Page 88 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“I still don’t trust the bond.”

“I know.”

“I don’t even trust myself around you right now.”

My hand moves to her cheek, and she leans into it before either of us can pretend she does not. “Then we do not make promises in a ruin chamber while bleeding.”

Her eyes close briefly. “That is annoyingly reasonable.”

“I have moments.”

She opens her eyes again, and the softness there is more dangerous than her defiance ever was. “What do we do, then?”

Above us, a distant impact shudders through the chamber ceiling. Brakk swears from the far wall, and Sira calls softly that the lower passage remains open but unstable. Reality returns reluctantly, bringing pain, pursuit, and the archive’s unresolved hunger with it.

I rest my forehead against Anita’s one last time. “We breathe. We stand. We keep moving.”

Her fingers curl in my torn shirt. “That’s all?”

“For now.”

She nods, though the movement is small.

When she shifts back, the distance between us feels newly charged and newly painful. Her lips are swollen from mine. Dust and tears mark her face. She looks shaken in a way that has little to do with the collapsing chamber.

I suspect I look the same.

Brakk’s voice drifts across the room with forced casualness. “Everybody decent, emotionally or otherwise?”

Anita wipes at her face and turns without fully leaving my reach. “Define decent.”

“Alive, clothed, and unlikely to make me need therapy.”

She glances at me, and color rises under the dust on her cheeks. “Two out of three.”

Brakk groans. “I did not ask for honesty.”

Sira approaches with measured grace, her eyes moving from Anita to me with gentle understanding she is too polite to name. “The lower passage is stable for now. The Choir will need time to cut through the folded ring above us, but not enough time for rest.”

I rise slowly, pain pulling across my chest and side. Anita stands with me, one hand hovering near my arm as if she wants to help and resents the instinct. I let her decide. After a moment, she grips my forearm and steadies me anyway.

The contact is quiet.

That makes it harder to dismiss.

I retrieve my weapon and check the charge. Brakk shoulders his cutter. Sira lifts the archive case before Anita can bend for it, and Anita looks ready to argue until Sira’s calm gaze stops her.

“You may reclaim it after your hands stop shaking,” Sira says.

Anita exhales. “Fine. But if it starts whispering, don’t answer in a mysterious voice.”

“I will answer in a very practical voice.”

Brakk shudders. “That might be worse.”

The lower passage opens ahead of us, narrow and sloping into deeper dark. Warm air rises from it in slow waves carrying the scent of ancient power and sealed memory. Behind us, the chamber where fear turned into hunger continues humming, indifferent to what it witnessed.

I step toward the passage, then pause when Anita draws even with me.