Page 273 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

She looks at me. “Ready?”

“No.”

She laughs. “Honest.”

“Always, with you.”

Her smile turns soft. “Then let’s go anyway.”

We step onto the command deck together.

Brakk looks over his shoulder. “Director, please tell the ship AI that my engineering overrides are an expression of love.”

Anita straps into the center seat. “Ship, Brakk’s engineering overrides are an expression of supervised love pending safety review.”

The AI replies in a smooth neutral voice. “Statement logged as emotionally irrelevant.”

Brakk slaps the console. “See? Rude.”

Sira smiles. “The ship knows you.”

The crew laughs.

Anita looks around the command deck, at the team, the consoles, the viewport, the future gathering itself into motion. For once, she does not hide her happiness. It sits openly in her eyes, bright and startled and brave.

I take the security station beside her.

She glances at me. “Sentimental old man.”

“Yes,” I say. “And yours.”

Her breath catches. Then she smiles fully.

The docking clamps release.

The Wayward Thesis glides forward into sunlight, carrying dangerous questions, imperfect safeguards, a crew ridiculous enough to survive us, and the first stable thing I have trusted in years.

No fate required.

CHAPTER 39

ANITA

The Coalition Academic Summit takes place inside a former temple converted into a diplomatic forum, which feels either poetic or deeply irresponsible depending on how much sleep a person has had.

I have had very little.

The chamber rises around me in layered circles of dark blue stone veined with silver mineral lines that catch the overhead light like frozen lightning. Ancient Ataxian prayer carvings still wind along the upper arches despite the room’s modernization, their softened edges carrying centuries of fingertips, arguments, and desperate hopes. The air smells of polished stone, expensive incense somebody insisted on burning for “cultural continuity,” warm projector systems, and the sharp bitter sting of the stimulant tea I drank too quickly an hour ago. Hundreds of voices echo through the massive hall in overlapping currents—scholars, theologians, military observers, reporters, translators, political aides—all speaking with the particular intensity of people who suspect reality may have changed underneath them while they were filing paperwork.

At the center of it all stands my presentation platform.

Which currently feels less like a podium and more like an execution scaffold with better lighting.

“You’re grinding your teeth,” Ghar murmurs beside me.

“I’m deciding whether fleeing into the ventilation system would damage diplomatic relations.”

“Yes.”