Page 60 of Zayrik

Zayrik rerouted auxiliary power, his movements synchronized with mine like we’d been flying together for years. “Boosting sensors. We’ll need them once we’re inside.”

“Nav, kill non-essentials once we’re deep. Run us dark.”

“Acknowledged.”

The nebula filled the viewport. Beautiful and lethal. I didn’t blink.

I flew straight into the storm, feeling Zayrik’s confidence in me pulse through the bond.

It should’ve terrified me, this new awareness.

Instead, it felt like power. Like strength I hadn’t known I needed—until now.

Another blast clipped the rear deflectors. The ship groaned.

My hands tightened on the controls.

Beside me, Zayrik’s body stiffened. I could feel the instinct in him to take over. To shield. To protect.

But he didn’t.

He trusted me.

“Sixty-seven percent,” Nav reported.

“Come on, Nyla. Hold together.” I whispered to the ship, but part of me was talking to whatever was building between Zayrik and me too.

The nebula swallowed us.

Visibility dropped to nothing. My hands moved by instinct, adjusting thrusters to keep us steady. But there was something else guiding me now. Something that felt like Zayrik’s presence in my mind. Focused and absolutely certain of my skills.

“Still on us,” Zayrik murmured, his voice low and close. The sound sent shivers down my spine that had nothing to do with fear.

“Let them follow.” Into the dark. Into my world. Where I’d always been most comfortable. Until him.

I dove deeper. No alarms. No chatter. Just the hum of systems and the pounding of my heart. And beneath it all, that new awareness of him. Of us. Of whatever had changed in that storage bay.

“Kestrel’s sensors won’t hold in here,” he said. His confidence in me wrapped around me like armor.

“Exactly.”

I threw the ship into a steep port dive, hugging the densest cloud layers. My body moved on instinct, but some part of me tracked him.

His nearness. His breath syncing with mine.

How we seemed to move as one, no words needed.

Then I hit the switch. “Nav, go dark. Now.”

Power drained. Lights dimmed. Engines fell silent.

The ship floated in dead space, adrift in shadow.

Just like us, suspended between what we were and what we were becoming.

Sweat trickled down my spine, but I didn’t move. Couldn’t. Every sense was focused on survival, on the pursuit, and on the man beside me who somehow felt more like home than any safe harbor ever had.

“They’ll think we broke apart in the cloud,” I whispered, the words barely a breath.

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