I still against him.
“Samai found records in Vezra's files. She was trying to escape. Take us somewhere my father couldn't reach.” His voice roughens further, catching on edges of grief thirty years sharp. “She loved us enough to risk everything, and I believed thatlove destroyed her. When my father said love was a weakness, I believed him because I thought he was right.”
“But love didn't destroy her. He did.”
“Yes.” He exhales, and decades of grief move through that single breath. “He did. And now he will pay.”
I press closer, offering what words can't carry. His arms tighten around me, and his knot throbs inside me, still holding us locked together while his body decides we're finished.
“I wonder what it would be like if our mothers had lived. How that would have changed us. How our lives might be different.” The thought spirals outward, touching all the paths I didn't take. Would I be here now? Would I have joined the forces and become a medic at all? Or would we still live in the slums, my mother's laughter filling rooms instead of absence? I'd never know. “I'd still be bailing my brother out of stupid mistakes.”
One side of his lips tips up into a half smile. “Then I might never have met you. And I would never have thanked your irresponsible brother for bringing you to me.”
The smile fades. His gaze holds mine, and the silver of his eyes darkens with an intensity that makes my pulse stutter. No humor lives in his expression now. Only certainty. Only a promise that settles into the space between us and takes root.
“And now that I've found you, you'll always have a home.”
My chest expands around something too large to name. Heat prickles behind my eyes.
“A home together.”
The words leave my mouth, and their truth crashes through me.
A home. Not temporary quarters assigned by debt or a barracks bunk I’d vacate when orders came or the cramped apartment I shared with Tomás where I slept with one eye open, waiting for the next disaster.
A home. With him.
I have a place now. A harbor. Walls that will hold against storms because he'll stand between me and anything that threatens. I can put down roots here without bracing for them to be ripped up. I can build without waiting for destruction to follow.
And he has a space where the Chief Enforcer, now Lord of House Draven, can set down his mask. Where the hardness his father demanded can soften, and no one will use that softness against him. He can hum his mother’s song without hiding it, feed the strays without pretending it means nothing, be gentle. And I’ll guard that gentleness with everything I am.
We can be ourselves here. Our true selves. The ones we've hidden from a universe that punished vulnerability. The ones we've protected in secret, afraid that exposure meant destruction.
His knot softens. He slips free, and the emptiness that follows makes me reach for him. He catches my hands, presses them to his chest where his hearts beat, then rolls us until I'm draped across him with my cheek against his skin.
His release slides from my body, marking the sheets, marking me. I don't move away. I want to carry him with me. Want every Draveki who crosses my path to scent what we are to each other.
“Tomorrow we rebuild House Draven.” His lips brush my temple.
“Tonight we rest.”
“Tonight,” he agrees. His arms tighten around me. “And every night after.”
The exhaustion I've been fighting claims its due. Safe sleep. Real sleep. The kind I haven't had in years. Maybe ever.
I came to Vahiri Prime to save my brother. I found healing I didn't know I needed. A future I stopped believing in. A home I never dared want. Sleep takes me with his arms around me and his heartbeat beneath my ear.
Tomorrow we rebuild.
Tonight, we rest.
Epilogue
MAEVE
The medical bay is mine now. Not borrowed. Not tolerated. Mine, upgraded equipment filling every cabinet, supplies arriving without begging or barter. The diagnostic unit hums, a satisfied purr of technology that cost more than my entire military salary. When I run inventory each morning, the numbers never come up short.
Three days since we burned his father's world to ash, and I still wake expecting the ground to shift beneath me.
