Breach Protocol

Elara
I built my life around certainty. Clean data. Measurable outcomes. The kind of work that left no room for doubt. For three years, the alien in my lab was a specimen, a means to an end, and I was very good at not thinking too hard about what that end was. Then everything fell apart at once, and suddenly the only thing standing between me and a slow death is the creature I've been studying.

D'varek
I had five years to imagine what I'd do when I finally got free. I never imagined the bond. Unbreakable. Irreversible. Tying my soul to the one person in the universe I had the most reason to hate. I told myself it was only biology. That knowing her wouldn't change anything. But the longer I spend at her side, the more I wonder if it knew exactly what it was doing.