Page 6 of Sixth
“You cannot.”
“Everything breaks.”
“Not this. You could cut flesh and burn skin. You could destroy your body. The pattern would remain. It is written into you now. Encoded.”
“Encoded,” she repeated, still uncertain what any of it meant. “You mean encoded into my DNA? My cells?”
“Affirmative.” His tone softened slightly. “The mark rewrites small pieces of what you are.”
She blinked at him, aflicker of unease tightening her stomach. “So, it’s alive?”
He hesitated before answering. “In a way. It links into your body’s electrical and neural systems, reads your pulse and hormones, and mirrors them through the paired mark. It is not alive in the sense you mean, but it behaves like adaptive tech—it learns from you and from me, adjusting to our biology so the connection holds.”
She frowned. “That still sounds like science fiction.”
“It is biology and energy both,” he said slowly, searching for words that might fit her world. “If you must have a human comparison, imagine it as a signal woven through your nervous system—always active, always responding. It tracks what you feel, mirrors it to me, and keeps the connection between us stable.”
Her throat tightened. “So, it’s a part of me now.”
“It is you,” he said, voice low but certain. “And it is us.”
She ran her thumb over the slight rise of the mark. The skin there felt warmer than the rest of her. “Aram knew what this was, didn’t he.” It wasn’t a question.
“Affirmative.He did not expect this. He wanted profit, not a bond. When the Valenmark formed, he lost his profit. Became angry, furious that something happened outside his domain.”
“So, now I’m broken merchandise, not worth anything to you?”
“You are still worth quite a lot. He would sell you as a weapon,” Apex said. “Because a true Valenmark unlocks more than heat. It unlocks access.”
That caught her attention. “To what?”
“My systems,” Apex said. “My reflexes. My ship. Certain Vettian locks respond to a bonded pair as a single presence. Only a perfect pairing triggers full access. There are buyers for that.”
Her stomach dropped. “You just described me as a key.”
“You are not a key,” he said. “You are a person. Unfortunately for you, Aram does not see people.”
Emmy turned away and braced her hands on the cool rim of the viewport. The black beyond wasn’t empty, but layered. It held faint colors she had never known space could hold, soft violets and greens that flowed like breath at the edges of her field of vision. Earth seemed very far away, her old life thin, like a shirt worn too often and left behind by accident.
She said quietly, “Back home, Irepaired drones and scraped for grants. Ilearned to hide anything that might stand out, anything that made me interesting. Interesting gets noticed. Noticed gets used.”
Apex stood a pace behind her. He didn’t crowd. “I am not Aram.”
She let out a breath. “I don’t know what you are.”
“Then ask.”
She turned back around slowly, weighing her words. Every question she could ask was dangerous, every answer he might give heavier than she was ready for. Her heart beat too fast, and the Valenmark thrummed in rhythm, reminding her that silence would only stretch the tension betweenthem.
She took a breath, choosing caution over impulse, but the question still came out softer than she meant, threaded with something almost like vulnerability. “What do you want from me, Apex?”
His stare held. “Truth. Consent. Survival.”
“Not obedience.”
“Not obedience.” The answer landed with power. “If you attempt to command a bonded mate, the mark rejects it. It does not recognize hierarchy. It is not made for domination or subjugation—it balances, merges. It exists so that two beings act in tandem, neither above the other.”
“Fuse,” she repeated, tasting the word. It made her think of solder and circuits, two metals flowing until neither could be separated without destroying both. “So your legend is real.”
