Page 56 of Alien Warrior Chef… With Benefits
I press send.
The wind cuts harder now. It carries the cold weight of the stars, and I feel them pressing down on me, vast and uncaring.I try to meditate, but my mind is a battleground—her face when I caught her from falling, the tremble in her voice, the way her fingers curled into my tunic like I was something worth holding onto.
I try to empty myself.
But Ruby fills every shadow.
The holopad chimes. One response. My breath catches in my chest like a misfired pulse rifle.
The priest’s words blaze onto the screen with the fury of a blade drawn in sacred judgment:
“If you have found her, warrior, the bond is already there. Delay only brings pain. Act with courage, or lose her to a future without you.”
I stare. I reread. My heart thunders, a war drum under my ribs.
Already there.
I drag a hand through my hair, my claws scraping scalp. The bond isalready there. I feel it in the marrow of me—in the way her laughter lodges behind my sternum like a hook. In how her pain rips me apart faster than any blade. In how I feel lesser, dimmer, when she’s not near.
She’s become the pulse beneath every thought. The sweetness in every breath. The fire I can no longer live without.
I was a fool to think I could resist it.
And yet…
She’s not Vakutan. She was not raised on chants and blood-oaths, not taught the sacred texts or the weight of a soul-binding vow. She smiles with open hands, not clenched fists. She lives in color and sweetness and gentle fire, and I… I am forged from something else. Something darker. Something old.
What if she sees the bond as a shackle?
What if I mark her soul with mine, and she breaks under it?
I breathe in through my nose, slow and deep, the air thick with dust and regret. My fingers tighten around the railing. Far below, a child’s laughter bubbles up from the streets—light, oblivious. For a heartbeat, I envy that ignorance.
The priest’s words burn on my holopad.
“Act with courage, or lose her to a future without you.”
I am a warrior. Courage is what I was bred for.
And yet nothing—not war, not death, not centuries of conflict—terrifies me like this.
I don’t sleep.I pace the dojo until the floor creaks beneath my weight. I spar with empty air. I boil tea I don’t drink. I replay the footage of our first televised round until the images blur.
Ruby in her apron, cheeks dusted with flour. Her fingers moving with sharp precision. The camera loves her—but I worship her. Quietly. Utterly. And with a reverence that borders on pain.
By morning, I’m raw at the edges. No dreams, no clarity—only one truth:
I must tell her.
I must give her the choice.
Because if I stay silent, if I withhold the truth of what she is to me, I take that choice from her—and that is a betrayal deeper than any blade.
I was not made for gentleness. But for her, I will become what I must.
I will become the truth.
Even if it destroys me.
