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Maggie’s shoulders drop a fraction of an inch, the microscopic release of tension betraying her relief. Around the table, the chiefs trade glances. One by one, they nod, even Caden, who has never kept a secret from his cousin longer than a mark.

I offer her a slow smirk. She thinks a medical boundary will keep me away. She underestimates the relentless, consuming nature of an Avaren male who has found his match.

I will respect her condition. I will not use a machine to prove she belongs to me.

I will simply tear down her walls, strip away her icy defenses, and get Margaret Elmsleigh to admit we are matches with her own beautiful, stubborn mouth. And I will enjoy every single second of the siege.

14

MAGGIE

The Avaren medical officer uses a futuristic-looking tool to extract my blood from the crook of my elbow.

I don’t flinch. I sit perfectly still on the bio-bed in the Sovereign’s medical bay, watching Lirael draw exactly one vial of my blood. The dark red liquid fills the glass cylinder, a stark contrast to the pristine white of the alien infirmary.

Lirael then presses a small dermal patch over the puncture. It seals the skin instantly, leaving absolutely zero trace of the intrusion. She handles the vial with a reverence usually reserved for religious artifacts, handing it off to Cyrel. The chief science officer practically sprints toward her laboratory modules, her red hair bouncing with every frantic step.

“The analysis will take several rotations,” Lirael informs me, “and a cure will take far longer than that. Do not expect miracles by the celebration.”

I roll my sleeve down, buttoning the cuff to hide the jagged bite mark even though it’ll soon become a poorly kept secret.

Orien stands by the reinforced doors, watching with his arms crossed over his broad chest. His usual cockiness is absent, and he’s not crowding me with his height.

I slide off the bio-bed, smoothing the front of my trousers. I got exactly what I demanded. The Avaren will use my blood to synthesize a cure for the Ghorvek pathogen, and they will not run my genome through their match registry. I maintained my boundaries. I protected my autonomy.

So why does the space between us feel like a chasm?

Caden pushes the Sovereign past every recommended limit, and still the journey to Avaris requires the better part of a rotation of travel through the solar system to reach the Quantum Entanglement Array—a localized gateway seeded near Jupiter by the mysterious Creators.

I spend those hours standing at the observation deck viewport, watching my ruined world shrink into a pale blue speck. I have lived underground for two and a half years. Space is a terrifying, infinite void that makes human warlords and their petty squabbles feel utterly irrelevant. The sheer scale of the universe threatens to crush the breath right out of my lungs.

When we approach Jupiter, the gas giant swallows the entire viewport. It is a swirling canvas of ochre and rust, so massive it defies human comprehension.

Cyrel explains the QEA jump to me shortly before we cross the threshold. Molecular disassembly and instantaneous reassembly across the universe. Meaning I have to let an ancient alien gateway rip my atoms apart and stitch them back together in another galaxy.

I grip the metal railing of the observation deck.

The jump takes a fraction of a second. There is no noise. No dramatic shudder.

My heart stops mid-beat. The blood halts in my veins.

Then, it restarts.

One moment I’m staring at the storms of Jupiter, and the next, an entirely unfamiliar tapestry of stars fills the glass. The Sha’rekai galaxy.

The Sovereign descends through the atmosphere of Avaris.

Given their relentless war with the Ghorvek, I expected a heavily fortified military installation churning out warships. I expected orbital defense cannons, ash, and concrete.

Instead, a sprawling, impossibly beautiful masterpiece unfolds beneath the clouds.

The planet is a vibrant, lush green. Massive forests of bioluminescent fungi cast a soft, ethereal glow across the terrain, turning the landscape into something pulled straight from a hallucination. In the center of the capital city rises the royal palace, its soaring spires constructed entirely of gleaming, luminous crystal. The architecture catches the light of their sun, Vireon, and scatters it like shattered diamonds.

It is breathtaking. It is a world that hasn’t been burned to the ground.

A sharp, ugly pang of jealousy tightens my chest. My people are starving in the mud, fighting over scraps of pre-invasion medicine, while the Avaren live in a crystalline fairy tale. I press my fingernails into my palms to ground myself against the bitter wave of envy.

Orien stands beside me. The physical distance between us is measured in mere inches, yet it carries the weight of a drawn battle line. He respects the boundary I laid down in the medical bay. He hasn’t crowded me, hasn’t dropped his voice into that silky register that melts my spine.