Page 15 of Fated to the Dragon Alien
“I can’t find anything about your people,” he said. “The data’s gone. No species markers in the database. What scant history I learned, I pried from my guardian and was told to stop looking.”
She blinked and glanced over again. That was not what she’d expected to hear.
His jaw was set, but his expression wasn’t hard. He looked…bothered in a quiet, unsettled kind of way, like he was angry and didn’t know where to place it. His brow was drawn, his mouth pressed thin, but the tension in his shoulders said he wasn’t just thinking about her words—he was feeling them. She’d never seen that from anyone in command before.
“So?” she asked.
“So I want to understand why,” he said. “Why every mention of your species is locked under security tiers higher than mine.”
“You’re Axis,” she said crisply. “I wonder why your own system would block you.”
“I’m starting to wonder about a lot of things,” he murmured.
Something tugged in her chest. Not fear. Not surprise. Just a dull, deep ache she’d been trying to push down since they pulled her from the only home she’d ever known.
“You had someone,” Stavian said. It wasn’t a question. “A bondmate, you called him?”
Cerani’s hands went still. The crystal scraper hovered inches from the wall. “Yes,” she said.
She could feel him looking at her, but she didn’t lift her head.
“What happened to him?” he asked.
“I told you. He died.” She kept her eyes on the rock. “There was a fever wave the winter before we were taken. The supply rations didn’t include medicine. Not even clean water tablets.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
After a pause, he asked, “Do you miss him?”
Cerani sat back, her spine straight now, the scraper resting on her thighs. “No,” she answered truthfully. “He wasn’t kind. And he wasn’t my choice.”
Stavian didn’t say anything. She looked at him then—really looked, meeting his eyes through the suit’s visor. “Our bondings weren’t about affection. I was assigned to him when I hit maturity. He wanted obedience, which I gave him, but I didn’t grieve his passing.”
Stavian’s brow quirked like maybe something about that surprised him.
Cerani tilted her head. “There’s no rule that says loss has to hurt.”
The tunnel buzzed with the soft pulse of light from the utility panels behind him, but everything between them had gone still.
“I don’t know who decided what my people were worth,” she said. “But if the data’s gone, it’s because someone wanted us erased. We were trapped in a penal colony, after all.”
“I know,” he said. “Which is why I’d like to keep talking to you. About your people, your past—yourself.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“Because I think you know more than you think you do,” he said. “And no matter what the Axis have tried to bury, they can’t erase what still breathes.”
Her breath caught, not because of his words, but because of what they stirred—some shred of old hope she thought had been stripped away, along with her name, her home, her choices.
She shook her head once, sharp. “Talking to me won’t change anything.”
“It might,” he said.
“You’ll get in trouble.”
His lips twitched. “Already am.”
