Page 42 of Enslak

The anger came first—hot and vicious, burning through my veins like acid. How dare they? How dare they look at this warrior, this male who'd survived horrors I couldn't even imagine, and decide he wasn't worth the effort? That his life was disposable because healing him would be too difficult?

My free hand curled into a fist against my thigh. I wanted to scream at them. Wanted to grab Charick by his perfectly pressed uniform and shake him until he understood that the male lying here wasn't just some broken soldier to be discarded. He was a person. He'd fought and bled and suffered, and he deserved better than this cold calculation of worth.

But the anger couldn't hold. It never could.

Grief rose up beneath it like a tide, drowning the rage in something deeper and more terrible. Because I knew this feeling. I'd sat before, holding another hand, feeling this same helpless fury at the universe's cruelty.

And I'd lost.

My vision blurred. I blinked hard, refusing to let the tears fall, but my throat was so tight I could barely breathe.

"I couldn't save him," I whispered to Enslak's still face. "I couldn't save Danny. I tried—God, I tried everything—but it wasn't enough. Nothing was enough."

His hand was warm in mine. Alive. His chest rose and fell with steady breaths.

"But you're not dying," I said, my voice breaking. "You're here. You're alive. And they want to take that away because it's too hard? Because they've decided you're too damaged?"

The anger surged again, tangling with the grief until I couldn't tell them apart.

"No," I said fiercely, leaning closer. "No. I won't let them do this. I don't know how yet, but I'll find a way. I promise you, Enslak. I'll find a way."

The door hissed open.

I turned, expecting Kavak or Charick, but it was George. He moved to the monitors, his expression carefully neutral as he checked the readouts.

"Have you tried everything?" I asked, my voice raw. "Is there really nothing else?"

George's hands stilled on the console. "I've tried everything within my capabilities, yes. The Garoot Healer can mend flesh and bone. We can repair physical trauma that would be fatal to most species." He turned to face me, genuine regret in his eyes. "But psychological damage like Enslak has suffered... that's different. The mind isn't tissue we can simply knit back together. The conditioning he endured, the trauma—it rewrote neural pathways, created patterns that reinforce themselves. It's beyond what healing can reach."

"But he's still in there," I said, gripping Enslak's hand tighter. "I know he is. When he looked at me earlier, George, I saw him. Just for a moment, but he was there."

Something flickered across George's face—a strange expression I couldn't read.

"What?" I pressed, standing. "What is it?"

George hesitated, his gaze shifting between me and the monitors. "His brain wave patterns," he said slowly. "They were different this last time."

My heart stuttered. "Different how?"

He pulled up a holographic display, showing jagged, chaotic lines. "This is what his patterns have looked like since the conditioning—erratic, fragmented." He zoomed in on a brief section where the lines smoothed out, became almost rhythmic. "For exactly 1.3 seconds, when he saw you, his patterns stabilized. That's not random neural firing. That's recognition."

"Then there's hope," I said.

"There's a theory about Vaktaire bonding," George said, already moving toward the medical supplies. "About mate connections that transcend normal psychological barriers. When a Vaktaire finds their mate, the connection operates on a level deeper than conscious thought. It can break through walls nothing else can reach."

I stared at him, my breath catching. "Wait—are you saying you think we're... mates?"

George paused, his hands hovering over the medical equipment. "I don't know," he admitted. "The science on Vaktaire bonding is still largely theoretical, especially when it comes to human-Vaktaire pairs. But the brain waves don't lie. Something about you reaches him in a way nothing else does."

He turned to face me fully, his expression serious. "It might be the mate bond. Or it might be what you both faced together on Merisalle—trauma can forge connections that run deeper than anything else. Shared survival, shared pain... those experiences create neural pathways that mirror bonding patterns."

"But you think I can reach him," I said, needing to hear it clearly.

"I think you might be the only one who can," George said quietly.

The door opened again. Binwee stepped inside, her expression fierce and determined.

Since coming aboard the Bardaga, we'd become friends—or something close to it. She'd found me in the corridors those first few days when I'd been lost, both literally and figuratively. Sat with me in the observation deck when the silence became too heavy. Brought me food when I forgot to eat, and never once asked questions I wasn't ready to answer.