Dreams had never scared Jackie.

She actually quite liked sleeping. The colorful, vivid, bright dreams she usually saw had always been fun for her. Unlike people who struggled to fall asleep or who had nightmares, Jackie was used to getting a good night's sleep.

No longer. Lately, her dreams had been darker and filled with ominous signs that followed her long into the day. The terrible clock of her life that kept ticking so fast all of a sudden didn't even leave her be in her sleep.

This was the worst one yet.

The darkness enveloped her completely. Jackie had no idea where she was or even whether she was. She had no body and no voice in the endless void. It felt like she couldn't move, like she was paralyzed, but then it occurred to Jackie that perhaps there simply wasn't any "her" anymore.

She began to suspect she was dead.

Out of the darkness, voices drifted to her. There was a bright light somewhere above her, but Jackie couldn't reach it. She got the sense that she wasn't alone, but that wasn't as comforting as it should have been since she couldn't see or hear them properly.

Then another voice joined, deep and powerful and hers.

Jackie held on to that voice like it was the only lifeline she had left. Her mind dangled in the darkness, trying to focus on that voice or slip away into nothingness.

It seemed to go on for an eternity, at least. The terror of never getting out of there overwhelmed Jackie. She tried to tell her that she was in the shock that Dr. Tom had described, but it wasn't helping.

Centuries seemed to have passed before she became aware of something again. When she moved, Jackie could sense a warm, soft surface under her, like she was in a comfortable bed.

Am I sleeping?

That gave Jackie hope, but it also terrified her. Now it felt like she was sleep-paralyzed. She was still alive, just unable to contact the outside world. With all her strength, Jackie tried to move, to wake up, to shake herself awake. Even if she was still on the raider ship, it was better than the bleak, starless nothingness she was in right now.

There was someone with her, Jackie was suddenly certain of that. And she thought she knew who it was, too. Kol-Eresh's image appeared before her eyes, cloudy and distorted somehow.

She realized her eyes were open.

Jackie burst out of her nightmarish dream like a bolt of lightning, sitting up so fast it made her dizzy. She almost shot out of the bed, but the harbinger caught her before she could fall.

"Jackie," Kol-Eresh said quietly, his voice surprisingly soft.

She couldn't reply. Jackie's mouth was open in a hopeless, desperate scream but no sound came out. For a second she thought she'd brought the silence with her from the dream, but then her voice cracked and broken, horrified sobs spilled from her lips. Bitter tears were running down her cheeks as she gasped for air, clinging to the harbinger's big, firm body.

It felt so wrong, so pathetic to be that vulnerable in front of the man who'd kidnapped her from her home planet. Yet there, absolutely alone gods knew how far from her true home and all the people who Jackie had left behind long before the raid ships arrived, Kol-Eresh had one thing going for him.

He was there.

He was there, solid and strong like some avatar of hope, holding her at the moment when Jackie thought she was close to losing her mind. The powerful arms wrapped gently around her shoulders were not tight, but the feeling she got from them was being as safe as if gods themselves had finally decided to start fighting for her.

There was no helping it, no other safe haven to turn to. And in Jackie's tortured mind, she couldn't shake the nagging doubt that it was actually him that she wanted by her side, despite all reason or logic.

No Terran had ever truly helped. The comfort they provided was fleeting, the words mixed with grief as if she was gone already.

"Jackie," Kol-Eresh repeated and the emotion in his voice finally pierced the haze of her sorrow.

In a galaxy where everything was mortal and flimsy, she had happened upon the one man who didn't let that intimidate him.

She tried to answer this time, but the words refused to come. Tied up in her throat, Jackie was left with priority one, which was breathing.

"Light," she finally managed to whisper. "I don't – don't want to be in the dark."

Kol-Eresh never let go of her as he made some strange gesture with his hand toward the panel on the wall. At once, the motion detector begun brightening up the room. Not in that hollow medical bay kind of way.

The harbinger had summoned the morning. From panels all over the room, artificial sunlight seeped in, bathing her in the warmth and sense of hope that every morning brought.

Jackie took deep breaths, trying to calm her nerves. If she was alive, she wanted to stay that way. Now it seemed she had to stay awake for the entirety of what remained to her as well, because there was no way she was falling asleep after that.

"What do you remember?" Kol-Eresh asked, slowly petting her hair as Jackie slumped against his strong body.

She was thankful that the harbinger was out of his sturdy, hard armor. She could feel his heartbeat through the shirt he was wearing, felt the warmth of his body. All signs that she was still there, still kicking.

"I don't want to die," Jackie whispered.

Even saying those words out loud made her cling to the harbinger harder, pulling herself against him as if he really possessed the power to hold her there with sheer stubbornness alone.

"I'm not going to let you die," Kol-Eresh replied. "What happened, Jackie?"

She barely recalled anything before the darkness.

"I was running," she said quietly. "Running is good, it helps. Then I – I don't know."

She couldn't bring herself to say I thought I was lost.

Kol-Eresh made her look at him. The harbinger softly lifted up her chin and forced her to meet his burning gaze. The breadth of emotion and concern in his hazel eyes was enough to make Jackie listen.

"Listen to me," the harbinger said. "I have no idea what you experienced. Even my healers aren't entirely sure what's going on. All I saw was you crying out in your sleep while I held you, hoping that you would come back to me.

"Now you have and I need you to believe me. I will not let you die, not before your time. Do you understand me?"

"You can't say that," Jackie pleaded, tears still running down her face. "Don't do this. Back home, when people were initially trying to make me feel better, they said the same thing. I won't let you go. I'll find a way. There must be a cure. It just made everything so much worse.

“That's why you found me alone up in the mountains. I couldn't take it anymore. Not from them and not from you."

"I am nothing like them," Kol-Eresh said, his voice firm. "I am a Nayanor. We fight to the end for our fateds. There are always ways to combat an enemy that at first seems unbeatable. If the first idea my healers had doesn't work, I'll find another."

Jackie barely listened after "healer" and "first idea". Her throat closed up again and she barely managed to force words over her lips.

"What do you mean by first idea?" she asked, her voice shaking like it hadn't since she was just a little girl.

"I mean I know what it is you have," Kol-Eresh said. "My lead healer Forack found out from one of the females who were taken with you. She told us the name, the symptoms, your willingness to be left alone with it."

Just for a moment, Jackie's humor rose from the ashes.

"And it didn't occur to you to leave me alone?" she asked. "That's very Nayanor of you."

"Never," Kol-Eresh swore and the seriousness in his voice made the smile disappear from Jackie's lips. "It is not in my nature to give up. The female gave us the initial answers and now it's up to me to save you."

"How?" Jackie asked, laughing hopelessly, the tears burning her ears. "The entire Galactic Union hasn't found a cure. Palians are the smartest species ever to walk the stars and the best they've achieved so far is to control it, to minimize the pain when it gets bad. How do you expect to compete with them? It's just so new..."

She trailed off again, the sorrow washing over her. The monster of despair that lurked behind her touched its clawed hand against her shoulder, wanting to pull her into the darkness she feared so much.

"With the diadon," Kol-Eresh replied.

Jackie's head snapped up.

"You said they couldn't be fitted to Terrans," she protested, but after all those times of assuring herself that she was okay, that she'd made her peace, hope flared back to life so very fast.

The harbinger hesitated for a moment.

"That's a half-lie," he said. "We tell the females that so they don't get their hopes up, among several other things, but that is not important right now. All we do is to ensure you don't force our hand when things get bad."

"What does that even mean?" Jackie asked, her voice a broken whisper. "Are you saying it's possible?"

"Possible is exactly what it is," Kol-Eresh said.

He sat a little back so Jackie could see him properly, but he didn't let go of her hand, wrapped safely into his.

"The diadon is a very old mechanical device," the harbinger began. "By that I mean the schematic is old, of course. We can produce them ourselves, but the exact workings are a secret after their creators had a sort of... disagreement with the rest of us."

"What kind of a disagreement?"

"The kind where they viewed life as currency that could be easily spent," Kol-Eresh replied.

Jackie couldn't catch the words from her tongue fast enough.

"That is an interesting observation coming from a Nayanor harbinger," she said seriously. "I have heard stories about what you do to men who stand in your way during the raids. I saw the Ellora Resort burn when you didn't have to do that. And you told me yourself that Nayanors quarrel a lot between themselves."

"All true," Kol-Eresh said and there was an ominous glint in his dark eyes for a second that scared Jackie a little before he went on. "But all that is war, battle, survival. Those are natural parts of life."

"Of a Nayanor life," Jackie remarked. "Some species manage to live while others do as well quite fine."

Kol-Eresh gave her a hard look.

"I am a Nayanor," he repeated, telling Jackie that that argument was finished. "This is the life we were born for, the life we lead. All females who are bonded eventually try to turn their fateds against the ways of my people. It never works. You would not be the first to try and fail."

Jackie gave him a small nod, prompting the harbinger to continue.

"The Eternals, however," Kol-Eresh said, "are something else. When I kill a man, he's standing right in front of me and he's armed. I didn't burn your males inside that resort if that's what you're imagining. The Eternals would have had no problem with that if they imagined it would help them along in one of their experiments.

"There is a world of difference between being able – and willing – to kill an entire battlefield of enemies, and thinking genocide is a natural part of life that is a just price to pay for advancement of some technology no one ever needs."

"I understand," Jackie said. "Don't expect me to approve of the first part either, but I can tell the difference, yes. So what are they, these Eternals?"

She was slowly starting to calm down. The conversation helped, but the hope that the harbinger's words had instilled in her did most of the work.

"Ancient Nayanors," Kol-Eresh said, a heavy growl distorting his deep voice. "From a time when life on Luminos was very hard."

"Very hard," Jackie repeated, disbelief plain in her voice.

Kol-Eresh snorted.

"Harder," he specified. "The Eternals had to deal with an age where the fortresses were not habitable yet. Perhaps they weren't even built. We are not sure these days. The men we are dealing with had lived for ages when they'd been driven out. Things like that create a lot of rumors.

“Some say they built the fortresses. Some say they created the long night, instead. That the storm is the child of some failed attempt to control the planet's weather. It might all be true.

"What we know for sure is that they created the diadons."

Jackie tried not to focus on that. Nothing was as elusive, as addictive and painful as hope.

"The minerals that are found deep in the crust of Luminos have healing qualities," Kol-Eresh said. "You know that much already. I have no idea how they managed to harness that, but they did. From there on, every warrior is given the diadon when they reach an age where they might survive the implant."

"Some die?" Jackie asked. "Even Nayanors die from it?"

"The weak ones, yes," Kol-Eresh said. "You don't need to concern yourself with those. Any Nayanor who can't take that is not prepared for life on Luminos. It's better like that."

"That's harsh," Jackie said.

"It's not," the harbinger replied. "Life is not worth living if you can't do it to the fullest."

His words hurt almost like a physical blow. Jackie didn't say anything, wondering what he thought of her then, riddled with the illness that was killing her.

Oh, right. I'm not a Nayanor.

Kol-Eresh seemed to read her mind, because in the next second, he'd pulled her into his arms.

"Living to the fullest means being able to protect our fateds," he said. "It means having the strength to keep you safe. And I will do exactly that. The diadons can be fitted for Terrans. It's dangerous and complicated, but I will not lose you.

"I don't know what you saw in your dreams, but I promise that I will not let it get you."

It was too much for her. Jackie had tried her very best to resist the invisible cord that pulled her unrelentingly toward the harbinger. Every word out of his mouth at once drove her mad and made her ache for him. The loneliness was too much to combat, but it was so much more. Tiredness had settled into her bones.

Jackie was so very tired of living in fear, without a ray of hope. Of telling herself that hope was a poison she shouldn't voluntarily drink.

She buried her face against her fated's chest, letting herself be cradled into the tight embrace. Jackie could imagine Kol-Eresh's strength flowing into her, enveloping her in a protective aura.

For the first time since she heard the news, Jackie believed there was a chance it was going to be okay.