For a long moment, we just lie there.
Our breaths tangled. Our bodies marked with love and war.
Then I lift my head.
“Kallus,” I whisper, voice hoarse. “You have a daughter.”
He stiffens.
“They took her,” I say. “They hid her from you. From me. She’s ours, and we have to get her back.”
He goes deathly still. His jaw tightens. For a second, I wonder if I’ve broken him.
Then—
A slow smile.
It starts in his eyes. A wicked gleam. Then it spreads to his mouth, a curl of fangs and fury, equal parts happiness and sadistic glee.
“They dared,” he growls. “They dared take what is mine.”
He sits up, pulls me into his lap, his voice vibrating through me like a battle drum.
“Nothing will stop us,” he says, “from taking her back.”
And I believe him.
Because I’ve seen what happens when you try to cage a god.
CHAPTER 23
KALLUS
The holorecording loops again.
The moment her tiny hand curls into a fist. The way her crimson-tinged eyes glint. The flash of her little teeth before she lunges—raw, wild, perfect—and sinks them into the teacher’s wrist.
I can’t stop watching it.
“She bit me!” the woman on the recording shrieks, clutching her arm, tears streaming down her face. “She bit me like an animal!”
Damn right, she did.
I let the recording play again, chest swelling with something I haven’t felt in years—pride.
“That’s my girl,” I whisper, a slow, reverent grin spreading across my face. “Reaper through and through.”
Ayla stands near the console, arms crossed tight over her chest. She’s been silent since she pulled the file from Earth First’s secure servers. Risked everything just to show me this.
“She’s fierce,” I say, glancing over. “Like her mother.”
Ayla doesn’t smile. Her eyes are full of shadow.
I narrow mine. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She hesitates. Then turns, tapping something on her datapad. A new file pops up. Medical data. Gene maps. Treatment logs.
I skim them. My heart slows.
