Page 18 of The Monster's Daughter

Inside, beneath stacks of ration packs and brittle paper, sits a datapad.

I lift it with hands that feel too big, too clumsy. Dust clings to the screen, but when I thumb it alive, light flickers. The recording sputters, half static, half voice.

My father’s voice.

“—if you find this… Kage… we’re leaving for the old mountain bunker. Your mother said I was crazy for keeping it stocked, but… hah. Maybe I wasn’t so wrong after all. We left this morning. I don’t know what’s coming, but Lurax won’t hold. Don’t follow if it’s too dangerous. Just… survive, son. Survive.”

The image is fractured, but I catch his face in flashes: the familiar set of his jaw, the worry etched deep in his frills. My mother’s shadow moves behind him, quick, her voice calling his name.

The message cuts.

I replay it. Again. Again. Until I’ve carved every syllable into my skull, until my claws ache from gripping the datapad too tight.

They’re alive. They were alive when this was made. They’re in the mountains, where I always knew they’d go.

I close my eyes, chest heaving. For the first time in too long, the future doesn’t look empty.

We gather what’s left worth carrying. Bella rifles through drawers, tossing me old ration packs, brittle but edible. She finds a medkit under a loose floorboard, dust clouding the air when she pulls it free.

“Jackpot,” she says, brushing grit from her hair.

I grunt. My side still throbs where the drone’s claws tore through. When I bend to pack supplies, warmth seeps from the wound again, staining my scales dark.

Bella notices. “You’re bleeding.”

“It will close,” I say, dismissive.

She sets her jaw. “Sit.”

I almost laugh. Almost. But her tone is steel. I lower myself onto the warped couch, and she kneels beside me. The scent of her hair—copper and smoke—crowds me. Her fingers tremble as she cleans the wound, but they’re deft, practiced.

“You’re lucky this wasn’t deeper,” she mutters, voice sharp to cover the shake. “Another inch and you’d be spilling guts on your mother’s rug.”

I smirk faintly. “She would not have approved.”

Bella startles, then huffs, lips twitching. “God, you actually made a joke.”

Her hand brushes mine as she adjusts the regenerator. The spark leaps again, electric, undeniable. My breath catches.

Our eyes meet.

For a long moment, neither of us moves. The air thickens between us, pulling taut like a bowstring.

Then she clears her throat and leans back, breaking the charge. “There. Try not to pick fights with more murder-bots for at least, I don’t know, twelve hours?”

I grunt. It’s safer than what I want to say.

That night, we stay in the living room. She claims the couch, wrapping herself in a blanket pulled from the wreckage. I take the doorway, sitting sentinel with the datapad cradled against my claws.

Her eyes flutter shut, her breathing slow and steady. She thinks I’m asleep. I’m not. I watch her until her breaths even out, guarding her like something precious I don’t dare name.

The house creaks and groans, wind sighing through broken windows. Dust glitters in the moonlight like ash ghosts. But I’ve never felt more awake.

Every time her chest rises, it feels like proof of something I can’t let myself lose.

Morning breaks harsh, light glaring off the ash-choked horizon. Bella shoulders her pack, eyes flicking once morearound the house. She pauses longer than I expect, gaze lingering on the photo frame now upright on the table.

“You ready?” I ask.