Page 119 of Stars in Umbra
Moments later, she turned to him. ‘Baby, you ready to leave?’
Her question was gentle, but her eyes held a fierce light, an intense focus that was just for him.
He nodded once. ‘Naam.’
Yearning arced between them, a tangible current that hummed in the air.
She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
The touch was a jolt of warmth, a single point of radiance and hope in the fog of his exhaustion.
He swayed into the phantom pressure long after she pulled away.
The sight of her, so beautiful in the unforgiving chamber, was a balm to his soul.
He spent most of his adult life alone, fighting, in the darkness, and yet here she was, the last person he ever expected, choosing to stand in the light with him.
She had seen him at his peak of vulnerability, his body broken and his will pushed to its absolute limit, and she had not run.
She had not recoiled.
She had simply said, ‘I’ve got him,’ as if his life was hers to claim and to protect.
A raw, unfamiliar burning spread behind his eyes.
He fought it back, biting down on the inside of his cheek, a penetrating, physical pain to force the emotional torrent into submission.
Fokk, he was not going to cry, not here, not now.
Still, the sensation was overwhelming, underscoring that he genuinely felt for her.
This woman, the one who disarmed him in every way, was proving to be his sanctuary, his safe space.
She was not just a warrior, or a lover, or a confidante.
She was his forever woman.
He reached for her hand and locked his own with hers.
She and Mirage flanked and guided him, still unsteady on his feet, toward her flyer parked on the landing pad of the Thabot Barracks rooftop.
Rina waved farewell to the Rider’s AI, who headed off to her transport.
Once inside the flyer, his woman activated stealth mode, and they lifted into the hazy, blush-hued skies of New Rambasa.
He sat in silence, the hum of the engines the only sound in the cabin.
Mo sliced his eyes away from Rina and onto the view outside as his mind shifted to the revelation of who his father was.
He was a freakin’ god-scion.
The truth echoed in his mind as his hands clenched in his lap, his knuckles pale.
Now, he recalled his mother’s stories, the tales of a glittering palace made of stars, and the promises of a life owed to them.
Guilt overcame him for not believing her accounts to be true, for dismissing them as fantasy.
So all along, what she shared about his childhood was accurate.
