, which had been a tense cage around mine, went slack. The rhythm of his breathing deepened, evening out into the slow, heavy pull of true sleep.

I watched the rise and fall of his chest. The harsh lines of his face were gone, leaving behind someone I’d only ever seen in flashes. Not the Ghost. Not the Strike Commander the records said was dead.

Just Veyr.

I didn’t shift my weight, didn’t pull my hand from his loose grip. The chrono on the wall ticked off minutes I didn’t count. It didn’t matter.

One moment he was still, the next his eyes were open, fixed and unblinking. The line of his body went wire-tight. His free hand snapped toward the weapon at his hip—then froze halfway, his gaze landing on me, on our still-joined hands between us.

“You slept.”

A shadow crossed his face. “So it seems.”

“Terrifying.”

“For both of us,” he said, voice rough with disuse.

I didn't let go of his hand.

My thumb traced the ridge of his knuckles, the calluses there, the places where weapons had worn his skin smooth. His gaze dropped to where we touched, then lifted to my face with something like uncertainty.

“How long have I been out?”

“About an hour,” I said again, softer this time. “You didn't dream.”

“I never dream.” But his voice had gone low, rougher than disuse could account for. “Not until⁠—”

He stopped. The ŭre pulsed between us, silver threading through the dim room, answering my pulse or his, I couldn't tell anymore. I reached up with my free hand and touched the hollow of his throat, where the collar of his shirt had fallen open. His skin was warm. Real. Not a ghost at all.

He caught my wrist. Not hard. A question.

I answered by leaning in.

The first kiss was careful, almost tentative. His mouth barely grazed mine, testing me. I opened to him, and the ŭre flared bright enough to cast shadows on the wall, a silent silver cry that matched the sound he made in his throat when I pulled him closer.

His hands found my waist, my ribs, the curve of my spine. He touched me like I was something that might break, or something that might break him. I tugged at his shirt and he went still, breathing hard against my mouth.

“Talia.”

I took his hand and pressed it flat against my stomach, beneath my own shirt. The ŭre surged, warm and seeking, and I felt him shudder—he always did, that first touch, like he still couldn’t believe I was letting him.

I pushed his shirt up and off, and he let me, raising his arms the way he always did now, no longer hesitant about what I’d find. The scars were still there-ridge and pucker, the pale geography of a body that had been used hard and healed wrong.

I traced the one that crossed his shoulder, and the ŭre dimmed, then steadied, the same way it did every time my fingers found that line. I bent to it. My mouth followed the scar down his shoulder, slow, unhurried, pressing a kiss into the ridge of old tissue where the wound had knotted and healed. He exhaled through his teeth. I kissed the hollow beneath his collarbone, then lower, over his sternum, feeling his pulse jump against my lips. The ŭre flickered silver across his ribs as I moved down his body—a soft press at each scar, each place where someone had opened him and left a mark—until he was trembling with the effort of lying still.