My Life for His Lover: I Gave His Rival The Galaxy

Chapter 2 The Devil's Bargain

Consciousness returned not as a gentle dawn, but as the shriek of tearing metal.

For a moment, I was back in the flagship’s med-bay, the needles in my spine, the life draining from me and my child. Then the cold of the pod’s deck bit into my cheek, and the acrid smell of ozone filled my lungs. The alarms were dead. The only light was a single, pulsing emergency red that painted the cramped cabin in shades of blood.

My spirit core was a shattered mirror inside my chest, every breath sending splinters of agony through me. The pod’s viewport showed nothing but the scarred hull of a much larger vessel, so close it filled the entire frame. We were docked. Or, more accurately, we had been caught.

A high-energy cutting torch sizzled through the escape hatch, carving a glowing orange circle. I tried to push myself up, my limbs heavy and unresponsive. The severance from Kaelen had saved my life but left my spirit in ruins. I was a weapon with a cracked casing, liable to explode or fizzle into nothing at any moment.

The circular section of the hatch fell inward with a deafening clang, and a figure filled the opening, silhouetted against the harsh industrial lighting of a hangar bay. It was massive, clad in midnight-black combat armor that was a brutalist mockery of Imperial design—thicker, scarred with plasma burns, and adorned with the jagged red crest of a raptor.

Two more armored figures followed, their plasma rifles sweeping the tiny space before locking onto me. They moved with the chilling efficiency of veterans, not the sloppy rage of common pirates.

Then the leader stepped inside.

He had to duck to clear the frame. The air in the pod seemed to compress under his presence. He removed his helmet with a hiss of depressurization, and the face revealed was not what I expected. He was young, perhaps no older than Kaelen, but where Kaelen’s features were carved from glacial ice, this man’s were forged in fire. A jaw that could break stone, cheekbones sharp enough to cut, and a web of faint scars tracing a line from his temple down his neck. But it was his eyes that held me captive. They were the color of molten silver, burning with a feverish intensity that seemed to be consuming him from the inside out.

His gaze swept over me, clinical and assessing. It lingered on the tattered remains of my Imperial consort gown, then on the dried blood on my lips.

“An SSS-class Guide,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated through the deck. It wasn’t a question. “Valerius’s wife. Adrift in my territory. He must be getting careless.”

I pushed myself into a sitting position, my spine screaming in protest. “He is no longer my husband.”

A flicker of something—amusement, perhaps—crossed his face. “Is that so? Then you have nothing. You are nothing but salvage.” He gestured to one of his men. “Take her. See what she’s worth on the black market. The core of a live SSS-class… that could fund our fleet for a cycle.”

My blood ran cold. He was right. I had no ship, no allies, no power. Only a secret I would die to protect.

As his soldiers moved toward me, the leader suddenly stiffened. A tremor ran through his massive frame, so violent I could see the plates of his armor vibrating. A low growl escaped his lips, a sound of pure, animalistic agony.

“Flare,” one of his men said, his voice tight with practiced alarm. “Commander, get back to the *Harbinger*! We need to get you to stasis!”

But the man—Zane, it had to be Zane—didn’t move. He dropped to one knee, his gauntleted hand slamming against the deck, buckling the metal plate. A faint, blue-white bio-electric energy crackled around him, arcing between the joints of his armor. His silver eyes squeezed shut, his face contorted in a mask of unbearable pain.

“The gene-lock… is failing,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

I understood instantly. The rumors from Imperial intelligence, long dismissed as p********a. Zane, the Crimson Raider, was a product of the Empire’s own monstrous supersoldier program. A success, until the genetic cocktail they’d used became unstable. The ‘flares’ were a cellular breakdown, a genetic backlash that caused unimaginable pain and, eventually, a violent, mindless death.

And the only thing that could soothe such a chaotic storm of biological energy was the harmonizing frequency of a powerful Guide.

This was my chance. My only chance.

Ignoring the fire in my own core, I reached inward, gathering the fractured pieces of my power. It was like trying to hold water in a sieve. I focused on the calmest, purest frequency I could produce—a deep, resonant hum designed to soothe, to stabilize, to command order from chaos.

I let it flow out of me, a fragile whisper of power, and directed it at him.

Zane’s head snapped up. His silver eyes flew open, wide with shock. The blue arcs of energy around him flickered and dimmed. The tremors wracking his body lessened. He stared at me, not as a piece of salvage, but as a drowning man stares at a floating piece of wreckage.

I held the frequency, pushing it, reinforcing it, even as the effort sent a fresh wave of agony through me. The fissure in my spirit core felt like it was being ripped wider. A wet, metallic taste filled my mouth.

“How?” he rasped, his breathing still ragged but no longer a death rattle.

“I am an SSS-class Guide,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “This is what I do.”

The cost of that demonstration hit me like a physical blow. The world tilted, the red emergency light smearing into a long, blurry streak. I swayed, and a violent, hacking cough tore through me. I collapsed forward, my hands hitting the cold deck as I vomited a spray of bright red blood.

The two soldiers raised their rifles, but Zane’s voice cut through the air like a whip c***k. “Stand down.”

He rose to his feet, moving with a newfound steadiness. He walked over and crouched in front of me, the sheer bulk of him blocking out the world. He reached out, his armored fingers surprisingly gentle as he tilted my chin up, forcing me to meet his searing silver gaze. He was studying the blood on my lips, the sweat on my brow, the profound exhaustion in my eyes.

“You’re broken,” he stated. “Your core is fractured. Badly.”

“Kaelen’s parting gift,” I managed to say, the bitterness a poison on my tongue.

He was silent for a long moment, the gears turning behind his eyes. He was a predator, I knew, but he was also a pragmatist. A dead Guide was worthless to him. An imprisoned, uncooperative Guide was a liability.

But a willing one… a willing one was a miracle in this lawless stretch of space.

“I will make you a deal, Evelyn Valerius,” he said, his voice devoid of any warmth, a pure, cold transaction. “My medics will stabilize you. My fleet will protect you. Kaelen will never touch you again. In return… you will do *that*,” he nodded toward the spot where he’d knelt in agony, “whenever I require it.”

He was offering me a cage of a different color. A gilded cage, perhaps, but a cage nonetheless. I had just escaped one master; I had no intention of serving another.

“My name is Evelyn Quinn,” I corrected him, my voice gaining a sliver of strength. “And I am not your tool. I will be your ally. A partner. You will give me shelter and medical aid. In return, I will help you control your condition. But I am not your property. We are equals in this, or there is no deal.”

His silver eyes narrowed, searching my face. I met his stare without flinching, pouring every last ounce of my will into that gaze. I was a queen, even in rags and ruin.

A slow, dangerous smile spread across his lips. It did not reach his eyes.

“A bold bargain for someone bleeding out on my deck,” he mused. He stood and turned to his men. “Take her to the med-bay. Get Doctor Aris. Tell him she is our guest. A very, very valuable guest. And that if she dies, I will personally space him.”

His soldiers holstered their weapons. One of them carefully lifted me into his arms. As they carried me out of the ruined pod and into the vast, greasy, and echoing hangar of Zane’s flagship, the *Harbinger*, I allowed my eyes to close. I had survived. I had made a devil’s bargain at the edge of the abyss, but I was alive.

In the med-bay, which was surprisingly clean and well-equipped for a pirate vessel, a grim-faced, gray-haired man named Aris worked silently. He injected me with a core stabilizer and a nutrient solution, his touch efficient and impersonal. He ran a full-body diagnostic, his brow furrowing deeper as the data scrolled across his monitor.

I drifted in a haze of pain and exhaustion, barely aware of my surroundings. Zane stood in the corner of the room, arms crossed, his silver eyes never leaving me. He was a silent, looming sentinel, guarding his newfound prize.

“Her spirit core fissure is catastrophic,” Aris finally reported, his voice low and grave. “I can stabilize it, Commander, but any significant use of her abilities will kill her. She’s walking on a razor’s edge.”

“She is more resilient than she looks,” Zane replied, his voice flat.

“Perhaps,” the doctor said, turning back to his screen. He froze, leaning closer to the monitor. He ran the scan again, his expression shifting from professional concern to utter disbelief.

“Commander…” Aris said slowly, his voice laced with awe and confusion. “You need to see this. The energy readings… they’re chaotic, but…”

He pointed a trembling finger at a small, flickering anomaly deep within the scan of my abdomen. A tiny, faint nebula of life, pulsing with a stubborn, defiant rhythm, nestled right beside the raging storm of my shattered core.

“By the stars,” the doctor whispered. “She’s not just fighting for one life. There are two.”