Page 97 of Alien Soldier's Heir

“When he turned five? Ten? When he started asking why the man who teaches him to fly doesn’t tuck him in at night?”

“I didn’t know how?—”

“Youlied.”

“Iprotected him.”

“You protectedyourself.”

Silence.

A terrible, deafening silence.

Then my voice breaks, brittle as glass. “You don’t understand what it’s like... waking up in the middle of the night with no one. Carrying a whole person inside you and feeling them kick and wondering if you’ll even survive giving birth on a base with a rusted medbay. Ihadto be strong. I had to make choices. And yeah—some of them were wrong. But I didn’t lie to hurt you. I lied to keep breathing.”

Kaz’s eyes are red now.

Not from rage.

From pain.

Real, raw pain.

He turns away.

“I can’t do this right now.”

“Kaz—”

He storms past me, knocking into my shoulder as he goes, every step a thunderclap of heartbreak against the floor.

The door slams.

And I break.

Right there, in the quiet, with nothing but the soft hum of the wall monitors and the fading echo of a man who used to be my whole world.

I sink to the floor.

My hand finds something on instinct—tiny, familiar.

Dar’s boot.

Left by the couch.

Worn at the toes, scuffed from a thousand adventures. He sleeps with the left one some nights, says it helps him “run in dreams.”

I hold it tight against my chest, curled into myself like maybe if I make my body small enough, the guilt will pass through me instead of cracking me in half.

It doesn’t.

It anchors me.

But I don’t know if that’s enough anymore.

CHAPTER 39

KAZ