He opens his eyes.
“I hate that you had to,” he says. “I hate what this war made of us.”
My fingers slide across the scar on his shoulder.
“Do you regret it?”
He lifts his gaze, meeting mine fully.
“Regret surviving? No. Regret coming back to find you? Never.”
I blink hard. “Even after what I hid?”
His jaw flexes, but he doesn’t look away. “You did what you had to. To keep her safe. To keep yourself safe.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No,” he says. “But it makes it real.”
I bury my face in his chest, clutching at him like he’s my last breath.
He strokes my hair. Slow. Methodical. Like the motion itself is holding him together.
“I don’t want her to grow up like this,” I say, voice muffled. “Always running. Always scared.”
“She won’t,” he murmurs. “Not if I can help it.”
The way he says it—calm, certain, unwavering—makes me believe him. Even if just for a second.
I kiss the center of his chest, where I know his second heart beats. The Vakutan side of him that survived even when everything else tried to break.
And maybe that’s what I’m finally learning.
We don’t survive despite the cracks.
We survive because of them.
______________________________________________________________________________
The sky inside the dome flashes crimson—too much color, too much noise—and my gut twists before the sirens even start. I know that scream. That tremble in the forcefield dome, the metallic groan in the floor. It’s not chaos. It’s the plan. Our plan.
My heart stutters anyway.
"Collapse sequence initiated," the automated voice drones. Drones like it’s not my whole damn life teetering on the edge of this bluff. I press my fingers against the override on the med-station wall and sprint. Every step echoes like a countdown.
Through the thick blast-proof glass, I see Vael.
He’s on his knees, one arm locked straight against the floor like he’s holding himself up by will alone. His other hand claws at the back of his neck—right where his cybernetic implant connects. There’s a glow there, pulsing. Too bright. Too fast.
The overload.
“Dr. Sorala!” a technician barks, panicked. “We’ve got a neural spike! Subject’s crashing!”
I burst into the dome.
Vael collapses.
His massive body slams to the floor with a gut-wrenching thud, limbs twitching, sensors flaring red. I drop to my knees beside him, already pulling the stabilizer from my belt.
