I feel every ridge, every vein. My body molds around him, desperate to pull him deeper. He thrusts slowly, carefully, until he’s buried to the hilt.
We both stop.
I’m full. So full I can’t think.
“You feel like fire,” he groans, head dropping to my shoulder. “Likehome.”
Tears prick my eyes. I wrap my arms around his neck, legs around his waist. “Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”
He starts to move.
Slow at first. Grinding. Rolling his hips so his ridges drag along my walls. Then faster. Rougher. Until I’m moaning with every thrust, crying his name like a prayer.
“Mine,” he growls, pounding into me. “Say it.”
“Yes—yours?—”
He fucks me like he’s carving it into the stars. My nails draw blood from his back. His teeth graze my throat. We’re tangled in heat and sweat and gasping breaths.
“I should’ve died,” he rasps. “But I lived for this. Foryou.”
I break again. Shatter around him, sobbing, pulsing. He follows with a roar, thrusting deep, flooding me with heat.
We stay there. Tangled. Breathing each other in.
And I know—this isn’t just sex.
It’s war.
It’s surrender.
And I’ve already lost.
I wakewith that bitter guilt already burning in my chest, like it never left. It’s there the moment I open my eyes, sharper than Jurtik’s wind cutting steel. I hear Kyldak before I see him—low laughter echoing through the courtyard as a few of his lieutenants spar over scavenged weapon cores. He laughs like a man who still believes he’s alive.
I close my eyes and hold the memory of Kel’s face in my mind. The little fevered body, the tremor in his lungs, the whisper of “Mama” like a prayer. It’s why I came. Why I risked dying—and doing things I swore I’d never do again. The longer I stay silent, the heavier the lie weighs.
I swing my legs out of the cot, feet hitting the metal planks. The air is thick with dust and engine grease. I taste iron in the back of my throat. I rise, cloak drifting behind me, and move like a ghost through the tents.
I can’t stay here idle. I need a plan. I need to test him—get a DNA sample without him knowing. Everything I do must balance danger and subterfuge.
He strides past me, laughing with Raxl, telling some bawdy joke about surviving a sand blight. I stiffen. My fingers itch. Thesight of him laughing—alive—is like salt in an open wound. I swallow hard.
Later,the sun is a cruel eye overhead, grilling flesh and metal alike. They organize a skirmish drill: mock ambush, reaction timing, suppression tactics. A perfect cover. I volunteer. My heart pounds as I step into the sparring ground, sand kicking underfoot, the heat pushing sweat down my spine. I’m watching him—watching how he moves, how he drinks from his canteen, how he sweats, how he breathes.
During a break, he drops his metal cup—one he’s used earlier, the one I saw him drink from after the pit fight. The rim glints in the afternoon light. No one’s looking. I slip behind two crates, heart sputtering. I slide the cup sideways until I can scoop inside with the thin tip of a sterilized bone shard I hid in my boot. I brush the shard along the inner lip, catching micro-residue—saliva, skin cell, whatever I can harvest. My pulse slams. Sweat drips down my temples. I lift the shard, tuck it into my sleeve, wipe my hands clean.
Kyldak steps toward me. I nearly drop the shard. I force my face calm. He says, “You good?” meaning literally—“did you overextend?” I nod. “Don’t push too hard.” His voice is soft, concern flickering in his red eye.
I swallow. “Just feeling the heat.”
He laughs. And that laugh—the sound of him still alive—makes my heart tear. I walk away, hiding the shard in a fold of my sleeve.
Every time he passes near me, my nerve frays. His scent—metal, sweat, burning coal—floods me. I steady myself.
By night, I retreat to my quarters. I press the shard onto a tiny field isolation chamber I rigged earlier from parts scavenged at the comms rig. The amber glow inside hums. I watch molecules separate, analyze gene patterns. I pretend not to feel sick with yearning.
And when the display shows a partial match—enough to confirm he’s the only possible donor—I have to look away. Because if he turned from myth into flesh, if heisthe one connection that saves Kel—or damns him—then I can’t hide this anymore.
