Page 80 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“If you rush, the nexus may kill you before they arrive.”

“Ghar, please move.”

His expression changes slightly at the word please, which is unfair because I meant it tactically and apparently my face did something else.

Brakk lifts one hand from behind us. “For what it’s worth, which is probably very little because nobody respects the mechanic until things explode, I am on Team Check the Bridge.”

I glare over Ghar’s shoulder. “Traitor.”

Brakk points toward the abyss. “That bridge appeared out of nowhere over an architectural death pit. I feel very good about my cowardice.”

Sira steps beside him. “I also recommend caution, though I understand Anita’s urgency.”

I give her an exasperated look. “That was a diplomat’s betrayal.”

Sira inclines her head. “I strive for balance.”

Ghar keeps his voice level. “We rest here, examine the bridge, then cross.”

“No.”

His eyes harden. “Anita.”

“No,” I repeat, more quietly this time. “We cannot keep treating the archive like ordinary terrain. The system is responding to the fragments because it wants something, or because it recognizes something, or because we are accidentally satisfying conditions built into it. Every delay changes the interaction. Every firefight changes the environment. Every time the Choir forces their way closer, we lose the chance to understand this place on its own terms.”

Ghar leans closer, his voice dropping so the others do not become the center of the argument. “You are asking me to risk everyone because the ruins have you by the throat.”

His words strike too close.

“Maybe they do.”

Pain flickers through his eyes before discipline buries it.

I hate that I put it there.

“I am not trying to drag you into this,” I say, though even as I say it, the lie collapses under its own weight. “No. That’s not true. I am dragging you into it. All of you. I keep saying the truth matters, and it does, but that doesn’t make me any less responsible for where my obsession leads.”

Brakk’s expression softens in the background, but he wisely stays quiet.

Ghar studies me for a long moment. The chamber’s light moves over his scars, catching along the black ridge markings at his jaw and shoulders. When he speaks again, the anger has not vanished, but it has changed shape.

“You know this is obsession.”

“Of course I know.”

“And still you want to cross.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The answer rises immediately, but I have to force it through a throat gone tight. “Because somebody buried the past so thoroughly that entire civilizations grew up on curated mythology. Because Teren died saving a case full of fragments, and I can’t let that mean nothing. Because every powerful institution in the galaxy will try to own, suppress, sanitize, or weaponize this if we survive long enough to tell anyone. Because right now, down here, we may be the only people who can see the truth before everyone starts fighting over it.”

Ghar’s gaze does not leave mine. “That is a heavy burden for four exhausted people.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”