I close the distance.
Fully.
The contact is immediate, solid, grounding in a way that cuts through everything else, and when he exhales, it’s sharper, like something in him finally gives way.
“Stacy,” he says, my name rougher now
I don’t answer with words.
Instead, I tilt my head slightly, closing the last fraction of space between us, my lips brushing his in a way that’s intentional, deliberate, not rushed, not uncertain.
He responds instantly, but not aggressively, not like before, and that’s the difference.
Everything about this is chosen.
His hand shifts against my back, firmer now, and I lean into it, matching the pressure, my fingers tightening slightly at the base of his neck as the contact deepens, not overwhelming, but consuming in a slower way.
“You’re sure,” he murmurs against me, his voice low, threaded with something that almost sounds like disbelief.
“Yes,” I answer, my breath brushing against his skin.
His grip adjusts again, not holding me in place, but anchoring me, and I feel it, the shift from restraint into something closer to trust.
“Then don’t hold back,” he says.
I pull back just enough to meet his gaze, my lips still close to his, my breath uneven but steady.
“I’m not,” I reply.
CHAPTER 33
TYROK
The names don’t feel real at first.
Not because I don’t recognize them, but because I do, and that recognition sits wrong in my chest as I pull the list across the display, each identifier slotting into place with a familiarity that makes the betrayal sharper instead of duller. The ship is quieter now, not empty, not calm in a way that lets me hear everything—the low hum of the engines, the faint click of systems recalibrating, the subtle shift of bodies moving in adjacent compartments—and underneath it all, the weight of what I’m looking at.
“They’re all confirmed?” I ask, my voice steady even as my fingers hover over the data.
Across the console, the comm flickers, and one of my officers leans into frame, his expression tight.
“Yes,” he says. “Cross-referenced through the same routing structure Stacy exposed. No false positives.”
“No assumptions,” I reply, my gaze still on the list. “I want certainty.”
“That is certainty,” he says, more firmly this time, though there’s tension under it, like he knows what confirming this actually means.
I let out a slow breath, then expand the network mapping, watching the connections unfold, lines threading through my command structure in patterns that shouldn’t exist, shouldn’t have been allowed to exist.
“They didn’t act alone,” I say.
“No,” the officer agrees. “Renn was the central node, but the network branches. Compartmentalized, layered. Whoever set it up knew what they were doing.”
I nod once.
Of course they did.
“They’re still active?” I ask.
