Chapter 10
KENRON
Ifeel her before I see her.
It’s the weight in my gut, the tightening in my jaw, the way my claws press harder into the dough I’m kneading. Like my body knows she’s coming, like it’s bracing for impact before my brain can catch up.
The lunch rush is thinning, and I’m elbows deep in prep for dinner—charred root slurry, flash-seared zathen ribs, slow fermenting jal crocks singing quietly beneath the heat lamps.
The smells are good, comforting even—garlic-glaze haze, bone broth steam, citrus-sharp fronds soaking in firewine—but I can’t taste any of it today.
Not really. It all feels... muted. Like I’m cooking underwater.
Like something important’s been buried alive in my chest, and I can’t dig it out.
Then the bell chimes.
The main door slides open with that soft hydraulic hiss, and every nerve in my body snaps taut. I don’t look up right away. Don’t have to. My staff knows me too well—Kiv elbows me gently, murmurs, “It’s her,” and ducks back to her prep station without waiting for me to respond.
I wipe my claws on a towel I don’t remember picking up, then finally lift my eyes.
Kristi.
She moves like she’s walking through barbed wire—every step measured, every breath tight like it might betray her.
No makeup today. Hair up. Jacket too stiff.
She’s not wearing her usual steel. She’s wrapped in something colder.
Something heavier. Shame, maybe. Or guilt.
Can’t tell yet. But it ain’t the same armor she wore when she first stepped in here, glaring at the decor like it insulted her lineage.
She doesn’t look at me.
Just goes straight to her booth—her booth now, even if I’d never say it out loud—and sits with her hands clasped too tight in her lap.
I let her sit. I let the silence stretch.
Then I grab the plate I was working on before I even smelled her footsteps.
It’s not what I normally make for her—nothing flashy.
But I spent three damn hours layering spice blends, slow-curing the meat, hand-slicing fermented root until my knuckles cramped.
I didn’t know she’d show. Didn’t plan it for her. But maybe… maybe I did.
I walk it out myself.
When I set the plate down, she flinches. Just barely. Like she’s surprised I didn’t throw it at her.
“It’s fresh,” I say, keeping my voice low. Even. No growl. “Figured you might be hungry.”
She doesn’t meet my eyes.
“Thanks,” she says, too quiet, like she’s choking on it.
I nod and walk away.
Back behind the line, the kitchen hums. Pans hiss, broth bubbles, knives thud against cutting boards.
But my hearing’s tunneled. I’m only tuned to one thing—the way her fork scrapes too softly.
The slow drag of silence stretching out between bites.
The rhythm’s wrong. Offbeat. I know her eating cadence now, and this… this ain’t it.
I glance over.
She’s barely touched the dish.
One bite. Maybe two. That’s it.
I swallow something bitter and burning in my throat. Not spice. Not firefruit. Something older.
I should walk away. I should go back to the marrow glaze and the root roast and the thousand other things demanding my hands. But I can’t.
So I pull off my apron, toss it on the hook, and stride out from behind the counter. I stop a few feet from her booth.
“You're gonna tell me why you are like this?” I ask.
She still doesn’t look up. Just stares at the dish like it’s a confession she doesn’t want to read.
“I—I was forced to support the districting measure.”
The words are soft.
But they slam into me like a dropped slab of raw meat.
I go still. Utterly still.
The kitchen fades. The sounds, the smells, even the colors around me dim like someone pulled the emergency shades down on my world.
All I hear is that one sentence replaying.
Her voice, tight and strangled, saying she backed the measure that could shut my doors, gut my business, silence the one place that still feels like mine.
I take a breath. It's shallow. Useless.
“You did what?”
Her lips press together like she's trying to erase the words from the air. But it’s too late. They’re already embedded. Like shrapnel.
“I didn’t—” she starts, then cuts off. Her hands tremble slightly where they rest on the edge of the table. “My uncle forced me into this. I didn’t realize…”
Her voice trails off, like even she doesn’t buy her own excuse.
I step back.
Just one step. But it feels like a chasm opens between us.
“You thought shutting down half the alien-owned businesses in this district was about city spending?” My voice isn’t loud, but it’s sharp enough to cut. “You didn’t think to ask who wrote the damn thing? Who benefits from it?”
“I didn’t know—look, I know it was a mistake, all right? I didn't even know what it was. He's using me to get you. I don't want any of that to happen, especially to you.”
“Bullshit.”
That silences her.
I rake a hand through my hair, claws catching in my scalp. I need to scream. Or throw something. Or walk into the walk-in fridge and just fucking shatter.
But I don’t do any of that.
I do what I was trained to do—what I’ve done since the war when the pain’s too sharp to feel and the sky’s still bleeding.
I shut down.
“I trusted you,” I say, not looking at her now. Can’t. “Maybe I shouldn’t have. That’s on me.”
“Kenron…”
“No.”
I shake my head, voice suddenly too calm. Too level.
“You made your choice. Now I make mine.”
I turn, walk back into the kitchen. My feet feel like anvils. My chest is hollow steel.
Behind me, I hear the soft scrape of her chair as she stands. No rush. No plea. Just resignation.
She leaves without finishing the meal.
I don’t watch her go.
But I feel the door hiss closed like the end of something vital.
Something I hadn’t even realized I needed.
At the end of my shift, I don't bother turning off the lights.
Not right away.
The last of the kitchen’s firepit coils fade to ember, the floor’s been swept twice, and the doors are sealed tight.
Still, I sit in the half-glow of the sconces, the ones lining the dining room ceiling with soft waves of golden flicker that mimic firelight—Vakutan design meant to mimic home hearths.
Feels hollow tonight. Like they’re just putting on a show for nobody.
I’m parked in the corner booth now. Her booth.
Not out of sentiment, but because I need to know I can sit here and not come apart.
The air still holds the faint trace of her—faint perfume of whatever she wears when she’s not trying to look like a blade, and the spice from the dish she barely touched.
My claws tap lightly against the tabletop, slow, steady, like I’m waiting on orders that’ll never come.
I close my eyes, let my head tilt back.
And I let it come.
The memory of her laugh—rare and low, like she'd forgotten for a second that she hated the world. The way she’d sipped Vakutan nectar like it might kill her but drank anyway, her lips trembling from heat or nerves or maybe the weight of the choice.
I remember that sharp-edged smile she gave the first time she liked something I made but didn’t want me to know it.
Like admitting the food was good would somehow let me in too deep.
I remember her eyes when she let the little Vakutan girl hand her that napkin. The twitch in her mouth like she wanted to recoil, but instead—instead—she waved. Not big. Not warm. But she waved. That child grinned like the galaxy cracked open for her.
And gods help me, I thought maybe we were cracking too.
That something inside her was changing. That maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t the only one sitting in that shift.
I thought we had a shot.
I thought I saw a flicker of something real.
But real’s got teeth. And I just got bit.
My fists curl under the table. The wood creaks.
She’s one of them. That’s the truth slamming through my skull now, again and again. She sat across from me for days, ate my food, looked at me like maybe I wasn’t just some monster wearing a chef’s coat—and then she voted. Signed her name under a blade and called it policy.
Just like her uncle. Just like the board. Just like all the polished human politicians with synthetic empathy and chrome-plated hearts.
I don't get to scream. Not here. Not anymore.
So I sit in this booth like it’s a damn grave.
And I feel it all.
The heat of her skin when our fingers brushed. The weight of her stare. That night she brought the human brandy, her voice all low shadows and fractured memories. I let her in, piece by slow piece. I cracked open parts I don’t show anyone—not even Father.
And she used that access to pull the trigger.
Gods.
The silence is loud now. Louder than any crowd. The kitchen isn’t humming. No clatter. No low conversation. Just the sigh of vents and the occasional flick from the dying flame coils. I rub my hands over my face, claws scraping lightly against my brow ridges.
I should have known.
No, that’s not fair.
I did know. Somewhere under the hope, under the draw and the ache and the hunger, I knew she had lines. Walls. That she’d grown up with poison in her ears, raised by a man who probably read anti-alien propaganda as bedtime stories.
But I believed she could unlearn it.
And maybe she still could.
But not like this.
Not after she threw me—us—under the gears of politics like we were just another inconvenience.
My father’s voice cuts the silence like a blade.
“You going to sit there all night and mope like a lovesick Fratvoyan?”
I don’t look up. “Maybe.”
He moves with that slow, deliberate weight he always has—measured steps, hands behind his back, eyes ancient and full of thunderclouds.
“She is gone?” he asks.
I nod once. “Walked out without finishing her food.”
“That’s something, at least.”
He pauses beside me. Doesn’t sit. He never sits in booths. Says they’re for cowards and liars. Claims a man should eat on his feet if the truth is in question.
“You want to close the place down?” he asks, like he’s asking whether I want to take a piss or sharpen knives.
I glance up at him. The ceiling’s glow halos around his head, catching the white streaks in his crimson scales. He looks like a statue left behind by war gods.
“No,” I say. “But she doesn’t eat here anymore.”
He nods.
Then, for the first time in a long damn while, he sits anyway.
Across from me. Right in the spot where she used to.
“Good,” he says, folding his arms. “Means you’re still thinking.”
I snort. “Barely.”
“You gave her your trust,” he says, not soft but not cruel either. “It was earned. You’re not wrong for that. She made you believe she could stand between your world and hers. You believed because you’re still a fool with your heart open.”
“That a compliment?”
He shrugs. “Depends what you do next.”
I lean back, fingers twitching. “Thought I might cook until my hands fall off.”
He raises a brow. “Not enough.”
“You got a better idea?”
His silence is answer enough. He’s seen it all. Done it twice. But this? Heartbreak? That’s not something the old warriors prepared us for. They trained us for pain, not betrayal that smells like perfume and citrus and sounds like soft apologies.
I stare at the ceiling like it might give me something useful.
But all it gives me is more silence.
“I wanted her to see us,” I say eventually. “Not just me. I wanted her to understand what we built here. What it means.”
“She saw,” he says. “She just didn’t believe it was worth standing for.”
That hits harder than I expect. Because it’s true.
“She could have,” I whisper.
He leans forward, claws tapping the table with sharp patience. “Maybe one day she will.”
I look at him.
“You still think she’s coming back?”
“No.” He doesn’t blink. “But pain doesn’t always mean permanence.”
I huff out a breath. Almost a laugh. Almost.
He stands then, slow and heavy. “Get some sleep, boy. Tomorrow you cook. And the day after. And the day after that.”
“What if she comes back?”
He pauses by the exit to the kitchen, hand on the frame.
“Then you serve her like any customer. No more. No less.”
He leaves without another word.
I stay in the booth another hour.
Long enough for the flames to cool completely.
Long enough to remember how I used to cook because I loved it—not just because someone beautiful watched me from the corner.
Eventually, I get up. Wash the glass she never touched. Wipe the table she barely leaned on. Reset the silverware.
And then I kill the lights.