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Veyr caught the fist.

Twisted.

A wet, cracking sound split the air.

I flinched.

The male screamed, a raw, animal noise.

Veyr dropped him.

A fifth attacker came from the opposite side, his jawline pulsing with red-orange ŭre. Darev’s shout was a sharp crack in the air. I turned. The male was three steps from me. Veyr was still across the yard, blood darkening his sleeve.

Veyr moved. Not a run—a displacement of air. A blur of dark fabric and silver light. He struck the attacker from the side, driving him into the wall plating with a sound like dropped tools.

The male landed one hit—a hard, glancing blow to Veyr’s ribs. Veyr didn’t flinch. His hand came up, fingers rigid, ŭre flaring white-hot as he struck the soft hollow beneath the attacker’s jaw. A sharp, ozone-scented pop. The male’s eyes rolled back. He sagged, unconscious before he hit the ground.

Silence pooled in the yard. My hands trembled against my thighs. My knees had turned to water.

Veyr straightened slowly. Blood ran down his side, and a second line marked his upper arm, silver-white light still moving beneath his skin. He looked at me—and stopped.

Something in his face changed, and it had nothing to do with the attackers. It was me. I understood immediately. He expected fear. Not the general kind. Fear of him.

And I was afraid of him. That was the problem.

I had just watched him disable five Zunatorian males with violence so precise it was almost clinical. They were not weak. They were trained. I had seen that much. They moved with discipline, covered exits, tried to contain rather than overwhelm, their ŭre flaring with exertion the same as any other Zunatorian’s. Veyr had gone through them anyway—broken bone, burned nerves, disabled weapons, dropped males close to his own size without ever losing control.

There was no pretending that was normal. No pretending he wasn’t dangerous. My body knew it. Every instinct knew it.

But none of those instincts could ignore the other thing: every time he moved, he moved between them and me. Every violent choice had gone in one direction—away from me.

I looked at the blood on his side, dark against the gray fabric, and my fear changed shape. It stopped being about the attackers and started being about the way he stood there as if nothing had happened.

“Are you hurt?”

Veyr stared at me. “What?”

“You’re bleeding.”

His expression did something I couldn’t read—a flicker, gone before I could name it. “I am functional.”

I stepped closer. Veyr did not move. That worried me more than if he had—that he stood so still, so careful, like a male waiting for a door to close.

“Let me see.”

“Talia.”

“Let me see.”

He watched me a moment longer. Then, slowly, he lifted his arm away from his ribs.

The cut was longer than I expected, running along the lower edge of his axŭ. Shallow, probably. I hoped. Blood had soaked through the fabric in a ragged line.

I reached toward him, and he stiffened. I stopped with my hand still in the air. “Can I?”

The question came out quieter than I meant it to.

He looked at my hand, then at my face. A pause. “Yes.”