Like he doesn’t trust reality not to rip me away again.
His fingers tighten at my waist, trembling—not from effort, but from restraint.
I feel the hitch in his breathing when he looks down at me, eyes wild, jaw locked. For a second, I see something break behind that scarred face. Somethingreal.
Then the sound of gunfire snaps the moment in half.
“MOVE!” someone yells—Raxl, maybe.
Kyldak throws me up onto his engine beast like I’m weightless. The saddle burns through my jeans, and I barely catch the edge of the handle before the monster lurches forward. He vaults up behind me, one hand locking the throttle, the other around my waist.
The cruiser roars.
The dunes explode behind us.
We tear through the chaos in a storm of sand and fire. I can hear engines exploding, screams cutting off mid-breath, the metallic hiss of weapons discharging. His men follow—dozens of them, shadows on bikes, shooting and shouting and laughing like devils set loose.
Kyldak doesn’t look back once.
I glance up at him. His jaw’s clenched so tight the tendons twitch. Sweat drips down his temple, running along the seam of his cybernetic eye. His skin’s streaked with blood—some his, most not.
And still, somehow, he’s the most alive thing I’ve ever seen.
“Let me go,” I rasp, shouting over the wind.
He doesn’t answer.
“I saidlet me?—”
He growls low in his chest—so deep I feel it through my spine. “Stop fighting me, Jaela.”
That voice.
The one that once whispered my name like a prayer. The one I thought I’d only ever hear again in dreams.
I twist in his hold, elbow him hard in the ribs. “I don’t take orders from warlords.”
“Then stop getting yourselfcaptured,” he snaps, throttling harder. “You’re lucky I got here before they?—”
“Before theywhat?” I shoot back. “Before they did to me what this planet did to you?”
That hits. His shoulders go rigid. His hand tightens reflexively around my waist until my breath catches.
Neither of us says another word until the warcamp looms into view.
His camp is chaos pretending to be order—half-mad and half-miracle, like him.
Engines circle massive tents stitched from Alliance sails, bonfires throwing light across rusted armor and weapons piled like bones. Men cheer when they see him, shouting his name—Red Eye, Red Eye!—but they shut up quick when they see me.
He ignores them. Doesn’t even glance sideways. He dismounts, then turns, grabs me by the arm, and drags me into the largest tent before I can catch my balance.
Inside, it’s dim. The air smells like oil and heat and leather.
He lets me go so suddenly I stumble into a crate.
“You’re real,” he says, almost to himself. “You’reactuallyhere.”
I straighten, brushing sand off my torn shirt. “Yeah, thanks for the rescue. Next time, maybelead with thatinstead of a kidnapping.”
