Chapter 25
The sound of footsteps woke her.
Ariella’s eyes snapped open, her body tensing before her mind fully caught up. The footsteps were wrong. They were too light to be Valrek’s and too heavy to be Lilani’s. A stranger was climbing the path to the cave, their breath ragged with exertion and something else. Fear.
Valrek shifted next to her, his arm tightening around her waist in a protective gesture that was more instinct than thought. His growl was low and dangerous, barely audible, but she felt the vibration of it through her entire body.
“Stay here.” His voice was rough with sleep, but his eyes were alert, already scanning the cave entrance for threats. “Keep Lilani quiet.”
“Wait.” She caught his arm as he started to rise. “I know those footsteps.”
She’d grown up listening to that particular shuffle—the academic’s gait, the hesitation before each step as if calculating the probability of a fall. The nervous breathing that grew worse under stress.
“It’s my father.”
Valrek’s eyes narrowed. “The man who sold you.”
“And the man who saved my life. Both things are true.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he remained where he was, his body still coiled with tension. She could sense his beast pacing just beneath the surface, waiting for permission to strike.
She rose slowly, wincing as her muscles protested. The after-effects of the suit had faded overnight, but her body still ached as if she’d been beaten. The burns on her wrists and ankles had scabbed over, angry red reminders of the cage she’d worn.
She wrapped one of the furs around her shoulders, suddenly very aware that she was wearing nothing beneath it, and moved towards the cave entrance.
The morning light was pale and grey, filtered through the clouds that still lingered from the storm.
The sea below was calmer now, though swells of white foam marked where the waves had carved new shapes into the shoreline.
Debris littered the beach, pieces of the shuttle scattered across the sand like the bones of some great beast.
And climbing the narrow path with all the grace of a newborn sea-bird was her father.
He looked terrible. His lab coat was gone, replaced by a simple jacket that hung off his thin frame. His spectacles were cracked, held together with what looked like medical tape. His grey hair, usually merely disheveled, now stood up in wild tufts as if he’d been pulling at it all night.
But it was his face that made her breath catch.
He looked old. Not just aged, but broken, as if something fundamental had cracked inside him. His eyes, when they finally lifted to meet hers, were red-rimmed and hollow with a grief so profound it made her chest ache.
“Ariella.”
Her name came out as a sob.
She didn’t move. All the words she’d imagined saying to him—the accusations, the recriminations, the years of hurt condensed into bitter syllables—lodged in her throat like stones.
He stumbled the last few steps up the path, reaching for her as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real, but he stopped just short of touching her, his fingers trembling in the air between them.
“You’re alive.” The words cracked on the second syllable. “When they found the shuttle wreckage, I thought…”
“How did you find me?” Her voice sounded steadier than she felt. She could feel Valrek’s presence behind her, a warm anchor in the chaos of her emotions.
“I looked everywhere.” He gave a broken laugh. “All night. I searched the beach, the cliffs, the rocks. I followed every scrap of debris, every piece of the shuttle. I thought…” He stopped, swallowed hard. “I thought you were dead. I thought I had killed you.”
You almost did.
The thought was sharp and ugly, but she didn’t say it out loud. There would be time for anger later. Right now, all she felt was a strange, hollow exhaustion.
“You should come inside.” She stepped back, gesturing towards the cave entrance. “Before someone sees you.”
He hesitated, his eyes darting past her into the darkness. She knew he was seeing the primitive furnishings and the rough stone walls, the furs piled near the embers of last night’s fire. A far cry from the sterile lab that had been her prison for most of her life.
And then his gaze found Valrek, his big body looming behind her. He had pulled on his leather vest but left his chest mostly bare, the scars of his exile clearly visible. His golden eyes glowed in the dimness, fixed on Anton with an intensity that made her breath catch.
“Father.” She kept her voice calm, neutral. “This is Valrek.”
Anton’s face went through several expressions in rapid succession—shock, fear, confusion, and finally something that might have been understanding. His mouth opened, closed, opened again.
“You’re the one,” he finally managed. “The Vultor warrior. The one who’s child she saved.”
“I am.” Valrek’s voice was a low rumble, closer to a growl than speech. “And you’re the man who tried to sell my mate to a monster.”
Mate.
Anton’s face crumbled at word, and she watched him finally see what she had been trying to tell him for years—that she wasn’t a science project or a bargaining chip or a means to an end. She was a woman. A woman who had found love in the most unlikely of places.
“I didn’t…” Anton’s protest died before it fully formed. “I never meant…”
“Father.” She stepped between them, not to protect Anton from Valrek, but to keep the conversation from spiraling into violence. “Why are you here?”
He looked at her then. Really looked at her, at the fur wrapped around her shoulders, at the way she stood in front of her Vultor warrior, at the marks on her wrists and the new strength in her spine.
And she saw the moment he understood. He had never been the hero of her story.
The realization broke across his face like dawn over the ocean, slow at first, then all at once. His shoulders slumped, his hands dropped to his sides, and for the first time in her memory, her father looked truly defeated.
“Merrick is dead.” The words came out flat, emotionless. “They found his body washed up on the southern rocks this morning.”
She felt nothing.
She had expected guilt, perhaps. Or relief. Maybe even satisfaction at the knowledge that the man who had tried to cage her was gone forever. But there was only a hollow space where her fear of him had lived for so long.
“And the contract?”
“Gone.” He laughed bitterly. “Destroyed in the wreck, along with most of his records. His legal team is scrambling. Without documentation, they can’t enforce any of the claims.” He looked up at her, something flickering in his hollow eyes. “The debt is cancelled, Ariella. All of it. You’re free.”
Free.
The word echoed in the cave, bouncing off the stone walls. Valrek put his hand on her shoulder, his palm warm through the fur, grounding her in the reality of the moment.
“There’s more,” Anton continued. “I told them you were dead.”
She blinked, stunned by the announcement. “What?”
“I told the authorities. Merrick’s people. Everyone.” His voice dropped to barely a whisper. “I identified your body. One of the other passengers, a young woman about your size, was… unrecognizable. I told them it was you.”
The confession hung in the air between them.
She stared at her father, trying to reconcile this broken man with the one who had sold her to pay his debts. He had committed fraud. He’d lied to officials, to lawyers, to anyone who would listen. He’d risked his own freedom to give her a chance at escape.
Why?
“They’ll find out eventually.” Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. “When she’s identified. When her family comes looking.”
“She had no family.” His eyes were wet again. “No one to claim her. No one to notice if she… disappeared.” He shook his head. “I checked. I made sure. No one will come looking for her because no one was waiting for her to come home.”
Like Ariella herself, once. A woman with no one to miss her, no one to mourn her, no one to care if she vanished into the sea.
“Why?” The question tore itself from her throat. “After everything, after Merrick, after the suit, after you stood there and watched him drag me away, why would you do this?”
He was quiet for a long moment.
Behind her, she heard Lilani stirring in her alcove, making the small sounds of a child slowly waking. Valrek’s hand tightened on her shoulder, a silent reminder that whatever happened next, she wasn’t alone.
“Because you’re my daughter.”
The words were simple, almost too simple after everything that had happened between them. But there was something in his voice, a crack in the carefully constructed walls of detachment and scientific reasoning, that made her pause.
“I know what I did.” He spoke slowly, as if each word cost him something precious.
“I know I used you. Experimented on you. Treated you like a… a test subject instead of a child. And I know that selling you to Merrick was the final betrayal.” His breath hitched.
“I made excuses to myself for all of it. But when I saw that shuttle go down… When I thought you were dead because of me…”
He couldn’t finish.
She watched him break down, tears streaming down his lined face, his body shaking with sobs he’d probably been holding back for years. All the cold detachment, all the academic distance, all the walls he’d built between them, all of it crumbling like sandcastles in the tide.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out broken, mangled.
“I’m so sorry, Ariella. I’m sorry I couldn’t be the father you deserved.
I’m sorry I let my work become more important than you.
I’m sorry for every time I measured your lung capacity instead of asking how you felt, every time I analyzed your modifications instead of holding you when you cried, every—”
“Stop.”
Her voice cut through his rambling, sharp and clear. He looked up at her, his face a ruin of grief and guilt, and she saw the truth in his eyes.
He meant it. Every word.