I moved closer, closing the distance between us. "You can't carry that, Serna. You did what you had to do. What your position demanded. That doesn't make you responsible for his happiness."
"Doesn't it?" She looked at me, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "I knew what I was taking from him. I knew, and I did it anyway because duty demanded it. Because the Alliance needed it. How is that any different from what you did—putting duty before the people you love?"
The parallel hit me like a punch to the gut. She was right. We were both carrying the same burden—the weight of choices made in service to something larger than ourselves, choices that had cost us the people we cared about.
"Maybe it's not different," I admitted. "Maybe we're both guilty of the same thing. But that doesn't mean we have to keep punishing ourselves for it."
"Don't we?" Her voice was barely a whisper.
I reached out and took her hand, feeling the warmth of her skin against mine. "No. We don't. Because at some point, we have to forgive ourselves. We have to accept that we did the best we could with what we knew at the time. And we have to let ourselves... move forward."
She looked down at our joined hands, then back up at me. "Is that what you've done? Moved forward?"
"I'm trying." The words felt inadequate, but they were true.
"For the last year, I thought Chloe was dead." The words came out rough, scraping against my throat like broken glass. "I thought my daughter was gone, and it almost completely broke me. There were days I couldn't get out of bed. Days I couldn't remember why I was supposed to keep breathing."
Serna's hand tightened around mine, but she didn't speak. She just listened.
"It was one of the reasons I agreed to come to space, to work with you," I continued. "I needed something different. Something other than grief. Something that would force me to think about anything except the empty space where she used to be." I swallowed hard. "And then I found out she was alive. That she'd been alive this whole time. And it meant everything, Serna. Everything."
I looked at her, really looked at her, and saw my own pain reflected back at me.
"I know what it's like to carry that weight. To think you've lost someone and that it's somehow your fault. But I also know what it's like to get a second chance—to realize that maybe, just maybe, you don't have to live in that darkness forever." Isqueezed her hand. "You deserve that too. You deserve to forgive yourself. To let yourself feel something other than guilt."
We sat in silence after that, the weight of shared grief settling between us like something tangible. But it wasn't uncomfortable. It was the kind of silence that came from understanding—from two people who'd walked through their own versions of hell and somehow found themselves sitting together on the other side of it.
The jungle breathed around us. Somewhere overhead, something with leathery wings cut through the canopy, sending a cascade of leaves drifting down. The chittering calls of unseen creatures rose and fell in waves, punctuated by the occasional deeper growl that made my hand instinctively move toward my weapon. But I didn't let go of Serna's hand.
Her thumb traced small circles against my palm, an unconscious gesture that sent warmth spreading through my chest. I could feel her pulse through our joined hands—steady, strong, alive. The heat pressed down on us, thick and humid, but somehow her presence made it bearable.
A distant screech echoed through the trees, followed by the crash of something large moving through the undergrowth. Neither of us moved. We just sat there, two soldiers who'd seen too much, lost too much, holding onto each other in the middle of a hostile alien jungle.
It was Serna who finally broke the silence, her voice soft but clear. "Thank you. For telling me that. For... understanding."
I took a breath. This was dangerous territory. This was crossing a line I'd sworn I wouldn't cross. But sitting here in the jungle, with death potentially waiting around every corner, I couldn't bring myself to care about the rules anymore.
"Did you ever think you had a true mate?" I asked instead, the question coming out before I could stop it.
Serna went very still. For a moment, I thought I'd overstepped, that she'd pull away and shut down. But then she said, "For a long time, no. I didn't believe I had one. I thought that part of me had been sacrificed along with everything else when I became Prime."
"And now?"
She held my gaze, and something shifted in her expression—something open and vulnerable and achingly honest.
"Now... I don't know anymore."
The way she looked at me when she said it—the slight softening of her features, the way her pupils dilated, the barely perceptible lean toward me—it was an invitation. A door opening. A chance.
I didn't let myself think. Didn't let myself catalog all the reasons this was a terrible idea. I just moved.
I cupped her face with my free hand, my thumb brushing along her cheekbone, and leaned in slowly—giving her every opportunity to pull away, to stop this before it started.
She didn't.
Our lips met softly at first, tentative, testing. Her breath caught against my mouth, and I felt her hand tighten around mine—a small gasp that sent heat spiraling through my chest. The kiss was gentle, careful, like we were both afraid of breaking something fragile.
But then she made a small sound in the back of her throat—a whimper of need—and leaned into me, and something inside me snapped like a live wire.
