Page 32 of The Warlord's Secret Heir

I look at my son. I don’t see a hybrid anomaly. I see curls stuck to sweaty cheeks. I see gold in his eyes like a sunrise on ruined ground. I see all the best and worst parts of both of us wrapped in soft flesh and a scream like a damned reaper banshee.

“I do,” I say.

“Then don’t die,” she snaps.

“Working on it.”

I leave in the dead of night.

I kiss Mama’s forehead. Hug Vira. She doesn’t hug back, but she doesn’t let go of my wrist until I do.

Then I kneel by Kel.

He’s curled under his favorite blanket—crayon-stained, threadbare, soft as sin. His little hand is wrapped around a plastic wrench. I smile. I cry.

“Hey, baby,” I whisper, brushing his hair back. “Mommy’s gotta go get something. Something really,reallyimportant.”

His lips move. Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe he hears me.

“Mama…”

I kiss his forehead. I breathe him in like it’s the last oxygen in the world.

Then I leave.

The shuttle’s launch is rough.

She fights me the whole way out of orbit, rattling like a coffin with an attitude problem. The stealth drive kicks in late and stutters. I override the emergency ping with a wire I shouldn’t touch and a prayer I don’t believe in.

But I make it.

Deep space opens up in front of me like a throat.

And then the drones find me.

The first two are easy. Old patrol models. I blind their sensors with a static burst from the hacked navchip and punch the thrusters.

The third one?

Not so easy.

It tags me before I even see it—a sleek, ugly little Alliance interceptor. Probably flagged my trajectory the second I left lunar shadow.

Alarms wail. My HUD bleeds red. The back stabilizer explodes. The cockpit fills with smoke and curses.

“Son of ablistering whorebot!” I scream, yanking the stick to starboard. The ship lists hard, gravity pulling blood from my brain. “C’mon, baby, hold together—just a little longer?—”

The panel sparks. The nav blinks out.

I’m flying blind.

“Stars, stars, stars?—”

Jurtik rises below me. Brown and cracked and burning at the seams. A wasteland with teeth.

I dive.

The atmosphere hits like a fist. The heat isinstant—metal howling, alarms shrieking, my teeth rattling in my skull. The console explodes in sparks. The cabin lights die.