Page 21 of Fated to the Dragon Alien
He searched her face. The warmth in her voice. The honesty that lanced straight through his chest.
Because you made me see what I’d refused to look at. You make me feel alive.That’s what he wanted to say. Instead, he turned toward the exit. “You matter to me,” he said, and it was no less revealing than his thoughts. “In ways I don’t understand. In ways that scare me.”
Cerani didn’t speak at first. She sat there on the crate, hands folded in her lap, eyes locked on his. The glow from the access light cut across her cheek through the visor, outlining her jaw and catching in a few loose strands of hair that fell in her face.
Her gaze didn’t waver. “You don’t get to say that lightly.” Her voice wasn’t cold—it was quiet. Measured. Careful.
He waited, his breath caught halfway in his throat. “I don’t mean it lightly.”
“This place kills things like that,” she added. “Hope. Want. Even truth.”
He nodded. She wasn’t wrong. He shifted his stance, putting pressure through the balls of his feet so he wouldn’t do anythingstupid, like walk back to her, like say something he couldn’t take back.
She blinked once, slowly. “You matter to me, too,” she said. “But it changes nothing.”
“It changes things for me,” Stavian said.
Cerani’s eyes softened. “Stavian, I am your prisoner. You are my warden. Within that structure, we’re not equals, and I won’t willingly subject myself to that dynamic. Not again.”
The air between them buzzed with the hum of pipes above, and something quieter below it—unspoken, waiting.
She stood and walked toward the opening where he still stood, then handed him the tablet.Fek, he hated her EP suit. Hated the extra layer between them. It was more than a protective garment—it was a barrier that divided their two worlds. A constant reminder that they had no business being here, sharing feelings that had no chance of growing into anything, when every instinct in him bellowed that they belonged together.
They stood face-to-face. Just for a moment, her hand brushed his arm, intentional, but brief. “As long as this is how it is, I-I can’t.” Pain crossed her features, quick and potent as her voice cracked over the words. “I just can’t.” Then she stepped past him, out into the dark corridor. “Goodbye, Stavian.”
She didn’t look back.
He stepped into the passageway feeling like his chest was compressed between two boulders. He didn’t need an interpreter to know that her “goodbye” was a permanent one. If he returned the next cycle for her lesson, she wouldn’t be here. There would be no more lessons. No more contact that wasn’t official mining business. And he wasn’t ready for that.
Stavian walked the empty corridor with the weight of that moment pressing hard and deep. It wasn’t her words that cut deepest—it was the truth behind them. She was right—the waythings were would not work. Attempting it would destroy them both.
This place ate feelings. Crushed them under duty and survival and fear.
Still… She hadn’t denied her own feelings. Instead, she’d told him that she cared for him, and he’d seen the regret when she’d walked away from him. That was enough to grip something solid inside him, some small tether he hadn’t realized he’d been clinging to.
Enough to contemplate crossing a line there’d be no returning from.
The lift to the supervisor wing was down. He didn’t call for another. He needed the walk. The burn in his legs, the constant thrum of pressure beneath his skin. He needed it to anchor him.
Every time he left that duct, it hurt more.
He reached the lower office and keyed in his access code. The door hissed open. The same lights blinked overhead. The same stale air pressed in. None of it felt right anymore.
He dropped the tablet Cerani had handed him onto his desk and stared at it.
She mattered. She mattered more than anything. The fact that she still couldn’t trust the feelings they had for each other made him want to tear down every checkpoint and security scan until she did.
But he understood. She had every reason to be cautious. In this place, wanting something too much was a weakness, and weaknesses got people killed.
Stavian turned back to the console and triggered the override for the equipment update request. He flagged her rebreather design under internal systems review, then buried the source tag behind several chains of tech approvals.
By the time Axis Command saw it, it’d be just another calibration add-on.
Just another survival mod.
He sat back in the chair, stared at the wall for a long minute, and let silence fill the room. His mind was a churning rush of ideas, feelings, wild rebellion.
He’d spent his whole life playing within the Axis’ rules. But Cerani had lit something in him that didn’t shrink under pressure—it grew. And now, every protocol he followed, every report he filed, tasted like ash.
