⚠️ This chapter contains dream imagery with erotic undertones and themes of forbidden desire. No explicit content.

Korel kissed him.

Not tentative. Not exploratory. Just claiming. Ravik tensed, ready to resist, but his body betrayed him fast, melting into the kiss before he could think. It consumed him, igniting something deep within—raw and buried, sharp as need. His dream self was too eager, too willing, leaning into Korel’s touch. It was everything he had ever wanted but refused to admit.

Korel’s hands slid down Ravik’s sides, possessive and firm, gripping his waist as though asserting ownership. The sensation sent jolts of heat through Ravik’s body, his pride and resistance rapidly dissolving. His mind cried out in protest, but his body welcomed every touch. His hips arched under the grip. Shame bloomed, hot and unspeakable.

Korel pulled back slightly, just enough to break the kiss, his lips brushing against Ravik’s ear. His voice was low as he whispered, “You wanted this, didn’t you?”

Ravik shuddered, the words cutting straight through his defenses. His breath came in shallow gasps, his heart hammering. His pride screamed against the truth, but the rest of him was too far gone. His mouth opened, the word yes trembling on the edge of his lips.

Korel stared at him.

“You’ll never escape me.” 

His lips moved, but the voice came wrong. Zarion’s cadence emerged, low and suggestive.

“You want this. You always have.”

Ravik’s fists clenched. “No,” he said, but his voice broke. “That’s not—”

The dream rippled again, surrounding Ravik in darkness, leaving only the shadowy outline of a figure. It stood there, unmoving, its features obscured, but the voice returned, closer than ever.

“I see you, Ravik. All of you.”

The darkness shattered like glass, and Ravik was back aboard the Revenant. He was standing in front of an airlock port, the void of space stretching beyond the glass, vast and silent.

He stepped closer, his movements slow and reluctant, as though something unseen were drawing him forward. The void whispered to him, its silence broken only by the voice—Zarion’s voice—wrapping around him like a shroud.

“If this isn’t what you want,” Zarion said, “then step through. Leave. But if you stay…”

Ravik stopped at the edge, his toes inches from the threshold, his breath uneven. Something in him leaned toward it. He didn’t know what.

“If you stay,” Zarion’s voice continued, soft, intimate, “you’ll belong to me. Are you ready for that?”

The question crawled under his skin. Ravik clenched his fists, unable to speak.

“Answer me, Ravik,” the voice whispered, close enough that he could feel breath against his ear. “Do you want to belong?”

Ravik woke with a start, his body twisting in the sheets. His cabin was dark, save for the faint glow of emergency lighting tracing the edges of the room. He gasped, damp with sweat. His skin still remembered the grip, the heat, the weight. He clenched his fists tightly, his knuckles whitening as he fought to purge the lingering sensations of the dream—the heat of Korel’s skin, the weight of his gaze, the unrelenting force of his dominance.

“No,” he muttered. “That’s not me. That’s not what I want.”

But his body betrayed him again, the memory of the dream too vivid to deny. He could still feel the phantom pressure of Korel’s grip, the overwhelming force of his kiss, the humiliating truth of his own submission. Rage cracked through him, too loud for a dream.

He sat up slowly, running a hand over his face. Zarion’s voice still haunted him—low, calculated, suggestive. The question replayed in his mind over and over: Do you want to belong?

His jaw tightened, his breath steadying as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. “It’s just a dream.” He should have hated it, yet every word left him wanting.