Page 15 of Vylit: Glowing for Her (Consumed by the Alien Heat #1)

MAYA

T he main chamber of the Mavtrosian Tribunal was nothing like I’d imagined… not that I’d had time to imagine much, but I’d pictured cold stone, columns, maybe some sterile, intimidating amphitheater. Not this.

They’d carved the place out of what had once been a living reef, the ancient coral towers bent and fused by unimaginable pressure into arches that blazed with bioluminescent fire.

Every surface dripped with color, the spectrum running from bone-white to a blue so dark it hurt to look at it.

Coral thrones, grown not built, sprawled in a massive crescent around the central pit, each throne occupied by an elder whose glow made the air itself seem to hum.

They presided like judges at a war crimes tribunal. Or, more likely, an execution.

The dais at the front was not a stage, but a landing pad… a slab of living moss surrounded by a million watchful, lidless eyes. The effect was to walk here, and be seen by everything. Not just by the leaders, but by every networked entity and gossipy bio-organic thing in a hundred-kilometer radius.

They had not bothered with subtlety. They wanted us to feel the weight of their gaze.

To the left of the arc, a half-dozen Intergalactic Dating Agency representatives glimmered in their businesslike way.

Three humanoids in identical sharp suits, two massive insectoid functionaries, and a jelly mass that might have been an executive in the middle of a long, painful conference call.

All their tech was polished within an angstrom of perfection, badge insignias, clipboards, and floating data globes ready to log every damn syllable for the record.

Kazmyr and Silvyr flanked me and Vylit as we waited in the anti-chamber.

Silvyr vibrated with excitement… apparently he loved a good dramatic entrance.

Kazmyr’s molten gold was dialed way down, flickering only when the tribunal murmured.

My own moss suit felt woefully inadequate as ceremonial dress.

I looked at Vylit, his skin awash with the blue-silver of readiness. At least he was mostly healed from our last pirate encounter.

"You ready?" I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.

He looked at me with those star-bright eyes, the barest hint of a smile fracturing his solemnity. "You have never been more than ready," he said, which made no grammatical sense but made my knees go loose anyway.

The chamber door unsealed, a slow unfurling of membrane and liquid glass. The entire assembly froze as the signal ripple went out. It was time.

I braced myself for the walk inside, but Vylit didn’t move.

Instead, he scooped me up… one arm beneath my knees, the other bracing my back, as if it were the most natural thing in the universe for a three-meter warrior to haul a human woman like a particularly valuable duffel bag.

His hands were hot and smooth and trembled only a little, which, honestly, was more than I could say for the rest of me.

I opened my mouth to protest, but the air in the chamber rushed out as we crossed the glowing threshold.

Every eye—organic, digital, or otherwise—snapped to us.

A thousand surveillance feeds, a million sensors, the combined scrutiny of two galactic bureaucracies focused on me and the man who, up until a few days ago, I didn't even know existed.

Vylit carried me straight through the war zone of stares, his stride unfaltering. He didn’t set me down until we stood at the exact center of the circle.

Silence, then a hiss… a sibilant, deliberate sound from the leftmost throne.

"She is bait," the voice said, the translation patch on my throat barely able to keep up. "Asset designed for entrapment. Look at the human. See how the data follows her. See how the pirates swarm. She is not a complement. She is a contagion."

I could feel my face go scarlet, which only made it worse. I wanted to bury my head in Vylit’s chest, but he held me at arm’s length.

He turned slowly, deliberately, until every leader and dignitary had a perfect view. Then he let me slide to my feet. His hand never left my waist.

"She is mine," he said, his glow flaring in a way that made the nearest judge recoil. "Not a trap. Not a pawn. Not Agency. She is—" He struggled for a word, then finally said it. In English. "Bonded."

The word hit the air like a thrown stone, sending ripples through the silent water.

He reached up, fingers brushing my shoulder with impossible gentleness, and peeled back the moss-liner to reveal the mating marks burned into my skin.

They’d healed into a latticework of shimmering blue, so bright they looked tattooed with molten glass.

The gasps that followed were not all outrage. Some sounded a lot like awe.

The patch at my throat scrambled to catch up, its speaker glitching out for a beat.

I forced myself to scan the assembly, meeting the eyes of every tribunal member who looked even remotely hostile. There were a lot of them. My stomach tried to curl into a neutron star.

The Agency execs, for their part, shuffled their clipboards and raised their hands in a synchronized gesture of protest. The jelly mass twitched with indignation.

"Unauthorized bond formation detected," intoned the lead humanoid, his voice as bland and oily as the world’s most ambitious HR manager. "Per Section 9 Subsection?—"

Vylit cut him off with a growl. "There was no time for protocol. The pirates?—"

"Pirate activity is irrelevant. Unauthorized mating constitutes a breach of contract," the jelly mass gurgled, its words pulsing directly into my brainstem.

"Your claim is invalid. The Registry must verify the bond before validation.

Otherwise, the mating may be reversed. Sample extraction will commence?—"

A low buzz erupted from the rightmost throne. The elder there leaned forward.

"Let us see the Glow Oath," he rasped.

Everything stopped. Even the Agency execs fell silent.

Vylit’s body tensed. Then he straightened, and for the first time, I saw him truly terrified.

He stepped forward. The healing moss-liner unspooled itself, leaving his upper torso bare to the cold air.

The patch of skin over his chest glimmered with bioluminescent circuitry, but instead of the usual pulsing gradient, lines of blue fire started to etch themselves into his flesh…

words, patterns, ancient code that burned brighter with every heartbeat.

He raised his arms, exposing his chest to the entire chamber, and began to speak in the old language I recognized from the hammock mating chamber thing.

The translation patch vibrated, trying to keep up, then failed completely as the words came too fast, too raw, too full of meaning that couldn’t be mapped to English. All I caught were fragments:

"…chosen…mine by choice…against the world and all Agency…light of my heart…bonded…"

The blue fire danced, words burning so hot and bright I could see them even with my eyes closed. When I opened them, the entire room was lit in the glare of his declaration.

The Agency execs recoiled, the jelly mass spasmed and lost structural integrity, and even the judges on their coral thrones seemed shaken.

Only then did the translation patch catch up, blurting, "Marital rope declared," in a garbled monotone.

A shock of laughter rippled through the chamber, quick and cruel.

But the laughter didn’t matter.

Because Vylit stood there, chest bared, his Oath written in living light across his body for everyone to see. There was no shame, no hesitation. Just him, and his choice, and the world’s oldest tradition.

I saw him look at me, saw the raw hope in his face.

And realized that everything he’d said to me on the ship—every promise, every oath—had probably been butchered by a shitty translation patch. How much else had I missed? What if he’d never meant to let me go?

I was going to have to check that tech myself.

The ancient judge hissed again, but this time, the sound was almost reverent.

"The Oath is valid. The bond is valid. The mate is valid." One elder called.

Several other judges nodded, and the gold and blue glow in the chamber flared brighter in agreement. I noticed one frowned though.

The Agency execs conferred rapidly, their voices buzzing with panic.

"Invalid registry," one tried again, but the words sounded weak, lost.

Vylit stepped back, lowering his arms, his chest still ablaze with the words.

A projection blinked to life over the pit… Silvyr, but not the smirking, prank-happy Silvyr from the ship. This Silvyr was grim, his silver skin scrolling with lines of code. He projected the stolen data across the air for all to see.

"Tribunal members. Agency. Mavtros." His voice was not human or machine, but something perfectly in-between.

"We have traced the source of every pirate attack, every mate abduction, every breach.

The Agency network is not only compromised.

It is controlled. Asset P routes all traffic, all mate pairing, all genetic matchmaking… through itself."

The display swirled, converging on a single point of light.

"Initiating transparency protocol," Silvyr intoned, the lines of code stacking until a single word blazed across the air, burning so bright it cast shadows.

ASSET P.

A silence so deep it seemed to swallow all noise followed. Even the judges were frozen.

Finally, the ancient judge spoke again, voice trembling with age and something like fear.

"Who is Asset P?"

Silvyr’s projection glitched, then stabilized. "Unknown. But the pattern is clear. Maya Poe’s abduction was not random. Neither was Vylit’s selection. Every unbound mate on the Agency network is at risk. Unless we act, Asset P will own the future of both our species."

The projection dissolved. Silence reigned.

Vylit looked at me, his chest still scrawled with living light, his eyes raw and unguarded.

My brain, always a couple of years behind my mouth, finally caught up.

I looked at the assembly. I looked at the man who had carried me through a battle, who had bared his soul, literally, to save me from being a pawn in someone else’s algorithm.

I could feel the words burning in my own chest. This time, when I reached for his hand, I didn’t hesitate.

"Asset P can go fuck itself," I said, voice steady. "You want a war? We’ll give you one."

Vylit’s biolights pulsed in perfect, impossible time with mine.

"The Oath proves the warrior's dedication but not the humans." Another elder called out.

Dread pooled in my gut. How would I prove to the Mavtros tribunal that I wanted this as much as Vylit did?