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Mine.

For a second, the lab disappeared around me.

I was back in the registration hall, sitting beneath white lights while strangers discussed my fertility as though I wasn’t in the room.

I remembered the Zunatorian official turning the screen toward me.

I remembered the percentage.

I remembered because the number had terrified me.

It had been high enough that three officials came in to verify it.

High enough that they started talking about the warrior before I had even met him.

High enough that I had spent days wondering whether a number could decide the rest of my life.

Then he died. Before there was a choice. Before there was a bond. Before anything.

And now his name was on my screen again.

I stepped closer, and my registration record opened fully. The warrior’s identity was correct. His death record was correct. But the compatibility result—I blinked, read it again, then leaned so close to the screen that the light hurt my eyes.

“That isn’t right.”

Sera’n had gone completely still beside me, and I barely noticed. The number on the screen was not the one I remembered—not rounded differently, not recalculated. Different. I knew the original result. I could still see it in my head.

“That isn’t my result.”

Sera’n said nothing. I turned toward him, and his face told me everything his mouth refused to. Just like that, the accession error stopped being a mistake, because somebody had changed my record—and Sera’n already knew enough to be afraid of it.

CHAPTER TWO

Talia

For several seconds, neither of us moved.

The lab hummed around us as though nothing had changed. Cooling units vibrated beneath the counters. Somewhere behind me, one of the automated processors released a soft chime. A sample tray rotated into its next position with a quiet metallic click.

Ordinary sounds.

That somehow made the look on Sera’n’s face worse.

I turned back to the screen and touched the compatibility record again, half expecting the number to change if I refreshed it.

It didn’t.

My original result had been higher.

Much higher.

High enough that I remembered the panic that had crawled through me when the official explained what it meant. Not a bond. Not a guarantee. But a compatibility strong enough that the warrior attached to the result had immediately become the center of every conversation about my future.

Now the archive showed something almost unremarkable.

I looked at Sera’n. “How does a compatibility result change?”

His gaze remained fixed on the screen, unmoving even as I said his name. “Sera’n.”