Page 27 of Thexan

“That’s where I come in,” I said.

It wasn’t a question.

“No.”

I looked at him. “No?”

“You will not be within immediate engagement range.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It is what will occur if you attempt to remain beside me.”

I held his gaze, letting that settle.

“If I’m not within range,” I said carefully, “you lose stability.”

His jaw tightened, just slightly.

“That is a factor.”

“It’s more than a factor.”

“Yes.”

“Then we don’t pretend it’s optional.”

Silence stretched between us, but it didn’t feel like resistance. It felt like something aligning, the same way it had the first time I realized his pulse responded to my touch.

He wasn’t arguing because he thought I was wrong.

He was arguing because he didn’t want the answer to be what it was.

I tightened my grip on his hand, just enough to make the contact deliberate.

“You don’t fight them alone,” I said.

His gaze didn’t waver.

“That was not my intention.”

“Good,” I said. “Because it’s not happening.”

The blade retracted without sound, the light collapsing back into the plating along his forearm until there was no visible trace of it at all.

I watched the space where it had been for another moment, then shifted my attention back to him.

“All right,” I said. “Now we have something we can actually work with.”

“It was always workable.”

“It was always incomplete,” I corrected. “Now it’s just dangerous.”

“That has not changed.”

“No,” I said. “It hasn’t.”

I pushed to my feet and moved back to the table, bracing my hands against it as I leaned over the map again. This time, I saw it differently—not just as terrain, but as a sequence of choices that would either give us an advantage or get us both killed.