They weren’t lazy anymore. They were bright. Intent. Displeased.
“My pet doesn’t skip meals.”
“I didn’t skip—I just forgot. There were other priorities. The core installation, the—”
“What priority supersedes survival?” The words came out sharp enough to cut. “You can’t be useful if you collapse from malnutrition. You can’t—” He stopped himself, jaw tightening visibly.
Can’t be mine if you waste away.
The unspoken end of that sentence hung between them like smoke.
“I’m not used to having someone monitor my food intake.” Elsa kept her voice even despite the intensity of his stare. “On theStardancer, I ate when I remembered. Sometimes that wasn’t often. We had ration protocols, but I was usually too busy charting courses to—”
“TheStardancerisn’t here.” The words cut through her explanation like claws through silk. “You’re in my fortress. My chambers. My nest.” Each word landed like a hammer blow on an anvil. “What happens to you is my responsibility now. Thatincludes ensuring you don’t die from something as preventable as hunger.”
“I’m not going to die from missing a few meals—”
“How many is a few?” He sat up abruptly, taking her with him. The furs fell away, exposing them both to the chamber’s cooler air. His hands stayed on her face, holding her gaze with implacable force. “How many meals have you missed since the crash? Since arriving here? Be precise.”
She couldn’t be precise. She genuinely couldn’t remember. Food had been an afterthought for so long—since before the crash, even, when theStardancer’scourse had gone wrong and she’d been too busy being furious at the captain to eat—that her body had stopped signaling need in any way she recognized.
Until now. Until her stomach betrayed her with an echo of that first growl, quieter but no less damning.
Sylas’s expression hardened into something that looked almost like fear. Fear wrapped in fury. The face of a predator who’d just discovered a threat to something precious.
“Stay here.”
He was already rising, already moving toward the communication panel near the door with strides that ate ground faster than should have been possible. His movements had transformed—the sleepy predator replaced by focused purpose. Caretaker. Provider. Something primal that had been sleeping beneath the surface, now fully awake and very displeased.
She watched him move, still tangled in furs that held the ghost of his heat. Still processing the whiplash shift from heated tension to protective fury. Her body still hummed with awareness of what had been pressed against her moments ago, even as her mind scrambled to catch up with the sudden change.
“I said I’m fine—”
“You’re not fine.” He didn’t turn around, claws moving over the panel with practiced efficiency. “You’re depleted. Yarxwarned me the neural damage from holding the core would increase your metabolic needs, and I assumed—” His voice caught, roughened. “I assumed you would eat when food was provided. Clearly, I assumed incorrectly.”
“You’re overreacting.”
Now he turned. The look he gave her could have frozen the heated pools in the bathing chamber. Could have frozen the entire fortress solid.
“My mate nearly died holding a Moon Tear core because I wasn’t there to stop her. My mate collapsed in the storm-woods and had to be carried home like a broken doll. My mate is so accustomed to neglecting her own needs that she doesn’t even recognize hunger anymore.” He stalked back toward the bed, each step deliberate, each movement radiating barely contained fury. “Tell me again that I’m overreacting.”
Mate.
The word hit her like a physical blow. Like the core’s energy surging through her nervous system all over again. He’d never called her that before—not to her face, not like this. Pet, yes. Possession, certainly. Valuable asset. Political tool.
But mate carried different weight. Different implications.
Different everything.
“You said—” She had to stop, start again. Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. “You said pet. In the throne room. You called me—”
“I know what I said.” He reached the bed, looming over her. This close, she had to crane her neck back to meet his eyes. “The court needed to hear certain things. Those things weren’t entirely accurate.”
Her pulse hammered in her throat. “What does that mean?”
For a long moment, he didn’t answer. Just studied her with those impossible eyes—cyan depths that had seen disastrous things, that had watched his father succumb to madness,that calculated odds and weighed outcomes and still somehow looked at her like she mattered more than all of it.
Then he reached down, gripped the furs, and pulled them away from her entirely. Cool air washed over her shift-covered body, raising goosebumps along her arms.