Page 17

Seventeen

L eonie hadn’t been able to look away.

The moment Karian had removed his mask, something inside her shifted. The air between them had felt impossibly still, charged with meaning she didn’t yet understand. She had braced herself for horror—for some grotesque face that would cement the truth of her captivity, something alien enough to crush whatever fragile link had started to form between them.

But what she saw shattered that expectation completely.

He was beautiful.

Not beautiful in a human sense. There was nothing familiar about his features. And yet... they mesmerized her. His skin shimmered with a pale, opaline glow, like moonlight filtered through deep ocean currents. His features were sharp, sculpted—high cheekbones, an elegant, predatory jawline, and a mouth that looked neither cruel nor kind, but deeply controlled. Regal.

His eyes were the most disorienting of all—black from edge to edge, devoid of whites or irises, vast and depthless like two polished stones. She had expected emptiness. Instead, she saw... weight. Age. A quiet force that made her chest tighten with something like awe.

And then there were the tentacles.

Seven of them, long and fluid, trailing from beneath the hem of his dark robe. They moved subtly, curling and adjusting with a life of their own. Sleek, muscular, lined with delicate ridges and faintly gleaming suction pads. They weren’t threatening—not overtly—but they unsettled her all the same. She couldn’t stop imagining what it would feel like to be touched by one. What he could do with them. The raw strength they implied.

She shivered, more from thought than temperature.

He hadn’t touched her with his tentacles. Not yet. But he could.

And she wasn’t entirely certain she didn’t want him to.

That thought terrified her more than anything else.

He’d known she was afraid. He admitted as much. And still—he hadn’t come to her. He’d left her strapped down, silent, bracing for death while explosions shook the walls of the ship around her.

She wanted to scream at him for that.

And yet… when he had spoken her name, his voice had shifted. Softened. There had been no cruelty in it. No ownership. Just reverence. It had sounded like discovery. Like she was something precious he hadn’t expected to find.

And when he said he didn’t want her to fear him... she had almost believed him.

Almost.

Her wrists still bore faint impressions where the restraints had held her. She rubbed them absently as she sat on the edge of the alien bed, her eyes fixed on the door he had exited through. The metal was smooth, seamless, but it might as well have been stone. She didn’t know if she could follow him, or if she even wanted to.

Safe.

That’s what he’d said.

"You are safe now. I give you my word."

She wanted to believe him. Desperately.

Because it would be easier to accept this place—this opulence, this captivity—if she could believe she wasn’t in danger. That her captor wasn’t also her protector. That she could trust him. Even if only a little.

He hadn’t hurt her. Not once. He had kept his distance. He hadn’t punished her for her anger, nor mocked her for her fear. And when he’d removed his mask, she had felt... chosen. As though he had offered her something sacred.

His face.

His trust.

That had meant something. Hadn’t it?

And still, she couldn’t forget the power in his body. In the sleek precision of his movements. In the way his tentacles had shifted around him like silent weapons. He had returned from battle still humming with violence—she could feel it in him, held barely in check.

And yet he had stood before her... vulnerable.

The duality unsettled her.

She lay back slowly, curling her knees toward her chest on the too-soft bed. The room’s lights dimmed in gentle pulses, casting shifting shadows across the smooth, curved walls. The ceiling above shimmered faintly like a dome of water, and she stared up at it, feeling smaller than she’d ever felt in her life.

“I have to stay sharp,” she whispered aloud, voice hoarse.

Because she didn’t know what he really wanted from her.

Because she didn’t know how long her resolve would last.

Because even now, what frightened her more than anything was this simple, haunting truth:

She wasn’t sure she wanted to run.

And that made her feel less like a captive… and more like something dangerous was waking up inside her.

Something she wasn’t ready to face.