Page 154 of Pocket Wife

Not alarm.

Purpose.

I open my eyes.

“I have to go back,” I say.

“I know.”

“Rethan—”

“I know.”

He kisses me once more, slow and certain, and helps me to my feet.

We dress in silence, touching when we can, leaving the barn behind like a secret the valley will never need to know.

I walk back toward the meeting hall with my boots dusty and my hair wild and my heart so full I think it might break.

Rethan walks beside me until the last threshold, where procedure waits.

And the bond carries us both forward, stronger than any law Helix could write.

CHAPTER 40

RETHAN

Istop at the meeting hall threshold because law still stands between us.

Lucy crosses first.

Mud streaks her trousers. Her curls have come loose around her face. Her eyes carry the hard brightness of someone who has survived too much to return unchanged, and beneath the exhaustion is something Helix failed to take.

She is still here.

Every head turns toward her.

No one speaks.

Then Nara rises from the clinic table with her son in her arms. “The clinic flow is holding.”

Lucy closes her eyes.

Only for a second.

I feel the relief pass through the bond, deep and shaking, before she opens them again and walks to the front board.

Not to me.

To the work.

I love her more fiercely for it.

Adjudicator Salo’s display brightens. Reviewer Noll remains beside him. Director Kaun’s seal pulses in the upper corner, no longer passive, no longer cautious. Helix’s panel shows Advocate Sen alone.

Corvek is still absent.

That absence has become its own answer.