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“You are not expendable.”

“Neither are they.”

His frustration had nowhere clean to go. “You make survival sound like arithmetic.”

“It is arithmetic when resources are finite. The moral part is refusing to hide who pays the remainder.”

He looked toward the sealed door. “On my world, command meant carrying that remainder.”

“Here it sometimes means letting other people see it.”

The quarantine shelter offered no place to retreat without making retreat obvious. Dreven’s jaw tightened before he sat again, farther from her than before. A meal hatch opened near the floor. Lina pushed through two bowls of root mash, dried meat, and a folded square of sweet fungus bread usually reserved for children.

A note had been pressed into the bread: THANK YOU FOR LETTING US VOTE. There was no name. Kesta read it twice, then broke the bread in half and handed one piece to Dreven.

“They may still vote against us next time,” he said.

“That is what makes the thanks real.”

They ate on opposite pallets. The domestic ordinariness unsettled Kesta more than danger. She knew how to function beside wounded soldiers and hostile commanders. She did not know what to do with a powerful alien male who peeled the bitter outer layer from his ration root and silently placed the softer center in her bowl because he had noticed she disliked the taste.

“You cannot bribe me with root,” she said.

“I was not bribing you.”

“That makes it worse.”

A rare smile touched one corner of his mouth. The sight created a low, physical pull beneath her ribs. The sixth scan showed no contamination. It did show the band synchronizing with Dreven’s implant rhythm whenever their heart rates rose at the same time. Tavi read the result through the speaker and swore.

“Could the system be reading emotional response?” Kesta asked.

“It reads electrical and hormonal changes. Emotion is the story bodies tell about those changes.”

Dreven said, “Can it create them?”

“I don’t know.”

That uncertainty entered the room and stayed. Kesta thought of attraction before the band had first flashed: Dreven carrying an injured child, Dreven allowing Keth to challenge him, Dreven standing outside the infirmary because entering without permission would have frightened her. Those memories felt like hers. The empire’s greatest cruelty might not be manufacturing desire. It might be making every real desire impossible to trust.

Hours later, the shelter cooled. One thermal line had failed when Tavi cut the panel power. Kesta wrapped herself in a rough blanket. Dreven offered the second without moving closer.

“You are cold,” he said.

“I’m aware.”

“Kharovians conserve heat through contact.”

“That sounded almost clinical.”

“It was intended to.”

She studied him across the distance. “You may sit beside me. No holding me in place.” He crossed the room and lowered himself onto the pallet, leaving space between them. Heat rolled from him immediately. Kesta shifted closer. His tail curled tightly around his own ankle.

“You can touch my shoulder,” she said.

His hand settled there with extraordinary care. The contact eased the cold and created a different kind of danger. Kesta rested against him. Beneath her cheek, his heart beat too fast for a male pretending calm.

“Does this feel engineered?” she asked.