Page 66 of Alien Assassin's Heir

“I can’t explain,” I rasp. “Not yet.”

Her lips press tight, her jaw trembling. “Then don’t. Just… don’t.” She turns her back on me, shoulders stiff.

I stand there like a fool, the silence louder than any argument we’ve ever had.

That night,we lie in the same bed, but it feels like a grave between us. She lies stiff on her side, facing the wall. I can hear her breathing—too even, too deliberate to be real sleep. I don’t touch her. I don’t even try.

When her breath finally slows, I slip out of bed. The floor creaks beneath my weight as I move into the living room. My datapad waits in its pocket of the field kit, exactly where I left it.

Or… not exactly.

I know this kit like I know my own body. The weight, the balance. And this—this isn’t how I left it.

A cold knot forms in my gut. I sit down at the table, flick the pad on, and pull up the logs. My claws tap impatient rhythms against the edge while the encryption history scrolls.

And there it is.

Unauthorized access. Someone breached the first shell and scraped the surface of the Coalition files.

The bile rises in my throat. I don’t need to guess who.

“Luna,” I whisper, the name breaking against my teeth.

I shut the pad with a snap, my claws trembling as they dent the casing. My vision blurs at the edges.

She knows.

She saw the dossiers. Maybe the exec’s face. Maybe worse.

And I hadn’t even tried to hide them well enough. Maybe some part of me had wanted her to find them, to force the truth into the open. Or maybe I’m just that careless, that desperate to pretend I can live in two worlds at once.

I grip the table until the metal groans, my breath harsh. “It was never going to last,” I mutter to the empty room. “Was it?”

Morning light seepspale and cold through the window. I wake stiff in the chair, my claws still dug into the table’s edge. The apartment is too quiet.

Too empty.

I lurch to my feet, panic clawing at my ribs. The bedroom—her side of the bed, bare. The closet—her clothes, gone.

I stumble into Solie’s room. The shelves where her toys sat are stripped, the blanket folded neatly at the foot of the bed.

“No.” The word scrapes out raw.

I stagger back into the kitchen, my chest pounding so hard it hurts. And then I see it.

On the table.

A small, silver pin.

I pick it up with hands that won’t stop shaking. An IHC tracking badge. Old, worn, the kind she used to wear when she was still someone official, before I burned her life down. She must’ve kept it hidden all these years.

I turn it over in my palm, the metal cold, biting into my skin. No note. No explanation. Just this. A message clear enough to gut me.

I stare at it for a long, long time, the silence pressing in until I can’t breathe.

Then the roar rips out of me, wild and furious. My voice shakes the walls, rattles the windows. Solie’s empty room throws it back at me like an echo of loss.

I slam my fist into the table. Metal warps under the blow, the badge skittering across the floor with a harsh metallic clink.

The sound fades, leaving only the hollow silence of an apartment stripped of everything that mattered.

And the silence is worse than the roar.