Chapter 11
LUNA
Idon’t know what scares me more—how deeply I still feel for him, or how easy it’s becoming to imagine a future with him again.
That’s the thought that won’t let me go, that digs its claws into me while I chop vegetables in my tiny kitchen, Solie humming tunelessly in the other room.
I should be terrified of what this means.
Instead, I’m standing here, setting three plates on the table instead of two, like I’ve already made my choice.
When I open the door, Kraj is there, filling the hallway with his broad frame, his scales catching the dying glow of Arkosh’s twin suns. He doesn’t need words—his eyes say enough. But he still smiles, a little hesitant, a little self-conscious, like he’s not sure if he belongs here.
“Dinner,” I say, voice steadier than I feel. “Come in.”
The smell of roasted beans and spiced root fills the apartment, and Solie barrels into the room, eyes bright.
“Mister dragon man!” she squeals, flinging herself against his leg.
He crouches, big claws tucked away, and ruffles her hair like he’s been doing it all his life.
My chest tightens at how natural it looks. How natural it feels.
At the table, it almost feels normal. He sits across from me, Solie between us, her little legs swinging under the chair. She chatters non-stop, testing him with question after question, her fork clattering against her plate as she leans too far this way and that.
“Can you change colors?” she demands between bites. “Like, can you turn pink?”
Kraj chuckles, low and warm, and his eyes shimmer—molten gold melting into a startling shade of violet. Solie gasps, covering her mouth with both hands. “Mama, look!”
“Show-off,” I mutter, but the corner of my mouth betrays me, curling upward.
“Again! Again!” Solie insists.
Kraj tilts his head, jawline sharpening, then softening, shifting subtly until he looks almost human for a heartbeat. Just a flicker. A trick. Solie squeals with laughter and claps her hands. “You are a superhero!”
“I told you,” he says, grinning at her, and my heart aches at the sight.
After dinner, after dishes are stacked in the sink and Solie has been wrangled through bath time and tucked into bed, I collapse onto the couch.
My body aches in that bone-deep way that comes from years of long shifts and longer silences.
But tonight, the silence is different. Tonight, he lowers himself beside me, the couch groaning under his weight, our knees brushing in a way that feels deliberate. My pulse stutters.
For a while, we don’t speak. Just sit there, listening to the hum of the solar lamp outside the window, the occasional creak of pipes as the heater cycles.
His warmth radiates through the space between us, his scent—earthy, faintly metallic, with a hint of something I can only call him—curling into my lungs.
“You hate it here?” he asks finally, voice low, rough.
I shake my head. “No. I don’t hate. It’s… harsh. Demanding. But it’s honest. People here don’t pretend to be more than they are.”
He waits, golden eyes steady, patient in a way I never thought he could be.
“It wasn’t the frontier that wore me down,” I confess, words spilling before I can stop them. “It was missing someone I didn’t think I should miss.”
His breath catches, barely audible, but I hear it.
Feel it. And when I finally look up at him, really look, I see all the years between us.
The battles fought, the wounds carried, the mistakes we’ll never undo.
But I also see the boyish grin he used to give me in the shadows of the IHC hallways, the warmth in his touch when he thought no one was looking.
He leans closer, slow, deliberate, giving me every chance to stop him.
I don’t.
When his lips find mine, the kiss is soft at first, tentative.
Testing. But the moment I answer—tilting into him, clutching the rough fabric of his jacket—it deepens, hungry and desperate, like we’ve both been starving for this without realizing it.
His hands cradle my face, claws careful against my skin, and I forget everything else. The war. The secrets. The lies.
For one long, breathless moment, there’s only us. Only this.
And when I finally pull back, gasping, I don’t push him away.
I fall. Again.
His kiss lingers on me long after our lips part, after the rush of air leaves my chest and I collapse against him, trembling.
I don’t know who moves first, him or me, but it doesn’t matter—we’re already reaching for each other, already falling into a gravity neither of us can resist. The couch creaks under us, our knees tangled, my hands clutching at his jacket like it’s the only thing tethering me to the ground.
“Kraj,” I whisper, the word spilling out unbidden, raw.
“Say it again,” he growls softly, his forehead pressed to mine, his breath hot against my lips.
“Kraj.”
He groans, and that’s it. He lifts me like I weigh nothing, carries me toward the bedroom, his scales rasping lightly against my bare skin where my tunic has ridden up. The sensation sends shivers crawling across me, and I don’t fight it. Stars help me, I don’t want to fight it.
This time, it’s different. Not frantic, not desperate like that first night we fell back into each other’s orbit. No, this time it’s slow. Patient. Reverent.
He lays me down like I’m something breakable, like I’m not the woman who’s held a crying baby through sleepless nights, who’s worked sixteen-hour shifts just to keep food on the table.
His claws trace my skin with a tenderness I didn’t realize I’d been starving for.
Every touch is deliberate, every kiss placed like a vow.
“Luna,” he murmurs again and again, the syllables low and rough, like he’s carving them into my bones. “Luna.”
I answer without hesitation, my voice carrying the years of longing and the ache of everything we lost. “Kraj.”
The way he looks at me—it isn’t hunger alone. It’s reverence. Worship. I feel seen. Truly seen. Not as a failed aide to an IHC commander. Not as a woman banished to a frontier outpost. Not even as Solie’s mother. Just… me. Luna.
The rhythm we find is unhurried, like we both know we’ve been given back something stolen and we’re afraid to waste a single second of it. My nails dig into his shoulders, my body arching to meet his as though I’ve been waiting three years for this very moment. Because I have. Stars above, I have.
“Mine,” he breathes against my throat, not as a command but as a prayer.
“Yes,” I answer, the word ripped from somewhere deep, someplace too raw to deny. “Yours.”
When it finally crests—when the storm breaks—it isn’t the violent, desperate release I half-expected. It’s something softer. Deeper. A shattering made of light, not destruction. And when we collapse together, our limbs tangled, our breaths syncing in the hush of the small room, I feel… whole.
We lie there in the aftermath, heat clinging to our skin, the faint hum of the heater filling the silence.
His arm is heavy and warm across my waist, his claws stroking lazy patterns over my forearm.
I press my cheek to his chest, listening to the slow, steady drum of his heart, a sound I once thought I’d never hear again this close.
He whispers into my hair, voice thick with exhaustion and something softer. “Next weekend. The festival in the plaza—they’ll have music, food stalls. Take Solie. I’ll be there.”
He talks of weekends, of plans, of a future like it’s already ours. And I want to believe it. Stars, I want to. I want to imagine Solie laughing with him at the festival, her little hand tucked safely in his. I want to imagine us walking side by side, not hiding, not afraid.
But I know better.
The truth is a blade pressed to both our throats, waiting.
The secret I’ve kept—our daughter, his daughter—lurks in every laugh, in every golden-eyed glance Solie throws his way.
And when it comes out, when the truth finally tears through the fragile fabric of what we’re rebuilding… will it break us all over again?
I press my face deeper into his chest, letting his warmth soak into me, trying to bury the fear in the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
“Luna?” he murmurs sleepily.
“Mm?”
“Don’t leave me again.”
My throat tightens. I want to promise him. I want to say the words and mean them. But the truth burns on my tongue, heavy and bitter, and all I can manage is a shaky whisper. “I don’t want to.”
He seems to accept it, because he sighs and pulls me tighter, his body cocooning mine, his warmth lulling me toward sleep.
But long after his breathing evens out, I lie awake, eyes fixed on the shadows dancing across the ceiling.
Because I know what’s coming.
And I’m terrified.