Page 46 of Fated in A Time of War

I lean in, slow, hesitant, and lay my head on his shoulder.

His body stiffens instantly—every muscle coiled, every breath halted. He’s stone under me, hard as the armor still strapped to his chest, and for one terrible heartbeat I think he’ll shove me away.

But then… something shifts.

The tension eases by fractions. His shoulders lower. His breathing deepens. And then, with a care that feels foreign to the man I first met, his arm comes around me. Not caging me. Not binding. Just there. Solid. Protective.

The weight of it nearly breaks me.

Because I should be afraid. I should be screaming inside my own head at the insanity of this—laying against him, my enemy, my captor, the Vakutan whose people burned villages like mine to ash. I should recoil from his touch like it’s fire.

But I don’t.

I melt into it.

And gods help me, for the first time since this war began, I feel… home.

The ache of it is unbearable. It’s not relief, not exactly. It’s the sharp sweetness of something I never thought I’d feel again. Belonging. Shelter. As if the storm outside could tear the sky apart, and here in this rusting husk, with his arm around me, I’d still be safe.

My eyes sting, but I don’t cry. I just breathe. In time with him.

I realize, with a heaviness that presses down to my bones, that I don’t want to escape anymore. Not really. The thought used to gnaw at me constantly—when to run, how to slip my bonds, where I’d go. Every moment was calculation, the mechanics of survival.

But not now.

Now I want something else.

I want him to choose me.

Not because I’m leverage. Not because I’m useful. Not because of whatever twisted fate the Jalshagar bond has spun around us.

I want him to look at me—not as Ataxian, not as prisoner, not as liability—but as truth. The same truth I’ve seen flicker behind his eyes when he talks about Lakka, when he watches me patch wounds, when he lets me walk beside him instead of behind.

I don’t say any of this aloud. The words would ruin it. Break it. Scatter it like dust in the stale air.

So I keep it inside, locked behind my ribs, heavy as stone and fragile as glass all at once.

His arm stays around me. Steady. Warm.

At some point, exhaustion wins. His breathing evens, slows, deepens into the cadence of sleep. His head tilts slightly towardmine, his weight leaning against me in a way that says trust more loudly than any vow could.

I stay awake.

I watch him like a secret, studying the sharp lines of his face softened by rest, the scar that cuts across his temple, the faint twitch of his jaw even in sleep—as if he’s still fighting battles behind closed lids. His skin smells faintly of blood and gun oil, of smoke and earth. And yet beneath it all, there’s something steady, something grounding.

Something that feels like the center of the world.

The war outside doesn’t scare me half as much as what’s growing in my heart right now.

Because this, whatever name this fragile thing might deserve—is more dangerous than every Kru mercenary, every collapsing ruin, every hungry drone that hunts the night skies.

This could undo me.

And I think—I want it to.

CHAPTER 15

KRALL