Page 101 of Thexan

And if it returned, it would not come only for me.

The thought tightened through me with enough force that I had to stop moving. The image in my mind that followed was unacceptable.

Brynn was in the line of engagement. Brynn would stand between danger and her people because that was what she did. Brynn refused to withdraw because her definition of responsibility did not allow retreat when others remained exposed.

I had seen that behavior. I had benefited from it. I had also understood, from the first moment she chose to remain near me, that it would one day place her in direct conflict with something she could not survive by endurance alone.

The bond responded to the direction of my thoughts with immediate resistance, not as pain, but as a deep internal rejection of distance. It did not dictate action. It did not remove choice. It made the consequence of certain choices impossible to ignore.

Leaving her would damage me.

I understood that now with a clarity that had nothing to do with injury or biological instability. It would not be a physical wound in the way my side had been opened by the hunter’s weapon, but the effect would be real. Separation from her would alter every part of the equilibrium that had begun to form inside me. The completeness I had described to her would fracture into something I did not want to experience and could not pretend would be inconsequential.

More than that, leaving would hurt her.

That was the factor I could not evaluate cleanly.

I knew how to calculate structural weakness, probability of engagement, survival ratios, and the cost of remaining under threat. I did not know how to measure the damage caused by abandoning a woman after accepting her bond, after receiving her trust, after telling her I wanted to remain because I cared for her, and then making distance into a weapon I called protection.

The contradiction disturbed me.

It did more than disturb me.

It created a pressure I could not resolve through analysis, because every path contained harm. Remaining might draw danger toward her. Leaving would wound the bond and disrespect her choice. Acting without consulting her would violate the very acknowledgment I had given her when she demanded a say in what our future became.

Yet the impulse persisted.

Remove the threat from the protected zone.

That command structure existed deeper than thought, embedded by training, war, and every operational model that had shaped me before I reached her door. If my presence endangered her, then removal of my presence should reduce the danger. The logic was efficient. It was also incomplete, because it assumed Brynn’s safety could be separated from Brynn’s will.

I looked toward the infirmary.

She was there. I knew it without visual confirmation, the bond orienting me with quiet certainty. She had returned to her work after the repairs, checking on a fever case near the lower houses and then disappearing into the familiar structure that had been hers long before I arrived. Even from here, I could feel the shape of her presence in my awareness, steady and warm and impossible to classify as anything less than essential.

The desire to go to her was immediate.

The thought of leaving her was worse than pain.

That was the truth I had been circling.

I did not want distance from her. I did not want a future in which I protected her from beyond the boundary of her life, watching from concealment, ensuring threats were diverted while she continued forward without me. That option might serve a tactical purpose, but I did not want that. The life I had begun to imagine was not one in which she remained safe because I vanished from it.

I wanted to stand beside her when she argued with me, to learn the systems of this settlement because they mattered to her, to wake to her voice telling me I was being impossible with that particular restraint that meant she already understood me too well. More than that, I wanted the private room behind the infirmary to stop feeling like a space I had been permitted to enter and become a place where my presence belonged.

The intensity of that want should have been inefficient.

Instead, it clarified the cost of leaving.

A sound behind me altered the air before footsteps reached the ground.

Tanner approached from the direction of the central yard; his movement was deliberate enough that he meant to be heard. That was a form of consideration, or caution. Possibly both.

“You planning to stand out here all night?” he asked.

I did not turn immediately. “No.”

“Good. Brynn will come looking if you do, and then she’ll blame me for letting you brood beside the fence.”