I nod, though she can’t see it.
“One day,” I promise.
“Soon,” she whispers.
The ship groans, ancient metal singing a lullaby in its own dialect. Ripley shifts again above us, snoring softly now. Some quiet corner of the galaxy hums outside, unaware of the war we’ve fled or the future we’re fumbling toward.
And for the first time in my life, I let myself believe we might just make it.
CHAPTER 28
RHEA
We find it by accident.
A moon with a sky like melted emerald. The kind of place that doesn’t show up on nav charts with names or flags—just coordinates and a whisper.
There’s a single cluster of buildings, low and curved like they were shaped by the wind. No tourists. No tech beyond the basics. Just quiet.
We rent a place with creaking floors and windows that don’t seal all the way. The wind smells faintly metallic, like wet iron and wild herbs. Ripley calls it “fairy air.” I let her have that.
The house is small—kitchen, two rooms, an open-air deck—but it’s enough. We don’t need bunkers or blast doors. Just soft beds and the space to exhale.
The lake out back isn’t water, not really. It's a gravity-variable fluid that glows faint blue at night and resists every known classification. The locals call it “mirrorwash.” I call it a blessing.
I teach Ripley how to swim in it.
She’s awkward at first—too many limbs, too much laughing—but she gets the hang of it faster than I did. Her curls float like a halo, and her shrieks echo off the cliffs like music.
Valtron builds a bench near the shore. Real wood. No synth. Just his hands, calloused and steady, shaping something that won’t break under weight.
He builds a swing, too, hung from a crooked, bone-pale tree that sways like it’s always dancing. He doesn’t say why. But I know. He’s building the childhood she almost missed.
We eat simple food. Flatbread cooked over a real fire. Fruit that stains our fingers red. Soup that simmers for hours and tastes like patience. We wear linen and laugh when it wrinkles.
No plasma. No encryption keys. No threat assessments or locked doors. Just breath. And each other.
That night, the wind picks up, rattling the loose pane in our bedroom window. It’s not a threatening sound anymore; it’s just the planet breathing. Valtron stands by the foot of the bed, the moonlight turning his scales to dark silver. He looks out at the lake, shoulders taut, not with tension, but with a kind of disbelief.
I walk up behind him and rest my cheek against his back. He’s warm. Solid. Here.
“You’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I whisper.
He turns, his golden eyes catching mine. The rest of the world stops pretending it exists.
“I’m waiting to wake up,” he admits, his voice rough and low. It scrapes over me like gravel and silk. “I spent so long running toward a fight, I don’t know how to stand still.”
I reach up, tracing the line of his jaw. “You aren’t standing still. You’re planting roots. There’s a difference.”
He stares down at me, and the intensity in his gaze steals the air from my lungs. “You did this. You saved us.”
“We saved each other.”
He shakes his head, then captures my hand, pressing a kiss to my palm that sends a jolt straight to my core. “I look at you,” he rasps, “and I don’t see the reporter or the fugitive. I see my life.”
That breaks something in me. The last wall I didn’t know I was holding up.
“Then stop talking,” I breathe, “and live it.”
