Chapter 23 Luna
LUNA
Vale’s workshop smells like hot metal and ozone, wires hissing under his soldering iron. The little shack is dim, lit only by a pair of buzzing strip-lamps overhead. Every time the current stutters, sparks spit, and I catch Solie’s wide eyes tracking them like fireflies.
“Don’t touch anything,” I warn her softly, guiding her back against my leg. She pouts, but obeys, thumb stuck stubbornly in her mouth.
Vale’s cigarette burns down to a nub between his teeth as he squints at the terminal. “Alright,” he mutters, tapping keys with nicotine-stained fingers. “You wanted ghosts, you’re getting ghosts. Clean as I can make ’em.”
I watch the screen, full of scrolling code and registry lines. It’s like staring at a language I once knew, one I’d buried after leaving the IHC. Now it comes back in fragments, enough to recognize the weight of what he’s doing. Vale isn’t just rewriting data; he’s weaving new lives out of smoke.
Kraj—no, Kael—paces behind me, too restless to sit. His claws twitch against his sides like he’s resisting the urge to rip something apart. Every time Vale pauses, he growls under his breath, and I have to reach out and catch his arm. “Patience,” I whisper.
He exhales hard through his nose, heat brushing my cheek. “I don’t like waiting on men like him.”
“He’s the only reason we have a chance,” I remind him.
Vale smirks without looking up. “Listen to her, dragon boy. You might be seven feet of murder, but in here? I’m god.”
Kael snarls low, but I squeeze his hand before he can snap. His eyes flick down to me, golden fire softening. He presses his forehead briefly to mine, and I feel the tension leak from him.
Vale chuckles. “That’s what I thought.”
The printer hums. Three slim chips eject into the tray. Vale picks them up with tweezers and lays them carefully on a ragged bit of cloth. “Here they are. Fresh IDs, right out of the oven.”
I pick one up, running my thumb over the etched code. “Luna Sarin,” it reads, as if I was born in the Zheln Sector and spent my life scrabbling on a mining moon. The lie is so neat it makes my skin crawl.
Kael holds his chip between two claws. “Kael Revik,” he says, tasting the name. His mouth twists. “Doesn’t fit.”
“It doesn’t have to fit,” Vale replies. “It just has to stick. You use it until it becomes your skin.”
Solie tugs on my sleeve, eyes round. “What about me, Mama?”
I kneel, pressing the last chip into her tiny palm. “That’s yours, baby. See? It says Sola. That’s who you’ll be for a while.”
“Sola,” she repeats carefully, rolling it around her tongue. She giggles. “Sounds funny.”
Kael crouches beside her, lowering his massive body until his golden eyes are level with hers. “Not funny,” he murmurs, brushing her hair back with a claw that trembles just slightly. “Strong. It sounds strong.”
She beams, teeth flashing, and whispers, “Sola,” again like it’s magic.
Vale clears his throat. “Practice them. Out loud. A slip-up at the wrong time gets you all killed.”
So we do.
“Kael Revik,” Kael rumbles.
“Luna Sarin,” I whisper.
“Sola!” Solie chirps, grinning.
The names feel heavy in my mouth, like stones I’m not ready to carry. We say them again, and again, until they start to taste hollow, until my tongue aches with the repetition. Each syllable is a thread tying us to this fiction, even as my heart rebels.
By the time we step out of Vale’s shack, the sky has gone blood-orange with Arkosh’s twin suns sinking low. The canyon winds bite sharp, tugging at my jacket. Solie tugs at Kael’s hand, skipping between us, her little voice piping, “Sola, Sola, Sola,” as if singing a new song.
But beneath the fragile rhythm of that joy, I feel the ground shifting.
News spreads fast on Arkosh. By the time we reach the tramline, the whispers are already circling:
The Coalition comm center is down. Dead as a husk.
Sabotage. Inside job. Targen’s furious.
They say he’s coming himself.
My stomach knots so tight I can barely breathe. If Targen’s coming here, to Wildwood, then the noose is already around our necks.
Kael’s hand squeezes mine hard enough to bruise. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t have to. I can see it in his eyes: this is exactly what he wanted. He baited the trap, and Targen took the hook. But baiting a predator doesn’t mean you survive the strike.
That night, Solie falls asleep curled between us, thumb back in her mouth, her little body radiating warmth.
The lamplight flickers soft over Kael’s scales, throwing golden shadows across the walls.
I lie awake, staring at them, listening to the steady sound of her breathing and the heavier rumble of his.
He has his arm curled around her, claws sheathed, body wrapped protectively as if nothing in the universe could breach that barrier. His other hand rests on my hip, anchoring me there beside them.
And I wonder—is this what safety feels like?
Or is it just the calm before the storm breaks?
I press a hand to my lips, feeling the ghost of his kiss still there, and whisper to the dark, “Is it possible to truly escape the past?”
Neither of them stirs.
But the silence that answers feels like a warning.
The lamps burn low, casting soft halos across the walls, but I don’t feel tired.
Not with Solie tucked warm between us, and Kael lying close enough that his heat seeps into my bones.
The outpost outside has gone quiet, though every so often a tram rattles faintly in the distance, like a memory of life carrying on.
Here inside this fragile bubble, it’s just us.
Kael’s golden eyes catch the lamplight, gleaming like coals. He hasn’t spoken in a long time, just stared at the ceiling, jaw tight. I know that look. The weight pressing down on him.
“Tell me,” I whisper, fingers brushing over his scaled arm.
His chest rises sharp, then falls slow. For a moment I think he won’t answer. Then his voice comes low, rough, as though it scrapes against the back of his throat.
“The dreams don’t stop.”
I blink. “Dreams?”
“Nightmares,” he corrects. His claws twitch once, retracting, like even the memory of them frightens him. “I see every face. Every soldier. Every villager. Doesn’t matter if they were enemy or ally. When I close my eyes, they’re there. Staring. Asking why.”
I squeeze his arm, grounding him. “And what do you tell them?”
His eyes flick to mine, raw and hollow. “That I don’t know. That I was told to. That survival mattered more than mercy. That’s the lie, isn’t it? You tell yourself it was duty, but duty doesn’t follow you into sleep. Guilt does.”
The air feels heavy between us. I swallow hard, tasting the metallic tang of fear—fear not of him, but of the black pit he carries inside. “Kael…”
“I killed for flags, Luna,” he growls softly. “For symbols I didn’t even believe in. And when the killing stopped, I killed to cover it. To bury the truth. I told myself I was sparing others, that maybe the lies protected someone. But all I was doing was stacking more bodies under my feet.”
He turns on his side, facing me now. His gaze is desperate, pleading. “I don’t know how to lay it down. I don’t know if I ever can.”
For a long moment, I can’t breathe. The silence stretches, broken only by Solie’s quiet breaths between us. She rolls slightly, thumb in her mouth, her little body pressed against my chest. My throat aches as I stroke her hair, my voice barely above a whisper.
“You know what the hardest day of my life was?”
His brows draw together. “Leaving me?”
I let out a humorless laugh. “Finding out I was pregnant.”
He stiffens, claws digging faintly into the blanket.
I press on. “I was on the station when the med-scan told me. Alone. The IHC had already cut me loose. Your ghost was everywhere, but you weren’t.
And I had this thing growing inside me, and all I could think was—how could I love part of a man I hated so much? ”
Kael flinches. “Luna…”
“I hated you,” I whisper, the words burning, because they’re true.
“I hated what you did to me. I hated that I let you close enough to break me. But gods help me, I missed you too. Every time she kicked, every time I felt her moving, I thought of you. Of your voice. Of your hands. And it made me sick, because I couldn’t scrub you out of me. Not from my body, not from my heart.”
His breath shudders, and for once, he doesn’t try to defend himself. He just listens.
“I raised her alone,” I continue, brushing Solie’s hair back from her scaled patch.
“I patched cargo records, scrubbed ship logs, worked shifts until my hands shook. And still, every night, I’d stare at her and wonder if she’d have your eyes, your temper, your curse.
I told myself I could keep her safe by keeping her secret. By keeping you away.”
Kael swallows hard, his throat working. His hand inches forward, hesitant, until his claws graze Solie’s blanket. “And did it work?”
I laugh bitterly. “You’re here, aren’t you? Somehow you found us anyway.”
Silence swallows us again. He looks down at her, at the little girl nestled between us. His face softens in a way I’ve never seen—not even years ago, before the lies, before the war. His voice is low when he speaks, almost reverent.
“She saved me, and I didn’t even know her name.”
I blink against the sting in my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I thought all I had left was the blood on my hands. Thought I was nothing but a weapon Targen kept pulling out of the box. But then she looked at me—like I wasn’t a monster. Like I was worth something. And it broke me, Luna. In ways I didn’t know I could still break.”
My lips tremble. I reach across Solie’s sleeping form, my fingers brushing his cheek. The scales are rough beneath my touch, but the warmth beneath them is alive, trembling.
“We can’t change the past,” I whisper. “But maybe we can stop running from it.”
His eyes burn. “And if the past comes knocking?”
“Then we answer together,” I say, firm despite the tears sliding hot down my cheeks.
He lets out a sound—half laugh, half sob—and presses his forehead to mine. “This time,” he says, voice breaking, “no lies. No silence.”
“This time,” I echo.
We don’t cry. Not really. The tears come, but they’re quiet. No dramatic collapse, no screaming. Just two broken people whispering truths into the dark, clutching each other across the body of the child who binds us.
We don’t run.
We choose.
When Kael leans in, his kiss isn’t hungry, isn’t desperate. It’s steady. Solid. The kind of kiss that says I see you. I still want you anyway.
And I kiss him back.
Later, the lamplight gutters out, and the world narrows to the slow rhythm of breath, the warmth of skin, the soft weight of Solie nestled between us.
“This time,” I murmur as sleep takes me, “we leave nothing unsaid.”
Kael’s arm tightens around me and Solie both. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
We fall asleep as a family.
For what might be the last night of peace we’ll ever know.