Page 9

NINE

Cerani

Cerani clung to Stavian’s shoulders as he carried her through the rubble-strewn tunnel. His powerful body moved with confidence. Each step was purposeful and steady, even though chaos surrounded them. Dust clung to the air as he navigated them through the debris. Sounds of alarms and cries for help echoed around them, and she felt every beat of her heart, frantic and loud beneath the burn of fear.

“Keep holding on. I’ve got you,” he murmured. His breath was a warm vibration against her arms.

She closed her eyes, trying to calm her racing thoughts. Her mind kept drifting back to Sema, lying helpless, every breath a struggle. They’d done what they could, but it barely felt like enough. The sight of her friend, so fragile and broken, made her stomach twist.

“Will the medics help them, or…?” she asked, afraid to finish the question.

Stavian’s grip on her tightened. “We’re almost there. Medics will take care of the injured.”

That didn’t reassure her, and he knew what she was really asking. But there was nothing she could do but hold on and hope. With Stavian’s powerful strides, they quickly reached an open area where surgical lights blinked and the smell of antiseptic soured the air. Hovering stretchers were already moving out with the medics—there were too few medics to see to everyone quickly.

Stavian reached the closest available hover stretcher and gently placed Sema down. The stretcher’s gel surface formed partially around her, lights blinking in response to the injuries its sensors detected. A wave of relief hit Cerani as she saw a medic hurry toward them, ready to handle the situation.

But as soon as Sema was in the hands of the medic, he lowered himself and untangled her arms from around his neck. “Hold yourself up on your good leg for just a moment,” he murmured.

She did so, and instantly, he turned around and scooped her up into his arms. The world shifted as he held her as carefully as he had Sema, strong and sure. He began walking toward the back of the med lab, toward a wall covered in doors. She’d been here once, during intake, and had found all those doors ominous. What were they? Cells? The morgue?

“Where are you taking me?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

“To a treatment room. I will see to your leg myself.” His expression was serious, focused, and Cerani felt warmth spread through her, even though she was scared. Even though her leg hurt and the world was literally crumbling around her.

She closed her eyes, leaning against him without reservation. The chaos faded as she let herself be wrapped in his strength. Her heart ached for all she’d faced. The pain of not knowing what would happen next, the uncertainty—she didn’t want to think about it now. She just wanted to feel safe, even for a moment.

The further they moved through the lab, the quieter everything became. The alarms were still there, faint behind the reinforced panel walls, but the crash of rocks and shouting had faded. The lights shifted to a sterile white glow. Not the inconsistent burn of the mining levels—this was cleaner, colder. Cerani barely noticed the pain in her leg anymore. Not because it wasn’t there but because she was holding on to the one solid thing left: Stavian.

She felt his chest rise and fall against her shoulder. Felt the steady rhythm of his steps underneath the haze in her mind. Maybe it had only been minutes. It felt like longer. She kept her eyes closed.

He finally stopped.

There was a soft shhhhk as a door slid open. The smell hit her first—sharp disinfectant and warm crystal foam, like the recycled med gel beds the miners weren’t allowed to use. He carried her inside.

“You can set me down,” she started to say, but he didn’t.

Instead, he walked straight to the narrow med bed in the center of the small chamber. He lowered her to the bed and the cool gel dipped under her weight. She sank halfway in with a quiet sigh. The surface gave just enough to cradle her limbs, but it was thick enough that she didn’t sink so far as to feel like she was being swallowed whole.

Stavian stepped away to the control wall, his hands working fast across the screen mounted beside her. A quiet stream of alerts beeped from the panel.

She blinked up at the ceiling, trying to force her breath steady. She hadn’t let herself feel it earlier—but it was there now. Her leg throbbed in waves. Her hands stung where she’d cut them on rocks. Her entire body ached like it had just given away too much at once.

She turned her head. “Is it bad?”

He looked at the screen, quiet for a beat. Then, “You have a fracture above your ankle and another mid-shin. One looks clean. The other…not.”

“Oh,” she said.

“We need to get the bones set and sealed now.”

She looked down. Other beings’ blood had turned her white under-suit red, green, and black. Her EP suit still hung at her hips where she’d pushed it down. The material and her boot hid the damage, but there was no denying that there was a mess under there. “It didn’t feel like that when I was moving,” she said, frowning. “It just burned.”

“Your pain receptors were in shock,” he said. “You were too busy helping others to notice your own injuries.”

She laid her head back. Her arms were heavy now. Too heavy to lift. The gel bed soothed the ache behind her ribs, but her throat still felt dry. Her fingers burned from ripping her own clothing and pushing away rubble.

The screen beside him blinked again. Yellow this time.

Stavian didn’t say what it meant—just typed fast at the panel. His jaw was rigid, like everything inside him was clenched.

“Is it worse than you’re telling me?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “But there’s some bacterial contamination. I’m going to have to remove your clothes to send in microbots to mend your bones and prevent infection. I can administer a pain blocker.” He looked at her with brows furrowed. “I’m asking permission to treat you, Cerani.”

“How do you know how to do this?” she asked.

“The med station is doing the work,” he replied, reaching for a drawer embedded in the wall. “I’m following the instructions it’s giving me.”

Cerani nodded. “Okay. Do it.”

He gave one short nod and pulled out a set of shears that looked like they could cut off a limb with ease. “Hold still. I need to cut off your suit. This part will hurt.”

“I can handle it,” she said.

His hands stayed steady, but it was how carefully he approached her that made her stomach twist. He stood beside the bed and steadied her leg as he pulled off her boot. She sucked in a breath as the movement sent shocks of pain up her leg.

He set to work with the shears next, slicing through the thick, bulky EP suit. Cool air hit her lower half as he peeled it open and laid bare her legs. From there, the under-suit that covered her injured leg split open with a single snip of his carefully handled shears. She bit her cheek at the sight. Her leg was badly swollen. Black and purple flushed the skin and her foot pointed at a wrong angle. Blood seeped from where a rock had crushed skin and bone.

Cold fear pierced through her chest. A wound like this… It meant amputation at best and death at worst. On the settlements, where the Terians didn’t have any advanced medical options, the worst scenario often was the likeliest one. “Oh no. Oh, stars, no.”

Stavian paused. “Cerani—”

“I’m going to lose my leg.” She swallowed and turned her gaze back to the ceiling. “Just make it quick.”

“You won’t lose your leg.” He sounded baffled by her reaction. “This is a treatable injury.”

She looked at him sharply. “It can be fixed?”

“It can definitely be fixed,” he replied quietly. “I need to remove the rest of this suit, though, before the machines can administer treatment.”

She gritted her teeth as he carefully lifted her—part by part—and pulled the remains of her suit free of her body. It hurt. Her body was done fighting, now. The adrenaline was gone. She lay there, trying not to think about how she was completely exposed to this male who held her life in his hands. She couldn’t even summon the energy to cover herself with her hands. But when she glanced at him, he wasn’t looking over her body. His attention shifted between the screen and her leg, never venturing anywhere else.

“You’ll feel a few pinches,” he said, not taking his eyes from the screen. “As the bed inserts some ports to transfer medication and microbots into your body.”

She barely felt anything as slender tubes rose from the sides of the bed on their own and found their insertion points.

“Pain medication being administered now,” he said.

Instantly, cool comfort flooded her body. She sighed in relief as the pain dissipated, leaving her relaxed and comfortable.

His gaze went to her, then, for the first time, and it stayed on her face. “That’s better, isn’t it?” He moved back to the drawer and took out a soft, white sheet of fabric that had a faint shimmer, and laid it over her body, covering her. It felt like air.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

“The microbots are being deployed,” he said calmly. “They’re going to mend your bones, set the crushed shards back in place and bind them there to heal. It will take time.”

“How much time?” she asked, well aware that the more time she was away from mining, the more tenuous her survival became. The Axis had no use for nonproductive workers.

Not once did he flinch at the sound of her breath catching. Not once did he look away. “All the time you need, Cerani.”

Something broke loose in her chest at the sound of his calm voice. “And the others?” she whispered.

“The same,” he replied. “I’ll see to it.”

Cerani looked away from him and focused on the ceiling. Talking suddenly felt harder than working with a fractured leg. “I held her hand,” she said. “I told her help was coming. That she just had to stay awake a little longer. But I could feel her slipping.”

Stavian stood beside the monitor for a long stretch of silence. The screen behind him blinked a steady green now. That had to mean whatever he’d sent into her body was doing its job. Her vitals were holding.

“She heard you,” he finally said. “Even if she didn’t speak, she heard you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I could see it in her face,” he said. “What you did mattered.”

“It didn’t feel that way.” Her chest ached in a place the pain mitigation medicine couldn’t reach. Cerani blinked hard and rolled her hands into fists against the blanket. “She was kind. One of the only people who still smiled. Still laughed.”

Stavian moved back to the bed. He didn’t touch her, but he was close. “I’m sorry.”

Cerani met his gaze, and let her grief show. She didn’t have the energy to keep her guard up, anyway. “I should’ve stayed with her. I don’t even know if she’s still—”

“She’s alive,” he said. “I checked her scan through the interface just a moment ago. One lung collapsed, but they intubated her fast. She’s not gone.”

Cerani pulled the blanket snugly over her. Her mind stayed on Sema—on what would happen next. She dug her nails into her palms.

“I wasn’t sure they’d even try to save her,” Cerani said. “I thought maybe they’d just…let her die. Easier that way.”

Stavian’s face hardened. He stood straighter, his hands curling briefly into fists. “They’ll help her,” he said. His voice was low, rough. “Not because they care. Because I ordered them to.”

Cerani frowned. “Will that get you in trouble?”

He shrugged. “Officially, the Axis can’t afford to lose too many miners at once,” he said. “If output drops below target, it draws attention. And Axis Central hate attention more than they hate getting their hands dirty.”

For a second, the truth of it made her sick. She wasn’t sure why it still surprised her. The air in her chest stuttered. It didn’t quite settle, but knowing Sema hadn’t died—not yet—let Cerani exhale for real. She stared down at her hands again. They were shaking.

“Unofficially,” he said, running his fingers through his hair, “I cannot stomach any more of this carnage and suffering. I just can’t.”

Cerani looked up. His expression was open in a way she hadn’t seen before—no shields, no careful pause. Just honesty. “You’ve been down here long enough to stop feeling anything. How is it you’re not numb like the others?”

“I thought I was,” he said quietly. “But then I met you.”

Cerani

C erani had never been an eloquent or whimsical person. She was practical. She did what had to be done with as little fuss and wasted energy as possible. Her friends had different personalities. Fivra was optimistic—painfully so at times. Sevas had a temper, and used it when she, or someone she cared about, was threatened. Lilas had pluck and wit and the most cutting tongue of anyone she’d ever met. Turi was determined and inquisitive, which was a combination that often found her in trouble in Settlement 112-1, and Nena…well, Nena was like an ancient sage. She didn’t say a lot, but when she did, it was usually wise and thoughtful and deep. Cerani loved each of them, and she knew that any one of them would be better suited for this situation than she was.

She’d worked so hard to smother her emotions during her miserable life with her bondmate. Feeling nothing was better than sitting with the boiling rage at his treatment of her, and she’d had to bury the unseemly relief she’d experienced when he’d died. And now here she was, faced with a male who was full of emotions. Cerani felt more comfortable back in that collapsed mine than facing and expressing the things rolling through her at that moment. “You’re supposed to protect the mine, not—” She stopped, her throat knotting. “Not worry about one miner.”

“You’re not just one miner.” His voice was low, pulling things out of her she fought hard to keep buried. “You’re fekking everything.”

Cerani fought back the burn in her eyes. No tears. Not now. “Don’t say that.”

“Too late.” His hand hovered above her blanket-covered leg before he thought better of it. “I won’t take it back.”

Cerani swallowed. “What do you want with me, Stavian?”

He stayed quiet for a long moment. The low hum of the med systems filled the room around them. The too-clean, sterile smell of it made the ache in her chest feel worse.

“I don’t know anymore,” he said, running a hand over his face.

Cerani shifted against the gel bed to get a better view of him. “Axis controllers always know what they’re doing,” she said, trying to sound distant. Detached. But her voice cracked on the edges.

He leaned his hip on the side of her bed. The lines of his body were a mix of tension and weariness, as if he was holding too much in. “Then maybe I’m done being an Axis controller.”

Between the burn of her muscles and the grief still raw inside her chest, all she could do was stare at him—at the way he looked at her like she was made of something rare. It was too much.

“You should leave,” she said.

“I’m not going to.”

Cerani couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. The walls felt too small, too close. She lay there motionless. Her breath caught somewhere in her throat, but she didn’t know what to do with it. The room felt too bright. Cold in all the wrong places. She pressed her hand into the gel bed like it might help her body remember where she was.

It didn’t work.

Stavian didn’t move either. He just stood there, his eyes locked on her like she’d said something deep enough to shift the ground under them. The silence stretched. She could hear the soft mechanical pulse of the med bed, like it was counting her heartbeats.

Then he shifted forward.

She tensed—for what, she didn’t even know. But his hand didn’t lift in warning or hesitation. He reached up, slow, almost careful, and placed his palm against her cheek.

Warmth spread across her skin, soft and jarring at the same time. His skin was dry, a little rough along the base of his fingers, but solid. Real. She blinked up at him.

“I dreamed of this.” His voice was quiet. “Of seeing your hair. Touching your skin.”

Cerani’s breathing slipped out too fast. She tried to make sense of something—anything—but her brain was just noise now. A buzz that blocked out the state of her leg, the grief in her chest, the fear in her gut.

“You dream of me?” she whispered.

He nodded, his thumb brushing the side of her face as if he’d done it a thousand times in his mind. “Every time I close my eyes.”

She swallowed and leaned into his touch, just a little. Not because she wanted to let go, not yet, but because it had been so long since someone touched her like she was something worth holding. She closed her eyes. Just for a second.

“I don’t want these feelings.” Cerani opened her eyes and found him looking at her like he was trying to read something just beyond the front of her face. “I don’t know what to do with them. This is impossible, Stavian.”

His brow lowered, but he didn’t back down. “I don’t think it is. I see you, Cerani. Not a worker. Not a number. Just you.”

Her throat worked from the rush of feelings that crowded her mind, but no words came out. Her fingers twisted in the thin blanket covering her, like they needed something solid to hold on to. Her whole body went tense all over again, but it wasn’t from pain this time.

A long breath escaped her lips. She nodded, not looking away from him. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated, and he let out a quiet breath like all of his air had been trapped since the moment he entered the room.

Cerani didn’t move as he pulled a stool next to the bed and sat, not touching her, not speaking, just being close.

She looked down at his hand resting on his thigh. Her own hand, bruised and stained, slid across the edge of the bed and out from under the blanket. She turned her palm upward. He looked at it for a moment, then placed his gently in her hand. Warm strong fingers curled around hers—just enough to hold, but not enough to push. Everything about it felt right. As if her hand had waited her whole life to be held by his.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” he said.

“What?”

“I spoke to Lieutenant Darven, my second in command at this facility,” he said. “He informed me that there have been incidents—rebellions. A penal colony collapse, a brothel riot, a full arena breakout.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Is that unusual?”

“Axis networks are starting to flag patterns,” he replied. “The problem with that is… All of the incidents had Zaruxians and Terians at the center of the damage.”

Cerani’s grip tightened over his. “The Terians—could they be my friends who were taken with me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t have access to any of this information. They’re locking more records by the cycle.”

Her throat worked hard. “They might be out there.” Her voice cracked with sudden hope. “They might be alive.”

“I can’t verify anything,” he said. “And I just learned of this myself. They’re watching me. Probably you, too.”

Silence settled between them again. It was heavy with possibility and a thread neither of them wanted to pull unless they were ready for what unraveled.

“Then you really shouldn’t be here with me.” She looked at their joined hands. “The Axis don’t play games.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “Maybe the Axis put you where they thought you’d disappear. If that’s the case, maybe it’s time for a rebellion of our own,” he said. “You. Me. Everyone still breathing in that mine.”

Cerani didn’t answer for a long moment. Her broken leg felt far away now, but her pulse roared in her ears. Rebellion. The word hit her like ice and heat at the same time.

“You mean that,” she said.

“I do.” His gaze didn’t shift. He didn’t blink. “It’s not just you who doesn’t belong in there. It’s all of them. Every single miner who’s being ground down right alongside you. They deserve better.”

Her ribs tightened around her lungs. “And you think if we start something, the Axis will let us live to finish it?”

“I know they won’t,” he said. “But I’d rather die as part of the storm than the system holding the line. I can’t keep watching them suffer. I can’t keep pretending I don’t look for you in every corridor.”

She stared at him, every part of her still. “You’re serious.”

“I’ve never been anything else.” He leaned closer, his voice low but certain. “I’m falling in love with you, Cerani, and I’m done fighting it.”

Cerani grabbed the edge of the blanket with her free hand as the one in Stavian’s squeezed his fingers. “I don’t know if this can work, but I—I want to try.” She swallowed hard, trying to make her words make sense. “I was never meant for love. Just duty. Just survival.”

His expressive silver eyes were soft on hers. “You are meant for everything. Love. Freedom. Happiness. I will see to it that you get those things, even if I have to tear apart the quadrant to do so.”

Never in Cerani’s life had anyone said words like that to her. They pushed into her like a hard wind and cracked the walls she’d built. Who was she protecting by keeping them up? Not herself anymore. Not really. “You deserve those things, too,” she croaked out as tears slid from the corners of her eyes. “I want to find them, you know. My people. Lilas. Fivra. Sevas. Nena. I don’t know if they’re the Terians in those incidents, but I have to find out.”

Then he nodded, a fierce light burning behind his eyes. “And I want to find these Zaruxians who caused all this mayhem for the Axis. To do that, we have to leave. All of us. You, me, the miners. We tear their system apart and get out before they even know it’s crumbling.”

She didn’t say okay this time. She didn’t nod or squeeze his hand. She just looked at him, trying to memorize him—each detail, each piece of the person who’d stepped so far outside the bounds of what he was allowed to be, just to sit beside her while she healed. “We…escape?”

“Yes.” Then he leaned in, slow but sure.

She didn’t move. It seemed impossible—there was that word again. Impossible. She used it a lot, but Stavian didn’t seem to think it had much meaning.

His hand brushed the side of her face again. Her cheek was warm beneath his fingers, her breath unsteady. Their foreheads brushed.

And then he kissed her.

It wasn’t rushed. It wasn’t desperate. It was soft. Grounded. His lips just barely pressed against hers. He wasn’t asking anything from her. But he was promising everything.

Her hand slipped around the back of his neck, just enough to keep him close. Her fingers curled into the space under his collar and stayed there, like she didn’t know whether she needed to hold on or let go. Her heart pounded so hard, surely he heard it.

When he lifted his head, his breath brushed over her cheek. Neither of them spoke. She stared at him, jaw hard and eyes flashing with the weight of what they both knew now.

“You kissed me,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

His lips brushed the gold spots on her forehead. “I did,” he said, steady and sure.

Cerani didn’t let go of his shirt. Couldn’t. Everything inside her felt like it was balanced on the edge of a blade. One wrong move, one wrong word, and it would all fall.

“I don’t know if we can survive this,” she said.

“We don’t have to know yet.”

Her throat tightened. Fear and hope churned so thick in her chest, she didn’t know which would win. Maybe both. Maybe neither.