Page 22 of Zayrik (The Protectorate Warriors Alien Fated Mates #6)

Nyla

MY PULSE HADN’T SLOWED since the moment Zayrik’s hands had been on my skin. Not since I’d kissed him like he was the only solid thing in the galaxy. Every nerve ending still hummed with awareness, with something that felt bigger than just physical attraction.

We barely finished what we’d started. Barely had time to process what had happened between us. And now? We had company.

Because timing in this galaxy was never on my side.

“Incoming!” Zayrik shouted as we raced to the bridge. His voice carried an edge I hadn’t heard before... protective, fierce.

I dropped into the pilot’s seat, fingers flying across the console. Tried to ignore how my skin still tingled where he’d touched me, how part of me could still feel him. The navigation screen lit up red with pursuit data. Sleek, unmarked, and definitely not friendly.

Just like old times. Except nothing felt the same anymore.

“Nav, give me options,” I snapped, already forcing the engines to climb. Adrenaline mixed with something else. Something that made me hyperaware of Zayrik’s presence behind me.

“The pursuing vessel is Kestrel-class. Pursuit and capture focused. You are currently outclassed by approximately twenty percent.” Nav’s tone could not have been less helpful.

Zayrik took the co-pilot seat without hesitation. His presence beside me felt different now, charged with everything we’d just shared. Everything we’d started. “We can’t outrun them.”

“Don’t need to,” I replied, fighting to keep my voice steady despite how my body responded to his proximity. “We just have to be smarter.”

He caught my eye, and the look we shared was loaded with understanding. With trust that hadn’t been there before. “The nebula.”

I nodded, adjusting our course. The Callian Nebula. A swirling storm of particulate matter and magnetic interference. A smuggler’s nightmare and a pilot’s challenge. Beautiful and deadly, like everything else worth fighting for.

“They’ll follow.”

“They always do.” The ship lurched as a disruptor blast grazed our flank. I bit back a curse, but through whatever connection had formed between us, I felt Zayrik’s tension spike. Felt his instinct to protect warring with his trust in my abilities.

“Zep, harness up!”

A piercing trill answered as he launched toward the console alcove, his worry for me clear in the sound.

“Deflectors at eighty-two percent,” Nav intoned.

Zayrik rerouted auxiliary power, his movements synchronized with mine like we’d been flying together for years. “Boosting sensors. We’ll need them once we’re inside.”

“Nav, kill non-essentials once we’re deep. Run us dark.”

“Acknowledged.”

The nebula filled the viewport. Beautiful and lethal. I didn’t blink.

I flew straight into the storm, feeling Zayrik’s confidence in me pulse through the bond.

It should’ve terrified me, this new awareness.

Instead, it felt like power. Like strength I hadn’t known I needed—until now.

Another blast clipped the rear deflectors. The ship groaned.

My hands tightened on the controls.

Beside me, Zayrik’s body stiffened. I could feel the instinct in him to take over. To shield. To protect.

But he didn’t.

He trusted me.

“Sixty-seven percent,” Nav reported.

“Come on, Nyla. Hold together.” I whispered to the ship, but part of me was talking to whatever was building between Zayrik and me too.

The nebula swallowed us.

Visibility dropped to nothing. My hands moved by instinct, adjusting thrusters to keep us steady. But there was something else guiding me now. Something that felt like Zayrik’s presence in my mind. Focused and absolutely certain of my skills.

“Still on us,” Zayrik murmured, his voice low and close. The sound sent shivers down my spine that had nothing to do with fear.

“Let them follow.” Into the dark. Into my world. Where I’d always been most comfortable. Until him.

I dove deeper. No alarms. No chatter. Just the hum of systems and the pounding of my heart. And beneath it all, that new awareness of him. Of us. Of whatever had changed in that storage bay.

“Kestrel’s sensors won’t hold in here,” he said. His confidence in me wrapped around me like armor.

“Exactly.”

I threw the ship into a steep port dive, hugging the densest cloud layers. My body moved on instinct, but some part of me tracked him.

His nearness. His breath syncing with mine.

How we seemed to move as one, no words needed.

Then I hit the switch. “Nav, go dark. Now.”

Power drained. Lights dimmed. Engines fell silent.

The ship floated in dead space, adrift in shadow.

Just like us, suspended between what we were and what we were becoming.

Sweat trickled down my spine, but I didn’t move. Couldn’t. Every sense was focused on survival, on the pursuit, and on the man beside me who somehow felt more like home than any safe harbor ever had.

“They’ll think we broke apart in the cloud,” I whispered, the words barely a breath.

“If they don’t double back.”

“Let’s not give them a reason to.”

We waited.

The Kestrel swept past.

Drifted.

Disappeared.

But the tension between us only grew stronger.

Zayrik leaned in, his voice quiet enough to raise goosebumps on my skin. “They bought it.”

“For now.” I fought to keep my voice steady, to ignore how his proximity made everything inside me hum with recognition.

I remained motionless, absorbing the implications of everything.

The adrenaline of getting away, the phantom sensation of his hands on my skin. The way something inside me seemed to reach for him without my permission. We hadn’t finished anything.

We’d just hit pause.

And the wait was already killing me.

“Nav, minimal power. Get me a course to Cindrel Station. Stay inside the nebula.” My voice sounded rough, even to me. Like I was trying to focus on navigation when part of me was still back in that storage bay.

“Six hours added,” Nav said, managing to sound both precise and judgmental.

I grimaced. “Figures,” I muttered. Six hours in close quarters with Zayrik, with this new awareness buzzing between us.

With the memory of his hands, his mouth, the way he’d made me feel like I belonged somewhere for the first time in my life.

I paused for several long moments, steeling myself. “Plot it.”

Zayrik stood, and I felt the loss of his presence like a physical thing. “I’ll patch the deflectors.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. “I’ll handle the drift.”

He paused at the hatch, looking back. His eyes found mine, and the intensity there made my breath catch. Made something inside me respond like he’d touched me.

“We’re not done.”

My voice was low, almost hoarse. “I know.”

Gods, did I know.

He left, and I let out a shaky breath. My hands were trembling. Not from fear. Not from the chase.

From him. From us. From whatever was growing between us that felt bigger than attraction, bigger than need.

“Your heart rate remains elevated,” Nav said, managing to sound both clinical and smug.

“Nebula’s stressful,” I muttered, knowing it was a lie. Knowing Nav knew it too.

“Fascinating. The spike began twelve minutes prior to enemy pursuit.” Right when Zayrik had first touched me. When everything had changed.

“Shut up, Nav.”

Zep chirped judgment from his tiny harness, the sound distinctly knowing.

“Not you too.”

But they were right. Everything had shifted. I wasn’t just on the run anymore. Wasn’t just surviving.

I was falling.

And the scariest part?

I didn’t want to stop.

SIX HOURS LATER, WE broke through the nebula. Cindrel Station Outpost flickered in the dark ahead, all jagged steel and lowlight security. An asteroid-born scrap station. The kind of place I used to feel at home. Now it just felt like another stop on a path I wasn’t sure of anymore.

No one in pursuit.

Just the hope that we might get ahead of Vask. Or die trying.

And something else now. Something that made my usual survival instincts feel different. Because now I wasn’t just protecting myself.

Zayrik returned to the bridge, quiet and steady. His presence filled the space in ways that had nothing to do with his size and everything to do with what had happened between us.

“Deflectors stable. No tail.”

I nodded, throat tight with words I couldn’t say. With the need to turn around, to finish what we’d started, to let myself fall completely into whatever this was becoming.

“Docking request sent.” My voice stayed professional, controlled. Like I wasn’t hyperaware of his every movement.

The comm crackled: “Proceed to Bay Fourteen. Welcome to Cindrel Station.”

As we aligned, his hand brushed mine. Just that small touch sent electricity through my veins, made something inside me reach for him.

And I already knew I wasn’t ready to stop wanting him.

Wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready.

Wasn’t sure I wanted to be.