Page 51 of Ravaged By the Reaper

For the first time, I’m not just chosen. I belong.

We linger amid the station’s quiet heartbeat, tender and exhausted. I drift over his scars, fingers trembling from what just unfolded.

I need to tell him. But words feel shallow. So I just breathe him in: salt and smoke, steel and quiet devotion.

I press a kiss to his clavicle. “I need to tell you something,” I murmur.

His breath pauses, steady as promise.

“There’s a price on my head,” I confess. “Malem’s declared me rogue. High-value bounty.”

The cabin falls still. Outside, the station continues its indifferent hum—but inside, we are more than a sanctuary. We are choice and belonging, tethered beyond fear.

I turn my head to catch his gaze. His eyes are glowing coals in starlight shadows.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks, voice low-boned in our hush.

I swallow. “Because I needed clarity in your arms first. Stability. You first.”

He presses his arm under my head. “Everything else—death, bounty, siege—they’ll come. But tonight, you’re mine.”

He doesn’t roar. He doesn’t rage. He only pulls me nearer. His breath brushes heated promise across my forehead.

A tear slips. “It’s not you,” I whisper. “It’s not your fight.”

He presses a finger to my lips. “It is now.”

The tremor in his voice is different from fury. It’s reverent. Hard-earned.

I close my eyes, letting his constancy chase the fear away—for now.

CHAPTER 16

HAKTRON

Amara's hair smells like defiance. Not flowers or perfume—none of that powdered luxury crap. It’s salt and sweat and ozone from the fire fight two nights ago, tangled with the smoke of cheap synth-whiskey we shared last night. She’s curled against me now, face buried in my chest, breath warm over the scar that cuts across my ribs like a jagged grin. Her fingers twitch slightly. Dreaming.

I wish I could stay here. I really do.

But war never sleeps, and it sure as shit doesn’t knock.

Something’s off.

It starts in my gut—the cold coil of tension that slips down my spine and settles just behind my eyes. Every instinct I’ve ever honed on blood-soaked raids and hollow asteroid ambushes starts screaming. Not with panic. Withcertainty.

They’re coming.

I ease out from under her like a ghost, tucking the blanket over her shoulder so she doesn’t wake to the cold. My boots are silent against the deck plating. The Starbase is asleep, the kind of quiet that presses on your ears like pressure at the bottom of a gravity well. Too quiet.

I don’t need a report to know it. I canfeelit.

The air tastes wrong—metallic, electric. It stings at the back of my throat.

I slip into the shuttle’s cockpit and slap the controls awake. They hum to life under my touch, throwing soft glows across the dark. I don’t tap the comms. Not the public ones. I punch a string of encrypted keys into a console only Panaka and I know how to read.

Secure Burst Channel: Widowmaker - Encrypted Relay Ping

The delay feels longer than it should. Seconds stretch. My jaw tightens.