Page 54 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Ghar’s face closes down with terrifying precision. Not rage. Something colder and more dangerous.

When he speaks again, every word lands with controlled force.

“Do not accuse me of surrendering my will.”

The quiet intensity in his voice hits harder than shouting would have.

I cross my arms tightly. “Then explain it to me.”

For a long moment, he simply looks at me.

Not through me.

At me.

The bond hums painfully beneath my skin while the chamber lights pulse faintly under our feet. Somewhere far above us, distant impacts rumble through buried stone as the Choir secures the surface.

Finally, Ghar speaks.

“Instinct may turn my head when you enter a room,” he says. “Instinct may sharpen fear when you are threatened. Instinct may make me aware of your location before conscious thought catches up. I will not insult either of us by pretending otherwise.”

I swallow hard but say nothing.

His voice lowers further.

“But instinct does not decide what I do after that awareness arrives.”

The chamber feels painfully still.

Ghar takes another slow step toward me. “Instinct did not make me erase your access trail in the scan lab,” he says. “Instinct did not make me recover Teren’s case instead of destroying it to keep you safer. Instinct did not make me run back into open fire because I understood what that evidence meant to you and what it meant to him.”

The mention of Teren cuts through me so sharply that I look away instinctively.

Ghar does not let the silence save me.

“I left the military because I watched people surrender their choices to destiny,” he says, his voice turning colder now, edged with old disgust and buried grief. “I watched commanders excuse atrocities because prophecy told them history required sacrifice. I watched soldiers stop questioning themselves because they believed fate had already judged their enemies for them.”

His eyes lock onto mine again.

“I choose every action I take,” he says. “Every one.”

The words move through me with terrible precision.

I want to dismiss them immediately. I want to armor myself behind sarcasm, cynicism, academic detachment, literally anything except the dangerous warmth blooming low in my chest.

Because he means it.

That is the problem.

Nothing in his face looks romanticized or manipulated. He sounds offended by the very idea that destiny could own him. The fury in him is not directed at me. It is directed at any force—religious, biological, cosmic—that tries to claim authority over his decisions.

And horrifyingly enough, I believe him.

I hate that.

Brakk clears his throat awkwardly and points toward the illuminated floor. “Well, this has all been emotionally devastating, but the haunted room is doing something again.”

Everyone looks down.