Page 57 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz
Unmovable.
Unreachable.
“Grau,” I begin — then stop.
Because what?
I don’t know how to phrase it.
Because I want to know what he’s holding back?
Because it feels like there’s something beneath the surface — something dangerous and unfathomably deep — and he’s deliberately keeping it from me?
“Yes,” I say instead. “If you’re holding up, then that’s good.”
He stares into his coffee — black like voidlight — and I watch the way his shoulders tense under the weight of some unspoken burden. I can feel it like static on the skin.
And I realize:
I don’t know him as well as I think.
I thought I did.
But this — this careful restraint — is something else entirely.
Something he won’t let slip.
Not even to me.
Not even when his eyes darken at the edges, not even in the quiet way his jaw tightens when Tidball’s name crosses my lips.
He sits there, mug in hands, a man shaped by war and instinct, and the room feels too small for all the things left unsaid between us.
And I wonder — not for the first time — if loving a Reaper means always standing on the edge of catastrophe.
Because with him, I’m never sure where safety ends and danger begins.
He sets his coffee down — deliberately — like he’s setting a boundary.
“Yara,” he says, voice low, “I’m here.”
Notherehere.
Not falling into me like last night.
Just… present.
Like a promise wrapped in restraint.
“I know,” I whisper.
But the words feel like a confession.
Because Idoknow.
I know that his presence is the one point of stability in my life right now.
More steady than contracts, more constant than crisis.
