Page 34 of Alien Warrior Chef… With Benefits
I try to make sense of it—my own idiocy, my panic, the surge of honor twisted so tight around my ribs it strangled the very thing it claimed to protect.
Because that’s what it was, wasn’t it?
Not discipline. Not virtue. Not Vakutan code.
Fear.
I feared her truth. I fearedmine.
And now that I’ve had the night to unravel my shame, to walk the circuits of these too-familiar streets like a lost beast pacing its cage, I know the truth—ugly, simple, sharp:
What I did was cowardice.
She offered me something—soft and searing and real—and I turned away like it would burn me.
But I’ve walked through warfires. I’ve bled through worse. And yet nothing scorches like her voice in the dark, sayingI’m not engaged anymore,like it meant we could start.
And I ran.
At one point, I stop at the little bridge overlooking the koi canal—watch their bioluminescent bodies twist beneath the surface in a lazy waltz of gold and teal. The lights from the floating vendor stalls flicker over the ripples. A human child nearby squeals as his drone-fish catches a digital coin.
I close my eye—the one still mine, not the metal one that hums softly in the night—and try to breathe.
My people say meditation restores balance. But balance isn’t what I need right now.
I need clarity.
I kneel beside the bridge, spine straight, palms open to the stars. The mantra comes easily, words passed down through bloodlines and battlefields.
“Strength in stillness. Truth in silence. The heart beats once. Listen.”
But silence doesn’t bring peace tonight.
It bringsher.
The echo of her laughter. The quiver of her breath when I kissed her. The way her hands curled into my tunic like I was something to be held, not feared. Not restrained.
Her lips were warm, even after the cool night air.
Her scent still lingers on my skin.
And her eyes—that wide, wide gaze, shimmering with disbelief and wonder—refuse to leave me be.
I stay there till dawn edges into the sky, bruised purple and ash-pink, and the bakeries start to stir with life. The scent ofsugar and bread rises with the fog, and I know, without needing to see it, that Earth Bites will already be lit.
She will be inside.
I rise with purpose. My body aches from the stillness, muscles stiff from more than just posture. It’s the ache of withheld truth, of longing unspoken. My students wouldn’t recognize me if they saw me now—unkempt, sleepless, stripped of the stoic armor I usually wear like a second skin.
But none of that matters.
What matters is this:
I will not run again.
Not from her.
Not from this.
