Different.
Perfect.
I don’t tellmy family.
Not yet.
Not because I’m ashamed. But because they’ll try to turn it into something it’s not.
A scandal.
A rebranding.
A comeback arc wrapped in tragedy and motherhood and holonet redemption.
They don’t get to have this.
Hedoesn’t get to be content fodder for the same people who told me to smile prettier after a bombing run.
He getsme.
The real me.
Or at least... whatever version of me is left after the wreckage.
The fear comes at night.
Not in dreams—those I can manage.
But in the quiet hours between midnight and morning, when the stars blur together and even Reflector’s pulse dims low.
I stare at the ceiling and think about what comes next.
About diapers and screams and sleepless nights.
About the first time he asks about his father.
About how I’ll have to look him in the eye and explain how the bravest, fiercest, stupidest man in the galaxy gave everything for someone he barely knew—and how she spent the rest of her life trying to beworthyof that choice.
I don’t know how to be a mother.
I don’t know how to raise a half-human, half-dragon-scaled legacy on a planet that barely tolerates difference when it’s fashionable.
But I know this:
I’m not giving up.
Not on him.
Not onme.
Garokk made his decision.
He chose death if it meant saving me.
Now I choose life.
Not because I’m ready.
