Page 25 of Alien Warrior Chef… With Benefits
Mara Adams.
Ruby’s aunt.
I swipe to play the message. Her voice is clipped, brittle, careful in the way only humans speak when grief is wrapping them in velvet gloves.
“Rekkgar. I don’t know if you’ve heard. But the Kael boy is dead. The Reapers hit the shuttle outside Banu Sector. No survivors. We told Ruby. It was... difficult. She’s resting now. I thought you ought to know.”
The message ends in a click.
I stand frozen, comm still glowing in my hand, heart thundering in my ears.
Kael. Dead.
She’s no longer engaged.
She’s… free.
A breath leaves me, sharp and ragged. My knees nearly give.
And that’s when I know—I’m not afraid of what I did.
I’m afraid of what I’lldo next.
Because now, the last wall between us is gone.
No more contracts. No more vows.
Just my guilt, my shame—and the raw, dangerous hope that maybe, just maybe, the kiss she gave me was permission.
I drop to the floor of the dojo and sit cross-legged in the dark. The moon filters through the narrow slats of the skylight, casting long lines of silver across my shoulders. I can still see the streak of her lipstick on my chest in the reflection of my arm bracer. I hadn’t noticed it before.
A mark.
A brand.
I touch it with reverence, then slide my fingers away like it burns.
She deserves better. She deserves flowers and music and slow laughter over breakfast. Not a beast who’s too broken to sleep without a weapon in reach.
And yet…
I want her anyway.
Gods help me, I want her like air.
The sweaton my brow drips into my eye, stinging like acid, but I don’t wipe it away. Ineedthe burn. I crave it. Pain keeps me present. Pain is control. Without it, I’ll drift—back to her porch, back to her lips, back to the way she tasted like cinnamon and secrets. Back to the moment I became the man I swore I’d never be.
My palm smashes into the padded training post with a dullthud, reverberating up my arm. The next strike is half-hearted. The one after that worse. I know the form. I could run thesedrills blind, backward, underwater. But today, every movement feels like slogging through tar.
“Master Rekkgar?”
The voice is hesitant. Small. Hesitation is dangerous.
I whirl. My eye flashes red as the cybernetic hums under strain. The apprentice—a young Mirandi boy with too-long arms and unshorn horns—blinks up at me, clutching a training staff like it might shield him from my fury.
“What?” I bark.
He recoils, flinching.
