Page 107 of Thexan

My anger didn’t vanish.

It changed shape.

I stepped closer again, close enough now that I could reach him if I wanted to, though I kept my hands at my sides for one more moment because this needed to be said before comfort softened it.

“I’m afraid too,” I said. “I’m afraid more danger will come. I’m afraid the settlement won’t adjust fast enough. I’m afraid I’ll wake up one morning and realize I don’t know how to be someone’s mate when I’ve spent so long being everyone’s medic. But I am not asking fear to make decisions for me.”

His gaze stayed on mine.

“No,” he said. “You are not.”

“And neither are you.”

He understood that it was a statement, not a question.

“I do not know how to protect what I love without controlling the danger around it,” he said.

The words left me quiet. What I loved. Not what I valued, preferred, or had been biologically driven to protect. Hearing love from him in that grave, precise voice made it sound less like confession than decision.

I reached for him then, laying my hand against his chest.

His whole body stilled under my palm, not from shock, but from attention.

“Then learn,” I said softly. “Because I won’t live inside your fear, and I won’t let you live inside it either.”

His hand rose slowly, covering mine where it rested against him.

“I am attempting to learn.”

“I know.”

“I will make errors.”

“I know that too.”

“That does not concern you?”

“It concerns me a lot,” I said, and this time a faint, unsteady breath that was almost a laugh escaped me. “But not as much as you deciding you should love me from a distance.”

His hand tightened over mine.

“I do not want distance.”

“Then stop treating it like a solution.”

“I will.”

I searched his face, needing to know he meant it, needing to see more than agreement because Thexan could agree to the truth and still take a long, painful path to understanding what it required of him.

“You talk to me before you decide something like that,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Not after.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t withdraw and call it protection.”