Page 43 of Silver Slayer

Vennox, still on the bunk, swung his legs over the side and hopped down. His kilt was on the floor a few feet away. He bent at the waist to retrieve it, and I got an unobstructed view of a perfect backside.

I really should have looked away.

I didn't.

The warrior had an unfairly perfect ass. Tight. Sculpted. The kind that probably belonged in a museum dedicated to exceptionally good life choices. He shook out the kilt and wrapped it around his hips with practiced efficiency while I stood there appreciating the view far longer than I should, given how I’d basically shut him down after the best sex of my life.

I dragged my gaze away. The light disc was already in my hand. I crossed to the hatch, threw the bolt, and the latch gave with a clunk that echoed off the walls. The seal broke with a soft hiss, and the door swung inward, hinges grinding with the stiffness of long disuse.

The corridor swallowed the light disc's glow within a few feet in either direction. I stepped out, and Vennox fell into step beside me, and I became immediately aware, the way you become aware of a change in air pressure, of the echo of him pressing against the edges of my thoughts.

It wasn't grief, exactly. It was more like the emotional equivalent of a gray sky, not storming, not threatening anything specific, just overcast in a way that had probably been true for so long it felt like the default. The weight of a male who had been carrying something heavy for so long he'd stopped remembering what it felt like not to.

It moved with me down the corridor like weather that had decided to follow me indoors, and there wasn't a single thing I could do about it.

I focused on the third hatch past the collapsed bulkhead, and what Vala had found, and the alertness that came with not knowing what was on the other side of a door.

It was easier than feeling his fog as my own.

For now.

Chapter Fifteen

VENNOX

The corridor swallowed the portable light disc's glow within a few steps in either direction, leaving us in a throat of moving shadow. My sword had been propped against the wall beside the door when we left; I had picked it up without breaking stride, the grip settling into my palm the way it had hundredths of times before.

I walked beside Quin, her anger still humming beneath my scales like a plucked wire, while the shawra at my sternum painted the corridor walls and marked my shame for anyone with eyes to see it.

She carried the bio-analyzer in her hand rather than clipping it to her belt, the practiced hold of someone whose readiness had long since stopped feeling like a choice. The soft glow beneath her shirt was just visible when she moved, pulsing in counterpoint to mine through the thin fabric. Two spirits speaking to each other across a silence neither of us knew how to fill.

Through the bond, I felt her conflict. Anger, bright, sharp, and justified, but beneath it, a longing so specific it carried the shape of a planet I had never seen. Earth. The word meant nothing to me, but the feeling behind it did: the ache of displacement that lives in the bones of anyone who has ever been torn from where they belong.

My ancillary heart hammered against my ribs. Every instinct I possessed screamed at me to reach for her, to pull her close and console her, but I was the source of her anger.

I would never do to Quin what had been done to me by imprisoning her within the cage of our joined spirits. The bond was not a weapon I would ever wield against her.

If preserving her freedom meant starving the bond the Spirits had chosen for us, then I would bear that burden without complaint.

I had seen the males who had lost their spirit mates to death. Their shawras no longer shone with living light, only the dark scar of what had once been etched into their chests. They still breathed, but something essential had been torn from them, leaving behind only the shell of the male they had once been.

If that became my fate, then so be it. Captivity had already fractured and splintered pieces of my spirit. Losing Quin would shatter what remained, yet I would endure rather than steal her freedom to spare myself.

The corridor opened into the cargo hold, a cavernous space gutted by the crash. The ceiling had partially collapsed near the far bulkhead, spilling twisted metalloid across the floor in frozen waves. Portable lights had been arranged in a rough circle, their pale discs casting overlapping pools of illumination acrossa workbench cobbled together from salvaged plating. Vala and Tyrk stood over it, their backs to us, heads bent in concentration.

I felt Quin’s pace slow beside me. Her free hand found the front of her shirt, fingers pressing briefly against the fabric where the shawra pulsed beneath it, as though she could quiet it by touch. She had not been prepared for an audience. Neither had I.

Vala turned first.

His luminous eyes swept over us, immediately finding the shawra on my chest before sharing a look between Quin and me. “Looks like congratulations are in order,” he said.

Tyrk turned next. The Nomadican’s massive frame pivoted with a fluid grace that belied his size, and his golden eyes landed on the glowing mark with an openness that made my chest tighten. He let out a low, appreciative whistle before he caught himself, the sound cutting off abruptly as he registered the silence that had descended over the hold.

"It will not always be so," I mumbled, shame burrowing through me like the thorned fibers of a floratrap root. "We will not be encouraging the bond."

Neither male questioned me. Vala’s expression did not change. Tyrk’s jaw worked once, the unasked questions visible in the set of his shoulders.

"This is what we came for," Vala said after a moment, turning back to the workbench. I was grateful for the change in subject, where the attention was no longer on us. "The power-transfer housingabsorbed most of the impact during the crash, but the junction conduit inside survived." His fingers traced the intricate lattice of crystalline threads. "The braided superconductive conduits remained intact, and the magneticcoupling collars are still functional. We'll need to reinforce a few stress fractures before installation, but it should restore power from the reactor to the engine array."