Page 98 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

Brakk looks over his shoulder at her. “That was elegant and mean.”

Sira inclines her head. “I intended both.”

I slow despite myself.

Anita nearly walks into me, then stops with a breath that touches the back of my arm. The bond registers her nearness immediately. Heat moves beneath my skin, unwelcome and undeniable, followed by a familiar anger at my own response. I turn toward Sira because anger at her is safer than looking at Anita.

“This is not a philosophy chamber,” I say.

Sira meets my eyes without flinching. “No chamber is merely one thing down here.”

Brakk mutters, “I miss rooms that were just rooms.”

Anita shifts the archive case against her hip. “Sira, maybe don’t poke the giant wounded veteran while we’re in an evil hallway.”

“I am not poking him,” Sira says gently. “I am acknowledging the wound.”

My hand tightens around my weapon. “You know nothing about it.”

“I know what destabilized faith looks like,” Sira replies, her eyes holding no judgment. “My people have long lives, Ghar Vek’Talan. We have watched civilizations revise their gods, bury their gods, resurrect their gods, and blame one another for the graves.”

“This is not revision,” I say, hearing the rough edge enter my voice. “Revision is a priest adjusting doctrine after a political embarrassment. This is excavation beneath the foundation.”

Sira steps closer with careful slowness. “A foundation may be older than the name carved upon it.”

“That does not comfort me.”

“I did not expect it to.”

Anita’s eyes flick between us, restless and worried. “The archive doesn’t prove everything is meaningless.”

I laugh once, and the sound comes out harsher than I intend. “You do not know what it proves.”

“No, I don’t. That’s my entire problem. But I know the records are incomplete, filtered through systems we barely understand, and translated under pressure while people are trying to shoot us.”

“You think uncertainty saves the old truths?”

“I think uncertainty keeps us from burning them down before we know what’s load-bearing.”

The phrasing catches me off guard because it sounds like her and not like comfort borrowed from someone else. She looks exhausted, bruised, and furious with the universe, yet she is still trying to build a bridge across a collapse she helped expose.

That should soften me.

Instead, it hurts.

“Load-bearing,” I repeat. “The Grand Design justified armies.”

Her expression tightens. “People justified armies with it.”

“Do not separate them so easily.”

“I’m not trying to let anyone off the hook,” Anita says, stepping closer despite the danger in my voice. “I’m saying the existence of misuse doesn’t automatically tell us what the original thing was.”

The corridor hums louder, or perhaps my blood does. “Original thing,” I say. “That is the question now, is it not? We do not know the original thing. We may never have known it. We may have killed, prayed, mated, buried our dead, and built entire codes of honor around a story assembled from fragments by beings who were themselves frightened custodians of someone else’s experiment.”

Brakk shifts uneasily. “That is above my pay grade, and I have historically lied about my pay grade.”

Sira places one hand against the glowing wall, and the silver current brightens beneath her palm. “Meaning does not always descend from origin. Sometimes meaning accumulates through what living beings do with what they inherit.”