Page 25 of Vylit: Glowing for Her
And I was hers.
Forever.
CHAPTER 11
MAYA
The main chamber of the Mavtrosian Tribunal was nothing like I’d imagined… not that I’d had time to imagine much, but I’d pictured cold stone, columns, maybe some sterile, intimidating amphitheater. Not this.
They’d carved the place out of what had once been a living reef, the ancient coral towers bent and fused by unimaginable pressure into arches that blazed with bioluminescent fire. Every surface dripped with color, the spectrum running from bone-white to a blue so dark it hurt to look at it. Coral thrones, grown not built, sprawled in a massive crescent around the central pit, each throne occupied by an elder whose glow made the air itself seem to hum. They presided like judges at a war crimes tribunal. Or, more likely, an execution.
The dais at the front was not a stage, but a landing pad… a slab of living moss surrounded by a million watchful, lidless eyes. The effect was to walk here, and be seen by everything. Not just by the leaders, but by every networked entity and gossipy bio-organic thing in a hundred-kilometer radius.
They had not bothered with subtlety. They wanted us to feel the weight of their gaze.
To the left of the arc, a half-dozen Intergalactic Dating Agency representatives glimmered in their businesslike way. Three humanoids in identical sharp suits, two massive insectoid functionaries, and a jelly mass that might have been an executive in the middle of a long, painful conference call. All their tech was polished within an angstrom of perfection, badge insignias, clipboards, and floating data globes ready to log every damn syllable for the record.
Kazmyr and Silvyr flanked me and Vylit as we waited in the anti-chamber. Silvyr vibrated with excitement… apparently he loved a good dramatic entrance. Kazmyr’s molten gold was dialed way down, flickering only when the tribunal murmured. My own moss suit felt woefully inadequate as ceremonial dress.
I looked at Vylit, his skin awash with the blue-silver of readiness. At least he was mostly healed from our last pirate encounter.
"You ready?" I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper.
He looked at me with those star-bright eyes, the barest hint of a smile fracturing his solemnity. "You have never been more than ready," he said, which made no grammatical sense but made my knees go loose anyway.
The chamber door unsealed, a slow unfurling of membrane and liquid glass. The entire assembly froze as the signal ripple went out. It was time.
I braced myself for the walk inside, but Vylit didn’t move.
Instead, he scooped me up… one arm beneath my knees, the other bracing my back, as if it were the most natural thing in the universe for a three-meter warrior to haul a human woman like a particularly valuable duffel bag. His hands were hot and smooth and trembled only a little, which, honestly, was more than I could say for the rest of me.
I opened my mouth to protest, but the air in the chamber rushed out as we crossed the glowing threshold. Every eye—organic, digital, or otherwise—snapped to us. A thousand surveillance feeds, a million sensors, the combined scrutiny of two galactic bureaucracies focused on me and the man who, up until a few days ago, I didn't even know existed.
Vylit carried me straight through the war zone of stares, his stride unfaltering. He didn’t set me down until we stood at the exact center of the circle.
Silence, then a hiss… a sibilant, deliberate sound from the leftmost throne.
"She is bait," the voice said, the translation patch on my throat barely able to keep up. "Asset designed for entrapment. Look at the human. See how the data follows her. See how the pirates swarm. She is not a complement. She is a contagion."
I could feel my face go scarlet, which only made it worse. I wanted to bury my head in Vylit’s chest, but he held me at arm’s length.
He turned slowly, deliberately, until every leader and dignitary had a perfect view. Then he let me slide to my feet. His hand never left my waist.
"She is mine," he said, his glow flaring in a way that made the nearest judge recoil. "Not a trap. Not a pawn. Not Agency. She is—" He struggled for a word, then finally said it. In English. "Bonded."
The word hit the air like a thrown stone, sending ripples through the silent water.
He reached up, fingers brushing my shoulder with impossible gentleness, and peeled back the moss-liner to reveal the mating marks burned into my skin. They’d healed into a latticework of shimmering blue, so bright they looked tattooed with molten glass. The gasps that followed were not all outrage. Some sounded a lot like awe.
The patch at my throat scrambled to catch up, its speaker glitching out for a beat.
I forced myself to scan the assembly, meeting the eyes of every tribunal member who looked even remotely hostile. There were a lot of them. My stomach tried to curl into a neutron star.
The Agency execs, for their part, shuffled their clipboards and raised their hands in a synchronized gesture of protest. The jelly mass twitched with indignation.
"Unauthorized bond formation detected," intoned the lead humanoid, his voice as bland and oily as the world’s most ambitious HR manager. "Per Section 9 Subsection?—"
Vylit cut him off with a growl. "There was no time for protocol. The pirates?—"
