But Sylas didn’t seem to find it laughable. And the way he’d looked at her—the raw honesty in his voice when he’d started to explain what she meant to him before that knock interrupted—suggested he wasn’t using the word casually.
Elsa pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching her breath fog the surface. Below, Yzefrxyl moved through courtyards and across battlements, their fur catching the amber light. They looked so normal from up here. So ordinary. Just people going about their lives in a fortress not like anything she’d been in before.
It was more magnificent than the new spaceport that was built to house theStardancerand her sister space cruisers.
The alien world beyond the glass felt impossibly far away. So did Earth. So did everything she used to be—the navigator who’d charted courses through the stars, the officer who’d warned her captain about the dangers he refused to acknowledge, the woman who’d had a life and a purpose and a future that didn’t involve being claimed by a monster.
She’s someone’s pet now. Someone’s possession.
The thought surfaced unbidden, bitter and sharp. She should hate this. Should be clawing at the walls, screaming for freedom, doing everything in her power to escape.
And the worst part wasn’t the captivity. Wasn’t the bracer on her wrist that marked her as his, or the locked door, or the complete helplessness of her situation.
The worst part was how safe she felt in his nest.
How, when she’d woken wrapped in his arms with his purr vibrating through her bones, some traitorous part of her hadn’t wanted to move. How the furs still smelled like him—starlight and musk and something earthier underneath—and she kept catching herself breathing deeper just to pull that scent into her lungs.
How she’d spent the entire day waiting for him to return. Not plotting escape. Not searching for weaknesses in the fortress’s defenses. Just…waiting.
Like a pet waiting for its master.
The word should have made her angry. It did make her angry, in a distant way that couldn’t quite penetrate the fog of exhaustion and confusion and whatever else was happening in her chest.
But anger required energy she didn’t have. Required conviction she couldn’t quite muster when every time she tried to stoke the flames, her mind supplied the memory of his claws gentle on her scalp as he brushed her hair. The patience in his touch as he worked through every tangle. His voice, rough with something that sounded terrifyingly like tenderness, telling her she looked like she belonged in his life.
She’d spent months being strong. Being capable. Being the one who held things together when everyone else fell apart. The captain had made bad decisions, and she’d calculated how to survive them. The crew had panicked, and she’d stayed calm. The ship had died around them, and she’d found a way out.
Now there was no ship to navigate. No crew to protect. No decisions to make except whether to keep standing at this window or return to the nest that still smelled like him.
She was so tired of being strong.
The door mechanism engaged.
Elsa’s pulse jumped before she could control it. Her body recognized the sound before her brain processed it—the heavy click of locks disengaging, the subtle hiss of ancient security protocols releasing. She turned from the window, her heart suddenly too fast, her palms suddenly damp against the fabric of her sleeves.
Not fear,she told herself.Not anticipation.
Just… awareness.
Sylas entered like a storm barely contained.
Tension radiated from every line of his massive frame—coiled in his shoulders, locked in the set of his jaw, visible in the way his claws flexed at his sides like he was barely restraining himself from violence. Whatever had happened in that council meeting had left marks. She could see them in the hard line of his mouth, in the sharp angles of his movement, in the barely leashed fury that seemed to crackle through his fur like static electricity.
But the moment his eyes found her, something shifted.
The storm settled. His shoulders dropped by inches—not relaxed, exactly, but less ready for combat. The hard line of his mouth softened into something that wasn’t quite a smile but might be its distant cousin. A ghost of warmth flickering through ice.
“You’re still here.”
The words came out rougher than usual, scraped raw by whatever had been happening in that council chamber. But beneath the roughness, she heard something else. Relief, maybe. Or wonder. Like he’d half-expected to return to an empty roomand finding her waiting had reset something fundamental in his chest.
Elsa lifted her chin, meeting those cyan eyes with more steadiness than she felt. “Where else would I be?”
A question that answered itself. The door had been locked. She’d been trapped here, with no choice but to wait.
But they both knew that wasn’t what he meant. And they both knew that wasn’t why she’d stayed exactly where he’d left her instead of testing the windows or searching for alternative exits or doing any of the thousand things a navigator was trained to do when held captive in enemy territory.
She’d stayed because some part of her had wanted to. Had wanted to be exactly here, exactly where he could find her, when he returned.