Page 95 of Conquer

He nodded, holding her gaze.“I’ve heard hands on is the best way to gain new knowledge.”The words left him before he could temper them, and the silence that followed thickened, hot and bright.

Her pupils widened just a fraction.A flicker of breath.And then she stepped around him, close enough that the edges of her sleeve brushed his hand.The contact was accidental, or could be called that, but energy hummed through the space left between them.

“Be careful, Oakley,” she said quietly.“We’ve only just been unbound.Freedom can make people do dangerous, reckless things.”

He turned, watching her cross the damp grass toward the others.“Yeah,” he murmured.“But sometimes worth every consequence.”

Seris didn’t turn back, but she must have heard him.Her stride hitched, a heartbeat of pause, before she disappeared into the shifting light of morning.

Oakley drew a steady breath, forcing his pulse to slow.The valley below was waking properly now: voices, light, movement.But all he could feel was the subtle glimmer of awareness still stretching between him and the shadow-marked woman, a taut thread he wasn’t sure he wanted to cut.

Something was building—quiet, deliberate, inevitable, and if he was honest, he was totally here for it.

He looked toward the ridge where Belig had vanished, then to the place where Seris stood moments before.The light had already changed there, brighter now, as though the world itself was leaning forward to see what came next.

Oakley adjusted the strap on his weapon, mostly for something to do with his hands, and started toward the clearing’s edge.He told himself it was to keep watch.

But he knew better.

He was looking for her.

And he had a feeling he’d keep looking for her every time she wasn’t where he could see her.

Maybe her story was just beginning, now that she was free for the first time since her creation, but it seemed she wasn’t the only one stepping into something new.Oakley drew in a breath that tasted of sunlight and river moss and the promise of change.He hadn’t been trapped in a dark, cursed chamber, but somehow everything around him felt brighter, sharper, alive in a way it hadn’t before.

Possibility.That was what it was.And that possibility just happened to have a name.Seris.