“I’ll be fine.”

Valdus’s frown didn’t lighten.

Ava shifted her weight, the echoes of their earlier raw words heavy in the air. “You’ve left Griffin, Bain, Darvish, and Barrett, as well as the rest of the team to guard me. We’ll be fine,” she urged. “It’s you I’m worried about. You should take more men.”

He tightened his harness strap, muscles bunching. “Ryker and I can move faster and more discreetly if it’s just the two of us. It will mean returning with the ore sooner.”

Which was definitely a good plan.

“I’ll start injecting the others.” She couldn’t quite look at him. Too much left unsaid. Too much she wasn’t sure how to answer. But she wasn’t about to hold the life of his teammates hostage over their disagreement.

She’d used the weakened version on Ryker and he’d done just fine. A moderate reaction, but nothing as extreme as Valdus’s. A substantial improvement. Especially since a quick test had indicated that the now eyebrowless Ryker was as immune to the droid’s self-destruction as his commander.

Since then, everyone clamored for their turn. Unfortunately, she had enough for most of the crew, but not all. Which was why Valdus and Ryker were headed back to the sabanther caves.

“I should have most of them inoculated by the time you return.” Time was ticking down. Time for them. Time for her as well.

Is the heat so bad if you have someone to share it with? Someone who would do anything to keep you from pain?

“Thank you.” Valdus stepped directly into her line of vision, his solemn gaze finding hers. “You’ve definitely proven to be the key to saving us all.”

His words staunched a bit of the bleeding.

But not nearly enough.

It’s not the heat that makes you vulnerable. It’s the heart. And it’s too late for me. I’m already at risk. Heat or not, you’re in my blood. A force I can’t resist. A compulsion I don’t want to shake.

Her heart stuttered in her chest.

She was furious with him for asking her to make such a choice. Angrier at herself for hesitating to seize the goal that had been her compass, her reason for living, since Hollisworth put that thing inside her. She’d proven herself willing to die for Valdus and his men. How could she not do the same for herself? For the woman in her who’d been crying to be free for years?

And yet…Valdus’s declaration, his suggestion that he was as vulnerable as she to the pull between them fulfilled a craving she’d never even realized she’d had. Left her wavering.

I may not have the heat in my veins, but the drive to touch you, be with you, is raw and unbreakable and can’t be cured with some serum. I need you to live.

Before there’d been nothing left to lose, no reason not to risk all, but her ex-captor had shown her a future that could be full of beauty and stars. It wouldn’t be perfect or safe, but it would include someone willing to stand by her side and fight. Someone who saw the heat not as an obligation or a slavish destroyer of her will, but as simply one more tie between them, a single thread in a tapestry of need and vulnerability that was, without their even realizing it, coming to bind her to him heart and soul.

So why risk everything to destroy a speck of technology that was becoming less and less significant in her life?

The weight of her choice threatened to send her to her knees.

“Ava?”

She’d been quiet far too long.

“Keep this with you.” Something narrow and hard pressed into her palm.

She looked down.

A handmade dagger lay in her hand. The same one she’d first noticed hanging from his harness in the transport hold, made of her precious ore. Carved deep into the side were the words Ava Davies.

Her heart skipped.

He’d made this for her.

“It’s lighter and more versatile than an ax—and every warrior needs their own weapon. Plus…if something goes wrong out there for Ryker and me, I know it’s not much, but it can be melted down to help make more serum.” Grim determination tightened his features. “In the meantime, if you have to use it as a weapon, make sure you strike to kill and that you’ve got an exit strategy. Stay alive and I’ll find you.” His blue eyes heated, his voice dipping to that low, familiar rasp that rolled across her skin. “There’s no place I won’t find you. Nothing I won’t do to keep you.”

Familiar words. They’d once sounded so ominous. But now…now they sounded like love.

She clutched her weapon tighter. It fit in her hand to perfection. “Thank you.”

His hand wrapped around hers. Gently. Carefully.

Her heart fluttered anew. He was always so careful with her.

“Thank you for reminding me there’s beauty and strength everywhere.” His thumb tracked across her sensitive skin. “Even down here. Even, maybe, within myself.”

“Definitely within you.”

They stared at each other, the weight of everything they’d been through, everything between them still, thick in the air.

“I know…I know it’s not settled between us, but…” her words trailed off. How to say all she felt? How to describe how torn she was without hurting him worse than she had?

“I know.” Shadows darkened his gaze, as if he already knew how her sentence would end. Which was odd. Since she didn’t know herself.

He took a step back. “We’ll finish it when I return.”

“Be safe.” She willed her hands to remain at her sides, his gift clutched tightly in her hand.

“You, too.” His gaze flickered to where Pratt lay curled against the wall. “Don’t drop your guard.”

“I never have.” Her gaze locked with his, tension buzzing between them, the words heavy with unintended meaning.

His lips flat-lined. “You could with me.”

Before she could formulate a response, he turned away, every mouthwatering muscle rippling as he stalked to where Ryker waited—and all she wanted was to call him back. To hold him one more time. To tell him she already had dropped her guard. That her heart was his.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she clamped her mouth shut, slid his precious gift into the pocket that had once held pills she didn’t even miss, and watched him walk away.