I nod slowly. “Would you go with him?”
Jack shakes his head before I’ve even finished. “No.”
No uncertainty. No struggle. Just no.
“Can’t,” he says, quieter now. “I have Solan.”
There’s something in how he says the name that threads through the bones of the sentence, making it heavier and gentler all at once.
“He’s my everything,” Jack continues. “I’d sooner cut off a limb than be without him.”
That’s not hyperbole. I can tell from how he says it. It’s fact. A line drawn deep enough that he doesn’t have to raise his voice to make it felt.
I think of Varek.
Immediately, annoyingly.
Of the scent of him in the furs and the stone and the air of his quarters. Of the way the bond steadies when he’s close. Of how much more solid I felt with him beside me in the medical room, as if my body had remembered something before my head had managed to catch up.
I don’t say any of that out loud.
Instead, I ask, “And Jamie knows that?”
Jack lets out a breath that might almost be a laugh if there wasn’t so much worry wrapped around it. “Jamie’s pissed off,”he says. “Misses his folks. Misses Earth. Misses knowing what the hell a normal day looks like.”
“Fair.”
“Very.” He shakes his head. “But he’s also determined to stay.”
That surprises me enough that I almost forget to manage my footing over a slight rise in the stone. “Stay?”
“He keeps saying he’s meant to be here.”
There’s enough unease in Jack’s voice that I hear the rest of it without him having to say it:and that worries the hell out of me.
“Kids say all sorts of things when they’re trying to make sense of something awful,” I say.
“Yeah.” Jack’s expression stays thoughtful. “Maybe. Or maybe he knows something I don’t.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It feels ominous.”
We reach a narrower passage that curves towards the cluster of rooms Varek uses when he’s in this section of Dathanor, and something shifts under my skin.
I slow. Not because of pain, but because of him.
The awareness comes so suddenly that I stop mid-step. It isn’t a thought, exactly. More like a pull—warm, immediate, certain. A sense of direction that slots into place with a strange, effortless rightness.
Jack notices me pause.
“You all right?”
I look ahead at the bend in the corridor. “He’s here,” I say.
Jack’s brows rise. “You know that without being fully bonded, how?”
I hesitate, not even worrying about the fact that my and Varek’s relationship must be the subject of a lot of gossip. Because the real answer sounds ridiculous even inside my own head. “I just do.”
