Page 36 of Fated to the Dragon Alien

“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.

TEN

Stavian

Stavian stood beside Cerani’s bed, watching her eyelids flutter closed. She’d fought sleep for almost twenty peks, stubborn as always, but the healing solution finally kicked in, and with it, the anesthetic additive that would put her out while the microbots did their work. Her injured leg was wrapped in protective gel, the bone already fusing back together with the help of hundreds of microstructures. She slept with her arm across her abdomen and her other hand still curled in his. Her breathing was steady.

He didn’t want to leave her.

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