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“Maybe so, but you need to sleep now.” I pointed to the pillow beside mine, the one nearer the bulkhead. “Lie down and face the window, please.”

“I will sleep.” He tilted his head. “But I must sleep facing the door.”

I frowned. “The ship is uninhabitable. Nothing’s coming through that door. Mechabot will contact me on the comms if it needs to tell me something.”

He shrugged. I figured his instincts demanded he never put his back to a door, especially in an unfamiliar place. I always slept facing the door myself, so it was odd that I’d settled in facing him instead.

It doesn’t mean anything, I told myself.I just don’t want to turn my back on him. I can’t trust him.

Except I did.

“Okay,” I said. “Face the door, if that will help you sleep.”

He must have been exhausted because he lay down immediately, his beautiful wings folded neatly behind his back and tucked close to his body. He mirrored my position, with one bent arm under his pillow.

We studied one another with weary eyes, neither willing to be the first to fall asleep. His rain forest scent seemed to fill the air. I longed to touch his wings and wondered if they felt as soft and silky as they looked.

To my surprise, my fatigue caught up to me before his did. I wasn’t aware my eyelids had drifted closed until I heard Kerian murmur something from the soft darkness beyond them. It sounded like he saidI like how you smell.

I like how you smell too, I thought.

A heartbeat later, I was sound asleep.

chapterfour

kerian

I sleptfor almost six hours—twice as long as I normally slept in two standard days—and woke refreshed, with clear thoughts for the first time since regaining consciousness aboardNebula Traveler. But try as I might, I still had no memory of how I’d ended up in the stasis pod or on this ship.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at the back of Gen’s head and her long blonde hair fanned out over her pillow. She did not strike me as a woman who gave her trust easily, but she’d fallen asleep quickly and then turned over in her sleep to face the door, putting her back to a stranger in her bed.

A stranger who, believing she had already fallen asleep, had confessed he liked her scent, only to have her murmurI like how you smell tooin reply before she’d drifted off.

I had certainly caught the scent of her desire before she declared it was time for us to sleep. Maybe she’d somehow sensed my attraction too. I hoped so.

All my adult life, first as a soldier and then as a mercenary, I had relied on my instincts to keep me alive, to keep me one step ahead of my enemies and one step behind my targets. But in this moment, every fiber of my being sang of her and nothing else, to the point I couldn’t trust my instincts at all. It left me feeling completely adrift. I needed an anchor—something I knew was real.

Gen slept deeply, with a light snore I found strangely endearing. I listened to the sound for several minutes before I wound her hair through my fingers, careful not to tug the strands and wake her. The smell of her drove every other thought from my mind except how much I wanted to feel her bare skin against mine. Her body looked like it would fit perfectly to my own.

The fact that made no sense did not stop me from thinking it.

Once we arrived at Ymar II, I would have to begin my search for answers to how and why someone had put me aboard this ship. I had so many questions. Why in stasis? Whythisship? I hoped the stasis pod wasn’t too damaged to give me some clues about where to start.

My gaze returned to Gen as she let out a little sigh in her sleep. She’d kicked off her blanket while we’d slept and lay partially on her stomach with one knee bent. Her pose invited me to lie next to her with my chest against her back and my arm around her middle, but I did not dare. Not unless I knew she wished me to do so.

As I pictured leaving her behind, a strange thing happened. An unfamiliar vibration ran through my abdominal and back muscles and made my wings flutter restlessly. A few moments later, they spasmed again more powerfully. I had to hold back a groan as the discomfort became pain.

In thirty-two standard years of life, I had never experienced this sensation, and it was truly terrible.

The pain became an urge, but I didn’t know what I needed to do to alleviate the agony. I sat up carefully, trying not to disturb Gen’s sleep. Six hours of rest might be more than enough for me to recover, but not nearly sufficient for her needs. Not after how badly she’d been injured.

With one last wrenching spasm, my wings unfolded of their own accord, snapping open like a sail caught in a gale-force wind. My back bowed and my head hit the window behind me.

The cabin filled with sparkling dust in every color.

For a moment, I thought I had hit my head hard enough to see stars, but that was not the case.

My wings spasmed again, releasing another blizzard of sparkling dust. I slumped against the wall, my chest heaving with ragged breaths. The dust, stirred by the air vents and my fluttering wings, swirled around us before settling on every surface in a two-meter radius.