Page 39 of Alien Assassin's Heir

No. Not if she thought I was dead. Not if she thought I’d abandoned her. Stars, I gave her every reason to hate me. I’d hate me too.

My claws scrape against the edge of the old table as I brace my weight against it, eyes locked on nothing. The air smells like scorched metal and the faint spice of desert sand carried in through the cracks. I can still taste her skin on my lips. Sweet. Salted. Real.

I shake my head and snarl.

“You’re not that man anymore,” I growl at my reflection in the smeared window. “You don’t get to want this.”

But wanting doesn’t care about rules. It doesn’t care about blood or orders or encrypted files.

It just is.

And what I want… stars help me, what I want is to stay. To step into that life like it’s waiting for me. Like it hasn’t already moved on.

I slump into the chair and pull the worn logbook from the satchel by my feet. My fingers flip to the last page. A crude sketch stares back at me—Luna’s profile, all fierce lines and soft edges. I started it the first week I arrived on Arkosh. Kept adding to it in the quiet hours between recon sweeps and surveillance scrapes.

It’s not art. It’s obsession.

I tear the page out, slow and deliberate, and watch it flutter to the floor.

Then I light a match.

The flame eats the drawing in seconds, curling black along the paper’s edges, and I drop it into the recycler chute before the smoke can trigger the alarms. The scent of burnt ink curls around my nostrils, bitter and sharp.

It doesn’t feel like closure. It feels like cowardice.

I close the logbook and shove it back in the bag. Then I grab my coat and head out into the wind, boots crunching against thegravel and sun-scorched refuse that lines the alley outside my safehouse.

I walk with no destination in mind. Just movement. Just the need to feel the planet under my feet and not the weight in my chest.

Wildwood isn’t much after dark—just flickering lanterns and murmuring voices behind shuttered windows. I pass the café where we had coffee. The synthbean smell is gone now, replaced by fried root vegetables and the distant hum of power relays.

And there, at the edge of the plaza, I see her.

Luna. Standing alone, arms crossed, eyes scanning the horizon like she’s waiting for something.

Or someone.

My pulse trips. I step back, half-hidden by a mural of the Helios Combine’s logo. I don’t call out. Don’t move.

I just watch.

Because for now, watching is all I deserve.