Page 80 of The Monster's Daughter

I’m not hiding anymore.

I release the holovid. Uncut. Brutal. Honest. Our story—Natalie’s rescue, the war, the peace we found between species and scars. I show Kage’s hands holding mine. Show Natalie transforming and still being a child. Still beingourchild.

“No one should be the enemy just because they were born somewhere else,” I say in the final frame.

It hits the net like a meteor. Goes viral in half a dozen systems within the first hour. Comment sections crash. Petitions light up the Alliance courts, demanding full rights for hybrid children. Demanding citizenship for Grolgath warriors who risked everything for peace.

Kage gets his papers.

Natalie gets her protection order—hybrid status fully enshrined in law.

And me?

I get an invitation.

To the Unity Summit. The same one that banned Grolgaths from Glimner twenty years ago.

I laugh when I read it. Then I cry.

Then I say yes.

But only on one condition: I bring my family.

The shuttle rises through Glimner’s upper atmosphere, carrying us toward the waiting cruiser that’ll take us to the summit. It’s quiet up here. The kind of quiet you earn.

Natalie presses her nose to the viewport, fogging the glass with excited breath.

“Do you think they’ll let me pet a space yak?”

Kage chuckles behind her. “If they don’t, I’ll start a rebellion.”

“Rebellions arecool,” she declares, kicking her little boots like she’s already halfway to leading one.

He pulls her into his lap, ruffling her hair. She snuggles in like she never had a parasite in her chest. Like she wasn’t once the eye of an AI storm.

And then, like it’s the easiest thing in the universe, she looks up at him.

“Wanna know a secret?”

He glances at me, then back at her, eyebrows raised.

“Always.”

She leans in, cupping her little hands around his ear like she’s shielding a galactic state secret.

“I think you’re my Daddy.”

Kage goes very still.

The kind of still that comes right before tectonic plates shift.

Then he laughs. Just once. Choked. Wet.

“I think,” he says hoarsely, “I’ve always known.”

I reach across the aisle and take both their hands. His in mine. Hers in his.

And together, we rise.