“This marks you as mine. Protects you from the worst of what’s out there. And tracks your location so you can’t run.” Sylas released her wrist, stepping back. “In return, I’ll answer your questions when time permits. Explain what you need to know to survive here. Make you useful instead of ornamental.”
It wasn’t freedom. Wasn’t even close.
But it was more than she’d had yesterday.
Elsa looked down at the bracer, watching the gem pulse. “Does it hurt? If I try to take it off?”
“You can’t take it off. It’s keyed to your biology now.” His tone suggested this should be obvious.
Elsa stared at the bracer. Permanent. Keyed to her biology. Like a claim—a mark—she could never remove.
“And if I walk out into that storm alone?” She kept her voice level. Clinical. The way she’d report hull damage to a captain who didn’t want to hear it. “Without you. Without your team.”
Sylas went still. Not the calculated pause of a politician choosing words—the absolute motionlessness of a predator who’d just heard something interesting.
“The cold would kill you before the Fallen found your scent.” He said it the way someone might comment on atmosphericpressure. Fact, not threat. “These woods strip heat from human bodies in minutes. You’d stop shivering first. Then you’d stop feeling your feet. Then you’d sit down to rest, and you wouldn’t get up.”
He stepped closer. His shadow swallowed the blue light between them.
“But if you stay close to me—under my command, inside my perimeter—you survive the night. Every night.” His head tilted, cyan eyes tracing her face with an attention that made the hum of the bracer feel louder. “Though nothing about this will leave you unchanged.”
“Is that supposed to comfort me?”
“It’s supposed to inform you.” His muzzle dipped lower. Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him—furnace-warmth against the cold stone air, the temperature differential so stark her almost leaned closer… before she shut that impulse down. “I am not the worst thing in these woods, Elsa.”
Her name in his mouth. Low and rough, the translator rendering it with a vibration the device couldn’t quite smooth out. Like the word had edges in his language that human phonetics couldn’t carry.
“But I may be the most dangerous thing in them toyou.” His teeth caught the light when he spoke—not bared, not threatening, justvisiblein a way that reminded her exactly what dangerous species she was bargaining with. “The Fallen kill without thought. Without purpose. Hunger and madness, nothing more.”
He paused. Something shifted behind those glowing eyes—the predator receding just enough for something sharper to surface. More deliberate.
“I don’t want to kill you.” The words landed quiet. Almost soft, if a voice that deep could manage soft. “I want tokeepyou… alive that is.”
The distinction shouldn’t have mattered. Shouldn’t have sent that involuntary pulse through up her spine. The gem engraved in her new bracer flaring once against her wrist like it had registered the spike in her heartbeat.
Elsa held his gaze. Refused to step back, even though every survival instinct she’d honed across three years of deep-space navigation screamed at her to put distance between herself and the seven-foot apex predator who’d just told her he wanted to own her.
“There’s a difference?” Her voice came out steadier than she felt. Good.
Sylas’s mouth curved. Not the flash of teeth she’d learned to read as warning—something slower. Darker. A smile that knew exactly what it was doing and didn’t care that she could see it.
“The things beyond this fortress kill without discrimination. Without desire. Their minds corrupted by Moon Tear exposure. Their allegiance to no one but themselves and their own survival.” He straightened, pulling back just enough to let her breathe again. “What I want is specific. What I want has a habit of asking questions when silence would be safer.”
He turned toward the door before she could respond to that, expecting her to follow.
“And we’re out of time. The team is waiting.”
Elsa took a breath. Felt the weight of the cloak, the warmth of the clothes, the hum of the bracer against her skin.
Proof she was still alive. Still thinking. Still finding ways to adapt instead of breaking as she followed him into the corridor.
Whatever it took to survive this treacherous planet filled with dangerous monsters.
The storm-woods livedup to their name.
Wind howled through skeletal trees, driving snow sideways in sheets that cut visibility to arm’s length. The cold bit through even the heavy cloak, finding every gap in her clothing to sink frozen teeth into exposed skin.
Elsa pulled the hood tighter, grateful for the fur lining that blocked the worst of the wind. Ahead, Sylas moved through the blizzard like it didn’t exist, his massive frame cutting a path she struggled to follow.