No. What a nice little word. I should use it more often.

She couldn't believe she'd finally managed to say "no" to Zar. It shouldn't have been such a hard task, but after a day of reluctantly agreeing to everything the warlord proposed, Ashley had managed to win herself a moment of peace.

Zar hadn't looked too disappointed, which was odd. The harbinger had simply nodded with a weird look on his face and shown her to one of the smaller side rooms. It was nowhere near as lavish as the master bedroom was, but as soon as Ashley closed the door, she fell on the bed, feeling like she'd somehow escaped.

Lying there, looking up at the ceiling, she wondered if it was the room of Zar's lovers. The question immediately brought forth a sharp, painful jealousy in her chest. The harbinger had said he hadn't had any fateds before her, but that didn't include all women, did it?

Ashley shook her head clear. She was obviously losing it if she took it upon herself to start getting possessive of the man who was the definition of possessive himself.

Away from Zar, Ashley realized how tired she was. It had been night when they left Terra and it had to be at least six hours later, because that was the estimated time of jumping into the wormhole.

The fact that she was in a place where space existed only in theory didn't make her feel any better. Tiredness, however, was suddenly catching up to her.

Ashley barely managed the strength to strip out of the "dress" and slip between the covers in only her underwear, hoping she wasn't sleeping under the hide of some beast.

Sleep took her, with the last thought being that she needed to start learning the complicated theory of wormholes if she was ever going to escape.

* * *

Ashley awoke with a small scream.

The Foront was breaking apart around her. It had to be, because that god-awful screeching couldn't have been anything else than the ship disentangling itself around her. It sounded like the thick metal walls were folding in on themselves. At any second, Ashley expected the ceiling to drop down and wrap itself around her.

She had never been easily scared, but the ungodly noise and the rough shaking of the ship were quickly dismantling the last of her courage.

The wormhole. There's something wrong with the wormhole.

Ashley got up, unable to stay in her bed for one more second. When she put her foot on the ground, the floor moved. In her sleepy confusion, Ashley could have sworn it tried to grab her leg.

She wasn't entirely awake yet, but she was almost positive floors weren't supposed to do that.

She'd wanted to grab the dress, but after that nasty surprise, Ashley simply sprinted out of her room, rounding the corner when her door lunged her way.

Zar caught her in his firm, strong grip and Ashley pressed herself against him, uncaring.

"Calm down," the harbinger said surprisingly gentle, holding her in his embrace. "There's nothing to worry about."

"What about this racket tells you that!?" Ashley whispered against his naked chest, feeling his warmth against hers at last.

"It's the wormhole," Zar said. "We're almost out."

"And?" Ashley demanded. "Is the ship going to break?"

"Probably not," Zar said with an amused grin that told her he was enjoying it way too much.

He continued with a more comforting tone.

"Creating the wormhole is simple enough if you know what you're doing. Entering, as you saw, is nothing. Exiting, however, is a bit trickier. Finding real space again is hard and needs an experienced pilot. Even then, it's a messy affair. The Foront is brushing against the unspace right now, but I've had worse rides."

"Worse how?" Ashley asked, starting to calm down when it seemed that Zar wasn't afraid.

Of course that implied that a man like Zar even could be afraid.

"I was nearly killed by a wall that turned the room I was in into a space barely large enough to house me," Zar said, laughing as if it was funny. "I once met a warrior who swore that when he came out of the wormhole, his room had jumped two floors up from where it had begun."

"That's not possible," Ashley said, pulling away from him a little, but not out of his arms.

Zar shrugged, looking at her with those deep, dark eyes of his.

"Very few things are impossible in the wormhole," he said.

The rocking continued and one particularly nasty screech made Ashley cry out again. She could have sworn the floor shifted underneath their feet as if they were going to drop through the ship.

Zar cradled her gently against his wide chest, holding her there without smothering her. And despite the unreal forces tearing at the ship, Ashley felt... safe.

"I won't let anything happen to you," the harbinger said, his voice completely different from before.

"I hoped you would come to me when the ship began to shake, thinking it would drive you to me. Now, seeing you afraid, it's not worth it. You can go back to your room if you want to. I will wait out the exit with you if it will make you feel better."

The floor jumped again but Ashley barely noticed. She was staring somewhere in the darkness of the hallway, her hands pressed against Zar's hot body, not wanting to take one step away from him.

This is a trick, her mind warned her. He's doing this on purpose. He just admitted he wanted to scare you to go to him and now he's emotionally manipulating you.

Only Ashley didn't believe her mind. Her heart was telling her something different.

"Can I sleep with you tonight?" she asked. "I might want to get back to my room tomorrow, but just for now?"

For a long moment, Zar said nothing. Then he turned without another word and led her through the rocking hallway back to his room. Ashley tried to ignore the way the walls seemed to want to close in on them. She could have sworn the quarters were twice as big when she'd come there the first time.

Luckily Zar's bed was still in the right place and in the right size.

"It should be over soon," the harbinger said as Ashley climbed under the sheets, joining her and letting her rest her head on his chest again. "The pilot is very good."

After another moment, he added:

"And if he isn't, I'll have his head. In this reality or the afterlife."

Ashley laughed softly. She couldn't believe herself but she suspected that she didn't hate Zar nearly as much as she should have. In fact, Ashley didn't think the emotion she felt toward the harbinger was hatred at all.

What the hell am I doing? This all going wrong.

It was harder to convince herself of that, though. Not when she hadn't felt as safe in a long time, maybe ever. Zar's arm was wrapped around her shoulders, keeping her there, making Ashley feel like she was where she belonged. She fit so perfectly into his embrace that the fated bond Zar was talking about truly had to be real.

It was up to her to decide how much she wanted to do with it, but Ashley could no longer deny that it existed. And that it had taken a strong hold of her.

Finally, the rocking stopped and Zar's comm link beeped somewhere beside the bed. The harbinger reached for it, leaving Ashley to slip out of his embrace.

Answering the call, Zar kept his eyes on her as Ashley had one foot out of the bed.

"Report," he ordered. "Any damage?"

"No, Harbinger. We are safely out of the wormhole. Luminos awaits us home."

Zar shut the link and put the transmitter away. He said nothing, simply looked at Ashley whose heart was thundering in her chest again.

If she stayed, if she let that be a precedent... who knew what ideas Zar would get?

She found that she didn't really care as much as would have been natural. The sheets were nice and cool under her while the covers were warm. And in the dim light of the room, Zar's eyes were burning with a calling that Ashley simply wasn't able to resist.

Fearing that she was making a mistake but throwing herself headlong into it anyway, Ashley got back under the sheets and rested her head on Zar's arm.

As the Foront sped toward her new home world, Ashley thought about fate. How cruel were the invisible hands that ruled her life, to doom her to slavery on Luminos?

And how cruel was it to make her want it, just a little?