Page 11 of Fated to the Dragon Alien
She’d looked at him like she wasn’t afraid—like she had nothing left to lose, and the only thing she carried anymore was courage and raw truth. Nobody looked at him like that.
He locked his hands back below his wings and let out a slow breath. She should be just another imprisoned miner. Honestly, she should be a problem requiring removal before Central reviews. Instead, he’d brought her to his office, given her food,listened to her. He’d stood there like a fool, watching her instead of doing what he’d been trained to do from his youth. What thefekwas wrong with him?
He didn’t want to answer that. But when he closed his eyes, all he saw was her face. That burned-into-his-blood kind of image that wouldn’t wash out. The way she stood tall even when she was exhausted. How she hated him and still told the truth anyway. And stars help him, he wanted to see her smile. Actually smile. What would that look like in a place like this? What would she sound like if she laughed?
Stavian gritted his teeth and forced those thoughts out. This wasn’t about emotion. It wasn’t about need. Not his, anyway.
He moved back to his console and entered a search sequence.
TERIAN — cross-reference species registry. The feed blinked. Loading.
Only four entries popped up. He frowned and expanded all of them.
Sparse. Almost useless. One classified under extinct species, which was obviously untrue. One was listed under unverified classification, Teria origin.” One—a short blurb on Teria itself.
He continued reading. The Axis had stripped the planetary resources of Teria, leaving it uninhabitable over five hundred mig-cycles ago. The rest was short and vague. No data on surviving populations. No species traits. No known genetic structure. No record of current settlements. Not even a planetary map.
He leaned in closer, fingers gripping the console frame.
This wasn’t normal. Not for Axis documentation. There should have been more. Axis records ran deep, deeper than most people ever knew. Whole planets cataloged in detail—topography, climate patterns, gene distribution, historical deviations, asset yields. That was the whole point of their control. They knew everything about everything.
Except this.
Except Teria.
Stavian pulled up the last classified report logged under Terian history. Time-stamped 412 mig-cycles ago. The source field was blank. That alone sent a chill down his spine. No origin, no author, no validation marker. Just a report saying the Terian project was “complete.” No follow-ups. No footnotes.
He closed out of the terminal and paced the floor once, trying to calm the knot in his gut. Someone had buried any trace of Cerani’s people so deep, it couldn’t be accidental. The system hadn’t just forgotten Teria. It had erased it.
That meant someone wanted them forgotten.
Stavian sat in his chair and stared up at the lights—dull, low-burning coils that never fully illuminated the room. Everything down in this low sector felt like the underlayer of Axis control. Functional but forgotten. Much like the miners. Like the truth about Teria.
He’d gone his whole life thinking he understood the Axis. Their structure made sense. Order. Precision. Conformity. It had trained him, educated him, and given him purpose.
But lately—no, for a long time now—none of it felt solid. Bendahn always said doubt was a symptom of incomplete data. “Trust in the system until it proves compromised,” she’d told him more than once.
Well, he had incomplete data now. The system was definitely compromised—and he wasn’t sure who to trust.
Except himself. Maybe not even that.
He opened the encrypted comm hub and hesitated before entering a private call code. It had been nine cycles since he’d last spoken to Bendahn, and he hadn’t reached out then—it was her message. She rarely contacted him, unless it was to issue new instruction or issue a reprimand.
Still, this needed to be escalated. If there was corruption of the Terian data, Bendahn might know how to correct it. He keyed her code. Locked it. Sent it.
The channel activated and a long silence stretched before the screen lit up—orange at first, then shifting to the deep navy overlay of an encrypted Axis comm channel. The Axis symbol rotated once and disappeared.
Bendahn’s holographic image appeared over his console.
She wore the same high-collared uniform she always did—silver-threaded with the Axis emblem pinned at her long, narrow throat. Her hair was drawn back, the braids looped and clipped behind her head with surgical precision. The blue-gray skin around her large, slitted eyes was lined with age and calculation. Nothing ever surprised her.
Not even him.
“Stavian,” she said, tipping her head. “What is the purpose of this call?”
His fingers curled against the edge of the console. “I’ve encountered a problem.”
Bendahn didn’t blink. “Specify.”
