Eleven years of loneliness had ended the moment the storm chose her.If her duty to her people would not allow her stay, if it was stronger than her desire to stay, stronger than our new bond, I was not capable of going back to my old life.
The crystals pulsed their quiet blue-white at the cave entrance.The cave smelled of ozone and cold obsidian and underneath both — warm and mine — her skin.Her hair.Her breath.Foreign and familiar at the same time.
I breathed her in.Held it.
Then the storm outside lit up my nodes like I’d been punched with a fist.
I sat up.
The storm’s signature had changed.The primary front itself advanced while we slept.I felt the power building, closing on the valley with a speed I sensed as a low, massive, bone-deep pressure.
We had burned many hours in the cliff fissure — sleeping, climbing, standing on ledges, lying in a crystal cave with her hand folded over mine and the planet humming its quiet approval.The storm had used every one of those hours to grow stronger.
We still needed to push through the jungle, install the crystal in her ship, and make whatever decision needed to be made while there was still time to make it.
The decision that would determine whether she climbed into her ship and left, or trusted what Soltharra and her mate offered, and chose differently.The decision I’d known she would be forced to make since the moment I'd seen her at the crash site, and the bond had fired, and the planet had saidher.
I was running out of time to convince her.To seduce her.To make her fall in love with me.
"The storm moved faster."Sloane sat up in the low cave light, dark hair loose around her face, sleep-warm and unguarded.The marks at her collar blazed their luminous rhythm in the cave dark.“My body feels… heavy.”
“The storm grew more powerful while we slept.”I devoured her with my eyes.Her hand was at her collarbone.Not covering the marks.Just touching them — fingertips resting against the branching light with quiet, vulnerable awareness.She was not hiding them or angry.She accepted that her body was changing.Adapting.Becoming more and more like mine.
Warmth moved through my chest like a second heartbeat.She had spent two days protecting herself from everything the marks meant.Now she simply touched them without apology, as if they had always been part of her.Her eyes had gone soft and round.Her pulse slow and calm.Content.Here.With me.
Her gaze drifted over my spine.Inspected the nodes blazing their urgent silver rhythm.She read them the way she read her scanner — rapid, intelligent, arriving at the conclusion before most people would have begun to look.
I wanted her again.Would always want her.My cock stirred but I turned away before I could give in to temptation.
"This storm is stronger than I expected."Which meant we needed to leave now.Move faster.
She stood and dressed quickly, then picked up the crystals without another word.
That.That was the thing that undid me every time.This woman who had analyzed and questioned everything I said for the last thirty-six hours — took one look at me now and moved.Trusted me.No argument.No qualification.No questions.
She was ready.Whether she realized it or not, she was learning to trust me.Rely on me.Believe that I would protect her.Which I would, with my life.She was mine.Small.Delicate.Fragile female.Her soft body was not as strong as the females’ in my village.But I could not make myself want another.Only her.
I had never wanted her more than I did in that moment.
"How long do we have?"She swung the straps of her small pack over her shoulder and pulled on her boots.
"I’m not sure.A day.Maybe less."
Her jaw set.The marks blazed at her collar."How long will it take us to get back to the crash site?"
"Eight hours, if we hurry."I read her body as I said it — shoulders set, eyes steady, no panic.The woman who had held a disintegrating shuttle in the air over a settlement she'd never seen was already running her calculations.“How much time will you need to repair your ship?”
“I don’t know.”Her sigh had me reaching out to run my fingers over her cheek.“I’m not even sure this will work.”
"Then we should run."
We left the cave and stepped into a world that had changed while we slept.
The valley hit me wrong in every register at once.The light.The scent.The air pressure against exposed skin.The pre-storm charge density so thick I could taste it, metallic and sweet and vast.The obsidian canopy, the higher branches, looked wet with charge in the grey morning.
The sky was too dark.The air smelled too metallic.
The silence was the worst.