Page 105 of Thexan

“And you came here to tell me that before you acted on it.”

“Yes.”

That mattered. I knew it mattered. Some part of me even appreciated it, but it did not come close to softening the rest.

I stepped around the table slowly, keeping my hands free because I knew myself well enough to know I might otherwise start straightening things that didn’t need straightening just to keep from reaching for something solid.

“Do you understand why I’m angry?” I asked.

His gaze did not shift. “Because I considered removing myself from your life after accepting the bond between us.”

“That’s part of it.”

His expression tightened slightly, not confusion exactly, but the awareness that he had not reached the full answer.

“Because leaving would harm you.”

“That’s closer.”

I stopped a few feet in front of him, close enough that I could feel the bond between us, close enough that the part of me that loved him wanted to reach for him even while the rest of me wanted to shake him until that careful logic cracked wide enough for him to feel what he had almost done.

“You were deciding what safety meant for me,” I said. “That’s the part you keep circling around without touching. You looked at a danger neither of us can fully control, decided the cleanest way to reduce it was to remove yourself, and you almost called that protection.”

“I did not act.”

“No,” I said, my voice still quiet. “You didn’t. That is the only reason we are having this conversation instead of a very different one.”

The words landed. I saw it in the small change in his posture, the nearly imperceptible shift of weight that told me he had absorbed the seriousness of what I meant.

“I do not want to leave you,” he said.

The admission should have eased something in me. It did, but only at the edges.

“I know.”

“I want to remain.”

“I know that too.”

“Then clarify the conflict.”

The request was so very him that under other circumstances I might have smiled. Not now.

“The conflict is that wanting to stay doesn’t help me if you still believe leaving is yours to choose whenever fear convinces you it’s logical.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, not in anger, but in concentration.

“I identified risk.”

“Yes,” I said. “And risk is real. I’m not asking you to pretend it isn’t. I’m asking you to stop treating me like a protected asset you can move out of danger by moving yourself away from me.”

His jaw tightened, the only visible sign that the words had gone deeper than the rest.

“You are not an asset.”

“Then don’t make decisions about my life as if I am one.”

Silence settled between us, but it wasn’t empty or evasive. He was working through it; I could see that. Thexan did not defend himself quickly when the point mattered. He absorbed, sorted, aligned. The problem was that my heart was beating too hard for me to wait patiently while he assembled the emotional equivalent of a battle plan.