Page 4 of Fourth

But undeniably.

Another breath stuttered in her throat. He adjusted the monitor’s display with a flick, trying to ignore the impulse clawing at the base of his spine. Something about the sound of her breath against the silence—human, fragile, alive—held him there, watching longer than protocol demanded.

He examined her like he might watch a fault line forming—no motion yet, but something building. Something undeniable.

The flush in her cheeks. The way her fingers twitched against the restraints. Her soft, delicious human scent. The shift of her body beneath the sedation was small, defiant, restless.

It threaded through the sterile air like an invisible current, catching in his lungs, lingering longer than it should have. It pulled at something base and buried, apulse of recognition without origin. Static flared along his skin. Notdanger, not desire, but something tangled between urgency and impossibility.

He locked his emotions down. Not in order to restrain her. To restrain himself. To cage the surge of something old and volatile rising inside him. Something with heat and memory buried so deep, it was as though it had rewired the cadence of his entirebody.

Her presence threw off his rhythm. Her scream had cracked something open. And now, she was watching him, wild and defiant, and every part of him demanded he react. But he didn’t. He locked it down. Sealed the reaction inside his bones and called it self-discipline.

She blinked rapidly, adjusting to the overhead light, fury giving way to horror. Riv’En watched her eyes snap to the walls, first to the shimmer of containment fields, then to the seamless construction of his ship, Veyna’s, interior, her confusion deepening. This was not Earth tech. Not even close. Her gaze darted from the ceiling to the diagnostic array to the unfamiliar materials of the chamber. Each new detail chipped away at her sense of orientation.

While the translation device calibrated, Riv’En stepped back, his expression unreadable, eyes tracking every shift in her vital signs. His gaze lingered for a moment longer than necessary on her flushed face, the rapid rise and fall of her chest. It was a brief moment of hesitation, one he quickly suppressed, as he had been trained to do. She was still disoriented, still human. Her resistance had only just begun.

His fingers curled tighter around the edge of the table, tension bleeding into stillness. The space between them pulsed, inexplicably charged, and he couldn’t pull his eyes away. He needed to reset. Refocus. But instead, he stood there, caughtin the gravity of her presence, lungs tight, restraint fraying at the edges. The tension in the air thickened, pulling him in as if something invisible had wrapped itself around his chest.

He couldn’t explain the way his gaze followed the curve of her lips as she panted, her pulse still erratic beneath her pale skin. His eyes traced the delicate line of her jaw, the flush of color in her cheeks, and despite the cold, clinical part of his mind urging him to focus, he couldn’t help but notice how her body responded to the proximity betweenthem.

The air seemed warmer, charged. Her scent, fresh and faintly floral, swirled around him, heightening the mystifying sensation that she was pulling at something deep within him. It was becoming more difficult to ignore the pulse of awareness between them, the magnetic, unwelcome attraction that simmered beneath the surface of his detachment.

She was a prisoner, an anomaly to be contained, and yet, the way she fought him, the way her body writhed under his restraint, sent a ripple of heat through him that he was not prepared to confront. The tension was undeniable, and it unsettled him in ways he couldn’t afford to acknowledge.

She struggled against the restraints, breathing hard, eyes wild. She shouted something at him, demanding, furious, but he heard only noise until her translator activated.

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.

The translator kicked in mid-syllable, scrambling to catch her voice as she shouted. The cadence fractured—half-English, half-garbled algorithm—before realigning on the third word. Even then, it lagged, echoing beneath her real tone like a shadow trying to keep up. It distorted her fury, layering one voice atop the other, and if anything, it made her sound unhinged. Wild. Like her rage had multiplied in translation.

She scanned the room with sharp, disbelieving rage. Her gaze landed back on him, still in his computer-generated human form. “You did this. You took me.”

She tore loose.

Predictable.

He caught her with ease, one arm locking across her shoulders, the other securing her wrists before she could land a strike. She bucked hard, fury radiating off her in ragged breaths and clipped curses, but he absorbed each movement with practiced, unshakable focus.

He moved with the lethal grace of someone built for this, restraining, not wounding. Neutralizing her without leaving a mark. But even as he held her still, the contact left something behind. Heat. Pressure. Awareness. Her heart thundered against his arm, her skin electric with resistance. And still, he didn’t letgo.

She fought like fire, writhing, kicking, cursing, twisted by panic into something nearly unintelligible. He absorbed itall.

Then, calmly: “Riv’En. My name is Riv’En.”

She froze. Just for a moment. Then twisted the word into something rougher.

“Riven,” she muttered.

He let her have it. It came close enough.

Then she did something no captive had everdone.

She bit him.

Hard.

Her head snapped sideways and her teeth sank into the flesh just beneath his collarbone—deep enough to draw blood, sharpenough to tear through the edge of his uniform. He jerked, more from shock than pain, and for a split second, she clamped down harder.

---