Page 33 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“Sira speaks carefully. That does not mean she speaks rarely.”

“So it’s true?”

“Vakutans revere them. We do not pray to them.”

“Because divine help is unreliable?”

“Because divine help does not excuse weakness.”

Anita studies me over the rim of her bowl. “That sounds exhausting.”

“It is culture.”

“Those can overlap.”

I glance toward the window. Beyond it, Nareth-Kul’s floodlit terraces descend into darkness. “We are taught that the Grand Design exists, but we are not children waiting for ancient hands to feed us. We fight. We build. We protect. If the Precursors shaped the road, we still have to walk it.”

“And if the road leads somewhere awful?”

“Then we walk with weapons.”

She laughs quietly, then seems annoyed that she did. “That might be the most Vakutan sentence ever spoken.”

“It is in the running.”

Her spoon taps against the bowl. “What about jalshagar?”

My appetite dies.

Anita notices. Of course she notices.

“There it is,” she says softly. “The big sacred lightning strike nobody wants to discuss like adults.”

I keep my voice even. “You dismissed it as neurological stress.”

“I am still very fond of that theory.”

“No, you are not.”

Her eyes narrow. “Do not tell me what I believe.”

“I am telling you what you fear.”

“Careful, Security Wall. That almost sounded like insight.”

“It was an assessment.”

“Of course it was.”

She looks down at her stew, but the humor does not entirely protect her now. The mess noise rises around us, utensils scraping, voices murmuring, heaters rattling against the cold. For a moment, we are strangely alone inside all of it.

Anita says, “Do you believe the bond means something because the universe says it does?”

Once, the answer would have been easy.

Once, I would have said yes because every instructor, elder, priest, and battle-song taught me that jalshagar recognition was the surest proof that the Precursors still moved through mortal lives. I would have said the bond was sacred. I would have said it honored us. I would have said many noble things with a soldier’s certainty, before certainty began to smell like burned cities.

I set my spoon down.