I'd had to concentrate on breathing. Had to remind myself to inhale, exhale, maintain the independent rhythm that kept us separate.
When she'd touched me—her small hands learning the shape of my scars, her fingers wrapping around me with that devastating combination of curiosity and desire—I'd felt the bond reach for her like a living thing. A tendril of connection trying to bridge the gap between us. My skin had felt too tight, stretched over a frame that wanted to expand, to encompass her, to pull her into the space where our heartbeats could finally synchronize.
For a moment, I'd almost let go. Almost surrendered to the pull and let my heart stop, let it restart in sync with hers, let the bond complete itself and damn the consequences.
But I couldn't.
Because completing the bond here, in this place, would tie her to a male with no future. A prisoner. A killer. Someone who would die on this hellhole planet eventually, and when I did, the severed bond would destroy her too.
So I held back.
This morning, I'd woken with her curled against my side, her head on my shoulder, her breathing slow and even in sleep. And my heart had tried again—that involuntary reach, that biological imperative to sync our rhythms.
I'd felt it stutter. Skip a beat. Pause for half a second too long.
Then restart, still independent. Still separate.
Still wrong.
The ache had spread through my chest like a bruise, radiating outward until my ribs felt too tight and my lungs couldn't quite expand fully. I'd lain there in the darkness, listening to her breathe, feeling my heart beat out of sync,and understood with brutal clarity exactly what I was doing to myself.
I was choosing slow death over the risk of her destruction.
And I would make that choice every day for the rest of my life if it meant keeping her safe.
But what if there was another way?
The Prime's offer echoed in my mind, the words I'd been trying not to think about since she'd spoken them.Kill Hewes, and you're paroled.
Freedom.
The word tasted foreign on my tongue. I'd stopped believing in it years ago. I'd accepted that living the rest of my life on Palaydium was my penance. That a warrior who'd killed innocents, didn't deserve redemption. Didn't deserve a future.
Didn't deserve her.
But Merrilee had looked at me like I was worth saving. Like the blood on my hands didn't define me. Like the man I'd been before still existed somewhere beneath the scars and the guilt and the violence.
For the first time since the transport had dumped me on this gods-forsaken rock, I let myself want something beyond the next breath. Let myself imagine a life where I could complete the bond without condemning her to die beside me in the wasteland.
Where I could be worthy of her.
The thought terrified me more than any opponent I'd ever faced.
Because wanting something meant having something to lose.
So I held back. Kept that final barrier between us. Refused to claim her fully even though every instinct I had screamed at me to complete the bond, to make her mine in a way that nothing could break.
Even if it killed me.
"Ahrick."
I turned. One of Persico's guards stood at the edge of the ring, his expression carefully neutral.
"You're wanted."
My jaw tightened. "By who?"
"Does it matter?"
