The first disappearance did not trigger an alarm.
That was the problem.
The logistics worker—third shift, bay seven—simply didn't clock in. No forced entry to his quarters. No anomalous energy readings. His access badge didn't ping anywhere it shouldn't have. His last message to a coworker was mundane enough to be forgettable: Running late. Coffee machine betrayed me.
By the time someone noticed the pattern, there were already three names on the list.
None of them important.
None of them high-profile.
None of them people the station's threat models were trained to protect.
Shadeclaw stood in a dim operations alcove, arms folded, eyes unfocused as streams of data slid past him. He wasn't reading the information so much as listening to it—feeling where the station's rhythm stuttered.
"Say it again," he murmured.
Mira repeated it softly. "All three share trace genetic markers. Dormant. Barely measurable. Golden Dragon lineage—thin, but consistent."
Shadeclaw exhaled through his nose. "Not random."
"No," Mira agreed. "Curated."
Elsewhere on the station, Mavryn Solthar was having the best morning of his life.
He hummed off-key as he walked through the hangar, helmet tucked under one arm, red hair sticking up in defiant angles no amount of grooming ever managed to tame. Mechanics shouted greetings. Someone lobbed a grease rag at his head. He caught it without breaking stride.
"Don't worry," he called back. "I'll crash after my first paycheck clears."
Laughter followed him as he climbed the ladder into the cockpit of his assigned Switchblade. The craft smelled like polished metal and recycled air—comforting, familiar, alive.
He ran his preflight checks with the relaxed confidence of someone who loved machines because they obeyed rules. Power levels stable. Cloak idle. Thrusters green.
Then the warning flickered.
Just for a heartbeat.
Atmospheric seal variance. Minor. Within tolerance.
Mavryn frowned. "That's odd."
He leaned forward, fingers dancing over the console, rerunning the diagnostic. Everything came back clean. The alert didn't repeat.
"Ghost in the wires," he muttered. "Figures."
He sealed the cockpit and initiated startup.
The air changed.
Not pressure—quality. Thin. Sharp. Wrong.
Mavryn's breath caught, lungs burning as something invisible constricted around him. The cockpit display dimmed, flickering as if light itself were being siphoned away.
"What—" He choked, slamming an override. "Control, this is Solthar—"
The channel cut to static.
The warmth in his chest flared violently, no longer gentle. Fire—not heat, but force—surged outward, rattling the cockpit. A panel burst free. Emergency systems screamed to life.
And somewhere in the shadows beneath the craft, a figure recoiled.
Shadeclaw arrived an instant later, shadows snapping tight around his form as he tore open the cockpit canopy with brutal precision.
"Breathe," he ordered.
Mavryn sucked in air, collapsing forward as the emergency oxygen flooded the cabin. His vision swam, spots of gold dancing at the edges.
"What—what happened?" he gasped.
Shadeclaw didn't answer.
He was staring at the floor beneath the Switchblade, where a smear of darkness evaporated like smoke in sunlight.
The attacker was gone.
No body.
No residue.
Just absence.
Medical cleared Mavryn within the hour. Mild hypoxia. Elevated stress response. No lasting damage.
Emotionally, he was shaken but defiant.
"So," he said, sitting on the medbay cot, helmet resting on his knees. "That's not normal, right?"
Danny arrived as the medic finished. He took in the scene—the pale edges of Mavryn's face, the way his hands trembled just slightly.
"No," Danny said quietly. "It's not."
Mavryn swallowed. "Did I mess up?"
"No," Danny replied firmly. "You survived."
Mavryn managed a crooked grin. "Good start, then."
Danny rested a hand on his shoulder, feeling the echo beneath the skin. Creation responded faintly, protective, almost… fond.
"You didn't do anything wrong," Danny said. "But you were targeted."
Mavryn blinked. "Why?"
Danny didn't answer immediately.
Because the truth was heavier than the question.
Across the void, Sareth Nevermore regarded the failure without irritation.
The report was brief. Clinical.
Subject survived. Reaction observed. Confirmation achieved.
Sareth folded his hands, expression serene.
"Good," he murmured. "The blood remembers."
He adjusted his projections. Refined the lists. Narrowed the window.
The wedding would provide the density he required.
Later, in a chamber shielded from observation and noise alike, Danny stood with Elysara and Jimmy before the Dragon Council.
The Dragons did not loom.
They occupied.
Space curved subtly around their forms, light bending to accommodate the sheer fact of them. Aurixal stood foremost, golden eyes calm. Vaelthysra watched with thinly veiled impatience. Kryndor lingered slightly back, interest flickering like embers behind polished obsidian composure.
Jimmy, for once, did not joke.
He folded his hands behind his back, posture straight, gaze steady.
"You wanted to speak about a gift," Jimmy said evenly. "Let's hear it."
Aurixal inclined his head. "We propose to create."
The word resonated.
"A planet," Aurixal continued. "New. Stable. Anchored near this station. It will house a permanent portal to the Dragon Realm."
Elysara's breath caught softly.
"A sanctuary," Aurixal said. "For Golden Dragon descendants. A place to live without hiding. A place to move between worlds without exile."
Vaelthysra's voice cut in. "It is not a utopia. It will require guardianship. Responsibility."
Kryndor smiled faintly. "And it will gather bloodlines in one place. Efficient."
Danny's jaw tightened.
"A target," he said.
Aurixal met his gaze. "Yes."
Silence followed.
Jimmy exhaled slowly. "You're proposing to build a lighthouse during a storm."
Aurixal nodded. "And to stand beside it."
Danny closed his eyes briefly, feeling creation stir—not in triumph, but in warning.
"And Bones?" Danny asked. "What happens when he whispers?"
Aurixal did not look away. "Then those who live there will choose whether to listen."
That answer frightened Danny more than any threat.
Choice was never safe.
But it was alive.
Outside the chamber, the station continued its careful breath. Somewhere, families packed. Somewhere, names vanished from rosters. Somewhere, Sareth finalized his calendar.
And Mavryn Solthar lay back on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, heart still pounding—not from fear, but from something else.
Something waking.
The wedding was no longer a ceremony.
It was a convergence of blood, choice, and consequence.
And the first drops of shadow had already begun to fall.
The shadows did not retreat after the meeting.
They adjusted.
Danny felt that immediately as he left the council chamber with Elysara and Jimmy. The station corridors were the same—same lighting, same hum, same hurried foot traffic—but the texture of the air had changed. Like a storm that hadn't arrived yet but had already decided where it would break.
Jimmy was the first to speak once they were out of range of Dragon hearing.
"A planet," he muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Of course they'd propose a planet. Subtle as a supernova."
Elysara's voice was thoughtful rather than impressed. "It's not generosity. It's absolution."
Jimmy glanced at her. "You caught that too."
Danny nodded. "They're trying to fix a mistake without admitting it was one."
Aurixal's fondness for him was real—Danny had no doubt of that. But fondness was not the same thing as accountability, and the Dragons still moved like beings who believed they were above consequence rather than subject to it.
"A sanctuary can become a trap," Danny said quietly.
Jimmy stopped walking and turned to face him fully. "It can. But it can also become a rally point. Something Bones can't erase quietly."
Danny met his gaze. "Which is exactly why Sareth will try to make an example of it."
Jimmy's jaw tightened. "Already is."
They resumed walking.
Security briefings escalated in subtle ways. Patrol routes overlapped more often. Plainclothes agents appeared where there had been none before. Shadeclaw's presence became more noticeable—not because he wanted it to be, but because absence itself was now suspicious.
The disappearances continued.
Another name. Then two more.
No alarms. No violence. Just… gaps.
Families reported missing loved ones who had gone to get food, to attend an orientation, to watch the stars from a viewport and never returned. Station records showed nothing unusual. Transit logs ended mid-line.
Danny stood with Shadeclaw in a quiet observation bay reviewing the list.
"They're being taken," Danny said.
Shadeclaw nodded. "Yes."
"Not killed."
"No."
That made it worse.
Sareth wanted them alive long enough to matter.
Mavryn didn't know any of this.
Not yet.
He was back in the hangar two cycles later, jaw bruised from biting down too hard during the hypoxia incident, but otherwise intact. He joked his way through maintenance checks, accepting ribbing from mechanics who treated the whole thing like a rite of passage.
"Congratulations," one of them said. "You survived your first assassination attempt."
Mavryn laughed. "Yeah, yeah. Next one I'll bring snacks."
But when he was alone in the cockpit again, prepping for a supervised test flight, his hands lingered on the controls longer than necessary.
He could still feel it.
That surge.
Not fear.
Recognition.
When he closed his eyes, he saw light—not blinding, not consuming—but structured. Lines of force intersecting, folding into something that wanted to build.
He shook his head, breath unsteady. "I'm really going to need someone to explain this to me eventually."
Across the station, Elysara met with Mira and the Wolf Queen again, but the mood was different now. The earlier warmth had been replaced by vigilance.
"They're disappearing," Mira said quietly. "The ones like us. The diluted ones."
Elysara's fingers curled slightly around her teacup. "Sareth."
"Yes."
The Wolf Queen's ears flattened. "Then he will strike where it hurts most."
"At the wedding," Elysara said.
The Wolf Queen nodded. "Because he wants witnesses."
High above, the Dragon Council debated containment strategies that danced carefully around the word guilt. Vaelthysra argued for limiting attendance. Kryndor suggested redirecting arrivals to the new planet once it was formed.
Aurixal listened—and said nothing.
He was watching Danny through the station's layers, feeling something deeply uncomfortable stir.
Regret.
Not for leaving.
But for not trusting what they left behind to choose correctly without them.
Far beyond all of this, Sareth Nevermore stood before a lattice of names and locations, hollow eyes bright with certainty.
"Soon," he whispered.
The wedding would not be stopped.
It would be answered.
And Danny—feeling the tightening weave of reality, the weight of choices converging—made a quiet decision of his own.
He would not let this be endured.
If Sareth wanted meaning…
Danny would make him choke on it.
The decision settled into Danny not like a spark, but like stone.
Heavy. Anchoring. Unavoidable.
He didn't announce it. He didn't call a meeting or issue a directive. He simply began to move differently. The kind of shift only people who had lived around him long enough could notice—the way his pauses shortened, the way his gaze lingered less on what might happen and more on what would.
Elysara felt it first.
She found him in one of the quieter transit spines, standing before a holographic projection of the station layered with movement vectors and faint probability curves. He wasn't touching the controls. He didn't need to.
Creation hummed around him, subtle but unmistakable, responding to intent rather than command.
"You're not waiting anymore," she said.
Danny didn't look away. "No."
She stepped closer, studying the display. "You know that once you stop waiting, everything accelerates."
"Yes."
"And that acceleration won't be kind."
He finally turned to her then, eyes steady. "Neither is hesitation."
Elysara searched his face, then nodded once. "Good."
She didn't ask him to slow down.
She had never loved him for caution.
Danny began quietly reinforcing the people, not the perimeter.
He met with Shadeclaw and Mira first, then Swift and Jake, then the Wolf King—never all at once, never formally. He spoke plainly. No speeches. No reassurance he didn't believe himself.
"This isn't about stopping the wedding," he told them. "It's about refusing to let it be used."
Shadeclaw inclined his head. "Then we treat every shadow as hostile."
"No," Danny corrected. "We treat every shadow as intentional."
That reframing mattered.
They began mapping disappearances not by location, but by meaning. Who vanished after speaking to whom. Which routes passed through which shared spaces. Where Golden Dragon bloodlines intersected with quiet, unnoticed labor.
Patterns emerged.
Not clusters.
Funnels.
Mavryn was not supposed to be part of that analysis.
But he was.
Not by design—by gravity.
Danny found himself watching the young pilot during a routine flight evaluation, standing behind observation glass with Jimmy and a handful of instructors. Mavryn flew like someone who trusted space to catch him. Not reckless. Just… unafraid.
"Good instincts," Jimmy murmured. "Terrible impulse control."
Danny smiled faintly. "He doesn't know what he is."
Jimmy snorted. "Welcome to the club."
The flight ended cleanly. Applause scattered. Mavryn exited the craft grinning, flushed with adrenaline, unaware that three separate security overlays tracked him as a potential target.
Danny turned away before Mavryn could see him watching.
Not yet.
Not until Danny could explain why.
The Dragon Council remained distant—physically present, philosophically hovering.
Aurixal requested no further meetings. He observed. Vaelthysra bristled at the disorder of the station, muttering often about inefficiency and dilution. Kryndor watched everything with patient interest, saying very little, storing everything.
The proposed planet remained a theory—calculations unfolding in nested simulations. It could be done. That much was clear. Creation at that scale was within their capability.
The question was not how.
It was when.
And whether it would be sanctuary or bait.
Sareth Nevermore finalized his preparations without urgency.
The failed attempt on Mavryn had given him exactly what he needed: confirmation that the bloodline responded. That creation still stirred even when buried beneath generations of dilution.
He adjusted nothing about the wedding itself.
No threats.
No warnings.
No visible escalation.
Instead, he refined his message.
The disappearances stopped.
Abruptly.
That frightened Danny more than their continuation.
Shadeclaw reported it with unease etched deep. "They've gone quiet."
Danny nodded slowly. "That means the net is set."
Somewhere deep within B.U.D.D.I.E.S. HQ, a message pinged across an internal channel—low priority, easy to miss.
Arrival confirmation updated.
The guest list expanded.
Golden Dragon descendants—some aware, some not—were converging on the station. Drawn by curiosity. By kinship. By something they couldn't name.
By hope.
Danny stood once more on the ceremonial platform as the station lights dimmed into artificial night cycle. Stars burned bright beyond the shielding. The Dragons hovered like silent gods.
Elysara joined him, fingers threading through his.
"They're coming," she said.
"Yes," Danny replied.
"And so is he."
Danny closed his eyes briefly, feeling creation coil tighter—not flaring, not raging, but ready.
"Let him," Danny said.
He opened his eyes, gaze steady on the vastness beyond.
"For once," he added quietly, "we won't just survive the lesson."
The universe did not answer.
It did not need to.
Everything was in motion now.
And the wedding—still unbroken, still unbloodied—had become the most dangerous thing in existence.
Not because of what it celebrated.
But because of what it dared to mean.
The meaning spread faster than any warning ever could.
It slipped into conversations that pretended to be about logistics and arrival times. It settled into the way people packed bags they didn't expect to unpack again, not out of fear, but because something in them whispered that this moment would divide their lives into before and after. It threaded itself into the station's rhythm until even the artificial gravity felt subtly more deliberate, as though the structure itself understood it was about to be tested.
Danny stopped pretending this was a defensive phase.
He walked the station—not in secrecy, not in armor—but openly. He spoke to people who would never be on any official briefing: maintenance crews, junior pilots, refugee coordinators, cafeteria workers. He didn't tell them to be brave. He didn't warn them. He simply listened. Let them talk about what they hoped the wedding meant. Let them argue about whether Dragons should be trusted. Let them admit they were afraid without offering comfort he couldn't guarantee.
Creation, he had learned, didn't need reassurance.
It needed honesty.
Jimmy watched him from afar, leaning against a console with a mug that had gone cold an hour ago. "You're making it worse," he said quietly when Danny finally stopped nearby.
Danny didn't disagree. "I'm making it real."
Jimmy sighed. "You know I'll back you."
"I know."
"But if this goes wrong—"
"It will," Danny said calmly.
Jimmy stared at him. "That's not reassuring."
"It's accurate."
The Dragon Council observed these movements with growing discomfort.
Vaelthysra finally voiced it, her tone sharp. "He is dismantling the perimeter by proximity. Every interaction increases variables."
Aurixal responded without heat. "Every interaction increases commitment."
"That is not a metric," Vaelthysra snapped.
Aurixal's gaze softened. "It is the only one that matters when inevitability is challenged."
Kryndor watched Danny again, eyes narrowing slightly—not with disdain, but calculation. A wedding. A planet. A sanctuary. A gathering of diluted bloodlines.
So many threads.
So many points of leverage.
He said nothing.
Below them, Mavryn finished another training run, hands steady this time despite the lingering echo of the attack. He laughed with his instructor, accepted a datapad, and nearly collided with Danny rounding a corner.
"Oh—sorry, sir," Mavryn blurted, scrambling back a step.
Danny paused, studying him—not as a symbol, not as a descendant, but as a person who had nearly died without understanding why.
"What's your name?" Danny asked.
Mavryn straightened instinctively. "Mavryn Solthar. Pilot. New."
Danny nodded. "You fly well."
Mavryn grinned, unable to help himself. "Thanks. Still alive, so I figure I'm doing something right."
Danny held his gaze a moment longer than necessary. "If anything feels wrong again—anything at all—you come to me or Shadeclaw immediately."
Mavryn blinked. "Uh… yes, sir?"
Danny's voice softened. "Not as an order. As advice."
Mavryn nodded slowly. "Got it."
As Danny walked away, Mavryn felt the warmth in his chest settle into something steadier—less confused, more present.
He didn't know why that mattered.
He just knew it did.
Elsewhere, Sareth Nevermore received confirmation that the station's posture had changed. Increased movement. Increased interaction. Increased faith.
He smiled thinly.
"They are doing my work for me," he murmured.
He did not advance the timetable.
He let anticipation ripen.
The last thing he wanted was panic.
He wanted belief.
The Dragon Council's gift proposal circulated quietly now, spoken of in whispers and careful speculation. A planet born of pure creation. A place where Dragon descendants could live without hiding. A bridge to a realm sealed for millennia.
Hope, given form.
Danny stood beneath the stars again that cycle, Elysara at his side, feeling the convergence tighten to a near-painful focus.
"Do you ever wish," Elysara asked softly, "that this could just be… ours?"
Danny closed his eyes briefly. "Sometimes."
She leaned into him. "Me too."
They stood together, unarmored, unhidden.
Across the station, across the void, across the multiverse, forces aligned not toward battle—but toward meaning.
And meaning, Danny knew, was the one thing destruction could never fully predict.
The chapter did not end with an explosion.
It ended with certainty.
The kind that came right before everything changed.
The certainty settled into its final shape the moment the Dragons moved.
Not forward.
Not closer.
They descended.
It was subtle—so subtle most of the station didn't register it consciously—but the relative orientation of their formation shifted. Not orbiting. Not hovering. Aligning. The kind of alignment that suggested intent rather than observation.
Every long-range sensor recalibrated itself twice before accepting the data.
Jimmy felt it before any alert crossed his desk. He straightened slowly, jaw setting, and keyed a secure channel.
"They've changed posture," he said quietly.
Danny felt it too. Creation tightened—not alarmed, not threatened, but acknowledging. Like a craftsman setting down tools and stepping back to look at the work so far.
Elysara squeezed his hand. "They're committing."
"Yes," Danny replied. "To being seen."
That mattered more than any planet they could build.
The Dragon Council requested a formal audience.
Not a command summons.
A request.
It was the first concession they had made to the multiverse since their withdrawal.
The chamber chosen was neither a throne room nor a tactical hall, but a wide circular forum normally used for interspecies arbitration. No elevation. No central seat. Just a ring—everyone equally visible, equally accountable.
Jimmy insisted on attending.
"I'm not letting you walk into six-thousand-year-old family therapy without a witness," he muttered, grabbing his datapad.
Danny almost smiled.
The Dragons manifested within the chamber without spectacle. No tearing of space. No overwhelming flare of power. They simply arrived, scales catching ambient light, forms vast yet restrained.
Aurixal inclined his head first—to Danny, to Elysara, and then, notably, to Jimmy.
"You govern well," Aurixal said calmly.
Jimmy blinked. "I… thank you?"
Vaelthysra did not bother with pleasantries. "We will not stay long."
Kryndor's eyes moved constantly, cataloging faces, reactions, microexpressions.
Aurixal spoke again. "The proposal stands. A planet of creation. A bridge. A sanctuary."
Danny met his gaze. "And a target."
Aurixal nodded once. "Yes."
Silence stretched—not tense, but heavy with truth.
Elysara stepped forward slightly. "You are offering a future," she said. "But futures require trust. You left before."
Vaelthysra bristled. "We withdrew to preserve—"
"To avoid responsibility," Danny said, not harshly. Just honestly.
The words hung in the air like a blade set gently on a table.
Aurixal did not contradict him.
"We believed," Aurixal said slowly, "that creation without destruction was possible. That if we removed ourselves, the universe would find balance."
Jimmy folded his arms. "And instead it found Bones."
Kryndor smiled faintly. "And others like him."
Aurixal's voice softened. "Yes."
Danny felt something shift then—not in the Dragons, but in himself. The frustration that had burned quietly since Chapter 198 did not flare.
It cooled.
"Then don't offer us perfection," Danny said. "Offer us presence."
Aurixal's eyes brightened—just slightly. "That is… acceptable."
Vaelthysra looked away, displeased but silent.
Kryndor's interest sharpened.
The planet would be created.
But not immediately.
Not as a gift bestowed from above.
As a project, shared with B.U.D.D.I.E.S., with the Wolves, with Dragon descendants themselves. A place that would grow—not appear complete.
That condition changed everything.
Outside the chamber, Shadeclaw received confirmation of a second failed attempt—this one aborted before execution. The assassin never entered the station. Never crossed the threshold.
Fear had finally reached Sareth's operatives.
That, too, was data.
Mavryn felt the shift without knowing why. He stood at a viewport watching the Dragons, heart steady now, warmth settled like a quiet promise rather than a question.
He didn't kneel this time.
He stood.
And somewhere far from the station, Sareth Nevermore closed his eyes as the final pieces locked into place.
"They chose visibility," he whispered. "Good."
The disappearances would not resume yet.
Not until belief was absolute.
Not until the wedding was close enough to taste.
Chapter 203 did not end with blood.
It ended with lines drawn—not on maps, but in meaning.
Creation had stopped bracing.
It was standing.
And destruction had taken note.
The standing changed the way everything felt.
It wasn't defiance anymore. It wasn't even resistance. It was posture—the difference between a thing that endures a storm and a thing that decides where to plant its feet before the wind arrives.
After the council adjourned, the Dragons did not vanish back into their distant formation. They remained—visible, present, unmistakably there. Not hovering as judges. Not looming as threats. Simply existing in shared space with a universe that had learned how to argue without them.
That choice rippled.
Traffic controllers adjusted routes without being asked. Diplomats stopped drafting apologies they hadn't sent yet. A few old factions that had gone quiet after the Dragons' withdrawal quietly reopened channels they had abandoned centuries ago.
Presence changed behavior.
Danny walked the long way back from the chamber, Elysara beside him, Jimmy trailing a half-step behind with the distracted focus of someone already rewriting contingency trees in his head.
"You realize," Jimmy said eventually, "that you just turned a wedding into a constitutional crisis."
Danny didn't slow. "I turned it into a conversation."
Jimmy huffed. "Same thing, different century."
Elysara smiled faintly. "He means it's alive."
Jimmy glanced at her, then sighed. "Yeah. I do."
They passed through a concourse where arrivals were being processed—faces unfamiliar, accents layered, species and cultures colliding in low, uncertain chatter. Some were here for the ceremony. Some for the rumor of sanctuary. Some simply because the multiverse had begun to whisper that something important was happening near B.U.D.D.I.E.S. HQ.
Danny felt creation respond to that gathering—not swelling, not flaring. Just knitting. Threads finding other threads.
Not a blaze.
A fabric.
Mavryn crossed the concourse at the same time, helmet tucked under his arm, laughter half-caught in his throat as he noticed the Dragons again through the glass. He didn't stop this time. He didn't kneel. He didn't stare.
He kept walking.
That felt right.
Later, Shadeclaw stood alone in a narrow maintenance passage where the station's hum was louder than conversation. He replayed fragments of intercepted comms, aborted approaches, ghost signatures that never quite resolved into targets.
"They're waiting," he murmured.
Mira joined him, shadows pooling gently at her feet. "For what?"
"For certainty," Shadeclaw replied. "Sareth doesn't strike chaos. He strikes belief."
Mira looked toward the distant glow of the ceremonial platform. "Then belief is exactly what he's about to get."
Shadeclaw's jaw tightened. "Yes."
Across the void, Sareth Nevermore opened his eyes and reviewed the updated feeds.
The Dragons were present.
The planet proposal had shifted from decree to collaboration.
The station had not panicked.
Most importantly—Danny had chosen visibility over concealment.
Sareth's lips curved into a thin, satisfied smile.
"Good," he whispered. "Now they can all see."
He sent no new orders. He did not accelerate. The worst mistakes were made by those who rushed to meet moments that were already moving toward them.
He would let the wedding come to him.
Back at the observation ring, Danny and Elysara stood together once more, the stars spread wide and sharp beyond the shield. The Dragons hovered closer now—not intruding, just close enough that their presence could not be ignored.
"Do you feel it?" Elysara asked quietly.
"Yes," Danny replied.
"The line?"
He nodded. "It's drawn."
She leaned into him, braid brushing his arm. "Then we walk it together."
Danny wrapped an arm around her, feeling the steady certainty of her heartbeat against his side. Creation settled—not triumphant, not fearful. Ready.
Somewhere behind them, the station breathed. Somewhere beyond them, the Dragons watched. Somewhere farther still, Sareth waited with practiced patience.