Anton’s face crumbled at word, and she watched him finally see what she had been trying to tell him for years—that she wasn’t a science project or a bargaining chip or a means to an end. She was a woman. A woman who had found love in the most unlikely of places.
“I didn’t…” Anton’s protest died before it fully formed. “I never meant…”
“Father.” She stepped between them, not to protect Anton from Valrek, but to keep the conversation from spiraling into violence. “Why are you here?”
He looked at her then. Really looked at her, at the fur wrapped around her shoulders, at the way she stood in front of her Vultor warrior, at the marks on her wrists and the new strength in her spine.
And she saw the moment he understood. He had never been the hero of her story.
The realization broke across his face like dawn over the ocean, slow at first, then all at once. His shoulders slumped, his hands dropped to his sides, and for the first time in her memory, her father looked truly defeated.
“Merrick is dead.” The words came out flat, emotionless. “They found his body washed up on the southern rocks this morning.”
She felt nothing.
She had expected guilt, perhaps. Or relief. Maybe even satisfaction at the knowledge that the man who had tried to cage her was gone forever. But there was only a hollow space where her fear of him had lived for so long.
“And the contract?”
“Gone.” He laughed bitterly. “Destroyed in the wreck, along with most of his records. His legal team is scrambling. Without documentation, they can’t enforce any of the claims.” He looked up at her, something flickering in his hollow eyes. “The debt is cancelled, Ariella. All of it. You’re free.”
Free.
The word echoed in the cave, bouncing off the stone walls. Valrek put his hand on her shoulder, his palm warm through the fur, grounding her in the reality of the moment.
“There’s more,” Anton continued. “I told them you were dead.”
She blinked, stunned by the announcement. “What?”
“I told the authorities. Merrick’s people. Everyone.” His voice dropped to barely a whisper. “I identified your body. One of the other passengers, a young woman about your size, was… unrecognizable. I told them it was you.”
The confession hung in the air between them.
She stared at her father, trying to reconcile this broken man with the one who had sold her to pay his debts. He had committed fraud. He’d lied to officials, to lawyers, to anyone who would listen. He’d risked his own freedom to give her a chance at escape.
Why?
“They’ll find out eventually.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. “When she’s identified. When her family comes looking.”
“She had no family.” His eyes were wet again. “No one to claim her. No one to notice if she… disappeared.” He shook his head. “I checked. I made sure. No one will come looking for her because no one was waiting for her to come home.”
Like Ariella herself, once. A woman with no one to miss her, no one to mourn her, no one to care if she vanished into the sea.
“Why?” The question tore itself from her throat. “After everything, after Merrick, after the suit, after you stood there and watched him drag me away, why would you do this?”
He was quiet for a long moment.
Behind her, she heard Lilani stirring in her alcove, making the small sounds of a child slowly waking. Valrek’s hand tightened on her shoulder, a silent reminder that whatever happened next, she wasn’t alone.
“Because you’re my daughter.”
The words were simple, almost too simple after everything that had happened between them. But there was something in his voice, a crack in the carefully constructed walls of detachment and scientific reasoning, that made her pause.
“I know what I did.” He spoke slowly, as if each word cost him something precious. “I know I used you. Experimented on you. Treated you like a… a test subject instead of a child. And I know that selling you to Merrick was the final betrayal.” His breath hitched. “I made excuses to myself for all of it. But when I saw that shuttle go down… When I thought you were dead because of me…”
He couldn’t finish.
She watched him break down, tears streaming down his lined face, his body shaking with sobs he’d probably been holding back for years. All the cold detachment, all the academic distance, all the walls he’d built between them, all of it crumbling like sandcastles in the tide.
