When it was over, we lay locked together on the furs, surrounded by the aftermath of battle.
"The Keep will need repairs," I said eventually. "The storage chamber is gone. Some of the secondary structures took damage."
"We'll rebuild." His hand stroked my hair. "We have time."
"Five days until the portal."
"Yes." He was quiet for a moment. "Will you watch it open?"
I thought about it. The portal back to human space. Back to the debt that had been cleared. Back to a life where no one had ever chosen me.
"No," I said. "I don't need to watch it. I already know where I belong."
His arms tightened around me. The knot pulsed, releasing more seed into my already-full womb.
Outside the Keep, the Ossuary was quiet. The ferals were dead. The threat was ended. And somewhere inside me, our offspring grew, unaware of the violence that had been committed to protect it.
We'd survived. We would rebuild.
KERRIS
Day thirty. The portal opened at dawn.
I felt the shift before I saw it. A vibration that traveled through the bone beneath my feet. The same sensation I'd felt thirty days ago, when I'd stepped through from the other side and landed in a world of calcium and dust.
Bruk stood at the entrance to the Keep, watching the horizon where the light had begun to shimmer. His hand rested on my shoulder, warm and steady.
"You can still go," he said.
I looked at him. Eight feet of calcified armor, amber eyes that had watched me suffer and break and choose. The monster who'd hunted me through a maze, edged me until I crawled, bred me until I passed out. The builder who'd spent twenty cycles constructing a home for someone who might never come.
My partner. The father of the offspring growing inside me.
"I know," I said.
We walked to the portal together.
It hung in the air at the center of the territory, a shimmering oval of light that hadn't been there yesterday and wouldn't be there tomorrow. Through its surface, I could see hints of thehuman world. Sterile corridors, artificial lighting, the clean lines of a processing facility.
The debt was cleared. The contract was fulfilled. I'd survived thirty days in the Ossuary, and now I was free to return to human space with a clean slate and a new identity.
Free to return to a converted storage unit. To meal replacement bars. To a life of building things for people who didn't care about me.
I stepped closer to the portal. Close enough to feel its pull, its promise of escape.
Behind me, Bruk went still. Waiting. Always waiting.
I thought about my parents. About Jonah. About the 180,000 credits of debt that had been the excuse I'd used to come here. About the real reason: the need to disappear from a life where no one had ever chosen me.
I thought about the Keep. About the nursery with its twelve platforms, waiting for offspring. About the ventilation system I'd redesigned, the traps I'd built, the defensive network that had saved our lives.
I thought about the offspring growing inside me. Already two weeks along, if my calculations were correct. Already changing my body, preparing me for motherhood on an alien world.
I turned my back on the portal.
Bruk was watching me. His expression was unreadable, but I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands had curled into fists at his sides. Twenty cycles of waiting, and this was the moment that would determine if the waiting had been worth it.
"I'm not going," I said.
