Page 68 of Owned By the Hvrok

Not fully scented, not enough to trigger the physiological spiral he feared. His helm still filtered most of it, but enough passed through to stir something.

A faint spike of heat.

A slow, building pressure in his abdomen.

He didn’t look down at her. He stared past her, out into the black storm-torn void beyond the cockpit windows, watching the snow dance like ash.

And yet in the periphery of his senses, all his attention was onher.

How small she was.

How fragile.

And… how much pleasure her presence gave him.

It was… unfamiliar. Not carnal. Not yet. Well, perhaps not fully, only slightly. And warm. Dangerous in its softness. He’d never experienced this kind of stillness before. This quiet contentment that came not from dominance, but from simplybeing.

He flexed his hand lightly on her hip, noting the soft give of her form, the way she didn’t flinch, didn’t draw back.

She liked his touch.

He felt it. Knew it.

And worse, he wanted to explore it. To draw more out of her.

But he held back, because heknew.

If he removed his helm, if he took in her scent fully—if he let his senses becomesaturatedwith her—there was a high chance he might fall into heat, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself if that happened.

Because this human…

She had pheromones.

How, he didn’t know.

No species other than Hvrok could trigger the biological spiral. But his body was reacting. Just faintly. A whisper of it.

And that was enough to make him wary.

He shifted slightly, one arm steady around her, the other reaching out to the interface panel. He activated the ship’s systems with a low command.

The main power grid flickered.

The ship was uncloaked, visible to any who happened to come across it.

He expected that.

There wasn’t enough reserve energy to engage it.

There was a chance the Nalgar would find them. And if they did…he’d be ready.

He always was.

But now came the most important task.

He opened a channel: low-frequency, encrypted.

His voice was quiet and precise as he encoded the signal: strings of identification codes, old passwords, backchannel pings designed only for a specific class of recipient. The kind of people who knew who he was. What he could pay. What he’ddone.

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