Vira’s jaw drops. The table goes quiet. Mother’s stern face softens. She leans forward. “You fixed that?” she whispers. She sounds… impressed.
Kyldak steps back, palms rising. “Just old hardware. Needed a tune.” He shrugs. The grin on his face is a soft blade. “Still got it.”
Dinner resumes, but now the atmosphere is warmer. The interrogation lapses into laughter, stories, jokes. Mother asks about Earth politics, sister harasses him about his tattoos, I snuggle next to Kyldak. Kel leans into his lap. This is family. Everything I’ve fought for.
Later, after plates cleared and zero-g card tables afloat in the lounge dome, I slip out through the sliding glass to the upper deck. I find Kyldak leaning over the railing, arms crossed, staring at the stars. The valley’s view is wide: domed farms, distant lights, the Milky Way arching overhead. The air is cool, scented of night jasmine and wet soil.
I step up beside him. “You okay out here?”
He glances at me. “Yeah.” He breathes in. “I think they like me.”
I laugh, soft in the night. “You’re lucky they didn’t try to sedate you in the medbay when you woke.”
He pushes off the railing and turns. His eyes shine. “Would’ve been worth it.”
I shiver, catch his gaze. The wind tangles his hair, stirs the vines. He reaches out, draws me close. Our lips meet — not tortured, not desperate, but settled, full of relief and peace. Stars frame us. The sky holds its breath.
I rest my forehead against his. The scent of him — metal, starlight, sweat — fills me. His arms — strong enough to carry worlds — fold me in.
We stand like that, quiet, until the vines glow, the domes hum, and Kel’s laughter echoes faintly in the distance.
Under the stars, I whisper, “We’re home.”
He grins, voice low. “Damn right.”
CHAPTER 28
JAELA
The house is silent—empty corridors, shadows tucked behind doorways, the hush before midnight’s breath. I slip my hand into his and guide him down the hall, away from lights and laughter and the fragile truce we’ve built, toward my old bedroom. The carpet is soft under bare feet. The walls whisper with echoes of teenage dreams—posters peeling, faded, of far worlds and constellations, bands I used to love.
I reach the door and pause, heart pounding. I flick on a dim lamp. Everything glows in gold and memory. The bed, the quilt, the stack of pillows heavy with years of secrets. I see him framed in that light—massive, almost awkward among softness, armor already half off.
He steps inside, helmet in hand. His boots clunk on the floor; the sound seems too loud in the quiet. He stands in the middle of the room, shoulders squared. He looks ridiculous and magnificent in the same breath. I swallow.
He begins to strip his armor piece by piece. The gauntlets clatter, the cuirass thuds, the greaves slide free, each piece revealing more of him. The scent of worn metal fades into the musky heat of skin, sweat, old blood, and something uniquely his—sun-warmed stone and storm-charged air. Under the lastpiece, he stands bare to the waist, towering over me, his golden-scaled chest broad and heaving with breath, muscles taut, tension visible in every inch of his seven-foot frame. Faint light flickers across the planes of his body, casting deep shadows into the ridges of scars and the dip of old wounds—pale, faded, but never forgotten.
I come forward, breath caught. My fingertips trail down his chest, cool against his heat. He doesn’t flinch. My hands map the strange, beautiful geometry of his torso—the crisscross of healed injuries, the seamless meld of cybernetic limb to living muscle. His left shoulder is thick with plated alloy, but the gold of his scales peeks around it like fire beneath armor. I trace the seam where flesh ends and tech begins, then lower, across the breadth of his shoulders and the rigid wall of his abs.
He exhales, shaky. “Are you sure?” His voice is low, cautious, stripped of his usual bravado. For a moment, he’s not the war-hardened soldier but something raw. A man. A lover. Vulnerable.
I don’t answer with words. I lean in and kiss him. Soft at first, trembling. Lips finding lips with uncertain need. His mouth is warm, parted just enough for the air to catch between us. He presses back, careful, reverent—like I’m breakable, like I’m sacred.
I whisper against his mouth, “Yes. I’m sure.”
The kiss deepens.
He lets me explore him—fingers sweeping across gleaming scales that shift beneath my touch, mapping muscle like terrain, memorizing the landscape of him. His right hand, still flesh, lifts hesitantly to my arm. He traces the underside, following my pulse to my collarbone, his touch reverent, as if each inch he discovers is something he’s stolen from death and can’t bear to lose again.
He’s massive, and I feel impossibly small against him—but safe.
The quilt folds beneath us as we descend together. I lie back, hair fanned across the soft bedding, the lamplight warming the curve of my bare shoulder as I shed the last layer between us. His eyes track every motion, red irises glowing, pupils wide with desire. He kneels beside me, breathing hard, and I watch him, chest rising and falling, jaw clenched like he’s holding something back.
“You’re… beautiful,” he mutters like he doesn’t know how to say it, as if the word tastes strange in his mouth. He lifts a hand—his cybernetic one—and cups my breast with gentle curiosity. The metal fingers aren’t cold; they’re warm from his body heat, and surprisingly gentle. His thumb brushes across my nipple, and I gasp.
My back arches. “Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t.
