Page 72 of Alien Assassin's Heir

The word comes out like a surrender. She means it in the only way left to her—whole and open and honest—and it makes something in me soften, even as the old fury sparks and crackles. I could rage at her for the lies. I could tear whatever is left of this place apart and howl until the sky answers. But when she looks like this—raw, small, the mother I remember and the woman who’d cut deals to keep us breathing—I can’t. I won’t.

“You don’t get to call yourself a coward,” I say finally, low. The boom of my voice has gone out of me, replaced by a raw edge. “You did what you had to do to keep her alive. Even if it meant hiding the truth from me.” My mouth tastes of copper and regret. “But you should’ve trusted me with the choice. If you had told me, I would have fought like a thing with no conscience to keep her safe. Even if it meant burning everything down for her.”

Luna studies me for a long moment, as if cataloging what I say and measuring it against all the betrayals she’s endured. “You could have burned everything down, Kraj,” she says, voice flinty. “But what then? Would she have had a life? Would she have had peace? I couldn’t gamble her future on your warfare.” The anger resurfaces, sharp and protective. “She’s a child, Kraj. Not a flag to plant.”

Her words are right. They are the narrow, brutal kind of right that leaves no room for excuses. I feel the truth of it like a handaround my throat. Still—still—that small, stubborn part of me that has always been feral and fierce cannot let go of the thought of being her father in every way, not just in title. The thought of losing her to anyone—orders, politics, enemies—makes my limbs tremble.

“I wouldn’t have gambled with her,” I insist, the sentence raw. “Not now. Not ever. I would have given up everything.” The admission is an unsteady thing, an exposed wire. “I would have walked through fire.”

She presses her forehead to mine, and for a suspended second we are two ragged things connected, not by the neat tidy ties of officialdom but by something older and stomached and honest. Our breaths mix—hers warm and fragrant, a swirl of lavender and spice; mine metallic with salt and old smoke. The generator hums somewhere, the safehouse alive with small noises that feel obscene in the wake of this confession.

“Then show me,” she whispers. “Show me now, Kraj. Don’t make me take a leap of faith into darkness because I’m tired of being brave the wrong way. Show me you’ve changed.”

The demand is not punishment. It’s not even a bargain. It’s an ungainly, desperate plea for proof, for flesh-and-blood evidence that beneath the scars and the kills there’s still a man who can be trusted. My throat tightens; I want to tell her—no, promise her—that I will, that I will be the father, the mate, the guardian she deserves. I want to spit out every plan that simmers in me: to cut the Coalition’s tendrils, to make Targen pay for every sleepless night, to carve us a safe place with my teeth and claws if I must.

But I don’t say it all. Words feel cheap now, like coins thrown into a bottomless pit. Instead I cup Solie’s cheek, awkwardly reverent, and press my forehead to the child’s brow. Her skin is soft, warm, and the faint scaly patches along her forearm ripple beneath my touch like a secret coming awake. She looks at mewith absolute, undiluted trust. The simple gravity of it unmans me in a way no battle ever did.

“She’s mine,” I whisper again, and this time it’s not a question. It’s a prayer. It’s awe. It is everything I didn’t know how to say aloud until now. The words are small against the roar that still lives in me, but they are true; they land in the room and settle like a new kind of weather. Luna inhales sharply, her hands trembling on my wrists. The hope in her eyes is tentative, flickering, but it’s there.

We stand like that for a long breath, triangular and fragile: Luna with her weary bravery, Solie with her unguarded love, and me, a man who has lived too many lives and must now choose the one that will matter. Outside the safehouse the world keeps turning—edges of war, Targen’s shadow, the unquiet ghosts of both our pasts—but inside this battered room, something else begins to knit, small and stubborn and dangerously real.

“Then we start,” I tell them, hoarse but steady. “We start with small things. I will not let them take her. I will not let them use her.” My claws flex around Luna’s hands until she flinches. “And I won’t lie to you again.”

She closes her eyes and exhales like she’s releasing a held breath that’s been burning her lungs. “No more lies,” she says, and it’s both a demand and a benediction.

Above us, the cold sky prickles with distant stars. The ache in my chest is not only pain. It’s a blade tempered into a tool—sharp, yes, but capable of building as well as cutting. I hold my daughter and the woman I love at the same time, and the world tilts in such a way that I can almost believe we might survive it.