Chapter 27
LUNA
Hours drag like years.
The shuttle bay hums with low power, the walls sweating condensation from the shift in temperature as night deepens.
Vale paces by the loading ramp, boots clicking sharp on durasteel, muttering half-finished diagnostics under his breath.
I sit on a crate with Solie curled against me, her head heavy on my lap.
My fingers keep tangling in her hair, untangling the same knot over and over, anything to keep my hands from shaking.
Every creak of the canyon wind makes me flinch. Every shifting shadow on the canyon lip above sends my heart into my throat.
“Should’ve been back by now,” Vale mutters for the tenth time. His voice is sharp but I can hear the strain under it.
“Don’t,” I snap, more harshly than I mean to. My throat feels scraped raw. “Don’t say it.”
He stops pacing, glances at me, then looks away. “I’m just being real.”
I stroke Solie’s head and whisper, “He’ll come back.” I try to believe it. The words taste like iron.
The hours stretch longer. My mind spins through every possible outcome—Kraj bleeding out in the dust, captured, dragged screaming into Coalition custody. My stomach knots until it feels like I’ve swallowed glass.
Movement.
At first, I think it’s another phantom of my fear. Just the wind. But no. A shape. A silhouette dragging itself out of the canyon mist, broad shoulders hunched, gait uneven.
My breath seizes in my chest.
“Kraj,” I whisper, and the word is half prayer, half curse.
Solie jerks awake as if she feels it too. Her golden eyes go wide, and then she shrieks, a sound so piercing and bright it makes my chest ache. “KRAJ!”
She’s off my lap before I can stop her, little feet slapping across the deck. Vale swears under his breath, but he doesn’t move to stop her. We all just watch.
Kraj stumbles into the floodlight spill at the edge of the bay, blood streaking his face, one arm hanging limp, his clothes scorched and torn.
He looks like death. And still—still—when Solie barrels into him, he straightens.
He catches her. Lifts her. His claws are trembling, but he lifts her like she weighs nothing.
She presses her face to his jaw and giggles through her tears.
I can’t hold myself back. I collapse against him, knees giving out as the relief crashes through me. My tears burn hot, streaking his chest where I press my face. He smells like smoke and copper and dust, and underneath all of it—the familiar heat of him.
“You came back,” I whisper against his skin. “Gods, you came back.”
He doesn’t speak. His arms wrap around both of us, crushing us close, and his chest shudders with each ragged breath. Solie clings to his neck, little fingers curling in his scales. For a long time, the only sound is the thrum of the shuttle’s idle engines and our breathing tangled together.
When at last he eases me back, his eyes are molten—gold and red, fire licking behind the exhaustion.
Vale clears his throat. “So… I take it Targen won’t be a problem anymore?”
Kraj lowers Solie gently to the deck, then straightens with a wince.
His voice is gravel, ragged but steady. “He won’t walk right again.
His people won’t find him soon. Coalition comms are silent.
I tore their lines apart. And…” He pulls a cracked datapad from his belt, tosses it onto a crate.
“Their files are scrambled. Every log. Every record. Burned.”
Vale picks it up, scrolls through, lips twisting into something that almost looks like admiration. “Well I’ll be damned. You really did it. For now… you’re ghosts.”
The word settles over me like frost. Ghosts. Not citizens. Not fugitives. Something in between. Free but untethered.
Kraj’s gaze finds mine again. “We can disappear. If we move fast.”
That night, we burn everything.
Vale rigs a thermal barrel out by the edge of the pad.
The fire licks high into the dark, painting our faces red.
One by one, the old lives go in. IDs, datapads, logs, even Solie’s school slates.
The plastic curls and blackens, turning to ash.
Kraj drops his old field kit in last, the metal hissing and warping in the flames.
His face is carved from stone, but I see the twitch in his jaw, the tiny muscle that betrays the weight of what he’s letting go.
Solie stands beside me, wide-eyed. “Why are we burning my toys?”
I kneel to her, cupping her cheeks. The firelight dances in her eyes. “Because we don’t need them anymore, firefly. We’re starting fresh.”
She pouts, but when Kraj crouches beside us, his massive hand engulfing hers, she nods solemnly. Together, we watch it all burn.
At the edge of the launch pad, with the flames snapping behind us and the shuttle door yawning open, I turn to him. My voice is barely a whisper. “Are we really free?”
For a long moment, he doesn’t answer. His gaze drifts upward, toward the twin moons fading in the thinning clouds. His face is unreadable, carved by shadow and light. Then, slowly, he nods.
“As free as anyone ever gets.”
Something breaks loose in my chest. The fear doesn’t vanish, but it eases enough for me to breathe. I take his hand. Solie tugs on the other, her little fingers sticky with ash from touching the burned slates.
“Then let’s go.”
The shuttle hums as we step aboard. The air inside smells faintly of oil and old metal, but it feels like promise. Vale slides into the pilot’s chair, fingers dancing over controls.
The engines roar to life. The ground trembles beneath us.
I glance back one last time. Wildwood lies in the valley, quiet under the stars. Our old life—our heartbreak, our mistakes, our hiding—all of it left in smoke and ruins.
The shuttle rises. The moons slip away, swallowed by the black.
And stars. Endless, blazing, opening up before us like a door.
I squeeze Kraj’s hand until it hurts, Solie pressed between us, her laughter ringing bright.
I let myself believe. We’re not running anymore. We’re flying.