Chapter 30
GYON
Pepper smells like me.
I’ve known it since the park—since the second she ran past us, her little feet kicking up sand, the faint ozone edge in her scent cutting straight through the city’s smog and recycled air.
I pretended I didn’t notice. I pretended I didn’t feel my chest tear open and try to rebuild itself in the same breath.
But I’ve always known. My instincts don’t lie.
I’m just waiting for Liora to admit it.
Every day she doesn’t is a new wound. A shallow one, but persistent, like a blade dragged over the same place again and again. It doesn’t kill me, but it keeps me bleeding.
I tell myself I’ll confront her. I tell myself I’ll pull her aside, press her to the wall, and growl, “Tell me the truth. She’s mine.”
But the words never pass my teeth.
Because another voice slips into my skull before I open my mouth—low, ugly, too close to fear.
What if she hid the child because she didn’t want you?
Didn’t want you near her?
Near your daughter?
The thought poisons me.
So instead of confronting her, I stay close. Close enough to smell Pepper’s sugar-sweet hair. Close enough to hear Liora’s heartbeat trip when she looks at me. Close enough that I can pretend things might still be salvageable.
Pepper barrels into me during lunch break, nearly knocking over two light rigs.
“GYON! Look, look!” she squeals, thrusting a paint-smeared hand in my face. “I made you a dragon!”
I look down at the paper. It’s just a swirl of colors and a very enthusiastic smear of glitter. But I crouch to her level anyway.
“A dragon?” I say. “Where are its fangs?”
She gasps like I just revealed the ending of her favorite cartoon. “Oh no—I forgot the chompers!” She bares her teeth and growls, a tiny, ridiculous attempt at intimidation.
My chest swells. I shouldn’t feel this soft. I shouldn’t feel anything like this. But the sound she makes—it is exactly the noise I made the first time Tayani shoved a hunk of sunrise grain dough at me and told me to knead it.
Pepper laughs at her own growl and flicks glitter at me. “You make one.”
I raise a brow. “You want me to make a dragon?”
“Yes! WITH TEETH.”
She grabs my wrist like she owns it, and for some reason, I let her drag me across the set to the craft table. Crew members pause, staring. Nobody has ever pulled a Reaper. Nobody has ever dared.
Pepper doesn’t know that yet.
The craft table smells like glue and paint and childish chaos. She slaps a marker into my hand. “Draw!”
I stare at the blank paper. “Reapers don’t draw.”
“Yes you do,” she says, hopping like she’s made of springs. “You carved things in the prop room yesterday.”
I snap my head toward Liora before I realize I’m doing it. She’s watching us from beside the monitor, arms crossed, trying to look composed. But her eyes—her eyes are molten. Soft. Terrified. Beautiful.
I turn back to Pepper. “Fine. A dragon.”
She cheers. I start sketching. It’s clumsy—too many straight lines—but Pepper looks at it like I’ve given her the galaxy. When I add oversized fangs, she gasps dramatically and claps her painty little hands over her mouth.
“TOLD YOU YOU CAN DRAW.”
I grunt. “It’s acceptable.”
“IT’S AMAZING. You’re a funny man with sharp teeth.”
I choke. I actually choke. “Sharp… what?”
“Teeth!” She taps her mouth, then mine. “Like you!”
A crew member overhears and chokes on a laugh. I shoot him a glare, and he immediately finds something very important to adjust on a camera.
Pepper beams and adds, “You’re funny.”
I have never, not once in my entire life, been called funny.
I bark a laugh. “You think so?”
“Yeah!” She leans in close and whispers—loud enough for everyone within ten meters to hear, “Mommy likes you.”
My breath catches. I don’t let it show. I just clear my throat.
“Well,” I say roughly, “your mother is complicated.”
Pepper shrugs like that’s the most normal thing in the world. “So are you.”
Later, Liora finds me in the prop room.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
Pepper is climbing the rigged battlements—fake stone, foam cores, but tall enough to break a human child’s ankle. Liora’s voice tenses as Pepper scrambles higher. “Is this safe?”
“She has claws,” I say.
Liora crosses her arms. “She does not have claws.”
I gesture. “Watch.”
Pepper slips. My muscles tense on instinct, ready to leap—but she catches herself with a fierce little growl, fingers digging into the foam like it’s soft wood. She swings back onto the platform and lifts her chin defiantly.
“See?” Pepper says. “Told you!”
Liora’s eyes flicker to mine. There’s that guilt again. That fear. That almost-truth hovering between her teeth.
I move slower than I want to. “She’s strong,” I murmur. “Stronger than she knows.”
Liora swallows. Hard. “Yeah.”
Pepper plops down the climbing wall in a sliding heap. She smacks into my shin and doesn’t even blink.
“Ow,” she says mildly. “Gyon, can we do it again?”
“Yes,” I say before Liora can open her mouth.
She gives me a look. A sharp one. But she doesn’t stop us. She watches while I show Pepper how to balance, how to crouch, how to push power into her legs. The crew stares but pretends not to. Pepper mimics me perfectly. My chest aches with pride so fierce it almost makes me weak.
When Pepper runs off to grab a juice pouch, Liora finally speaks.
“You’re good with her.”
I breathe out slowly. “She’s… easy to be good with.”
Liora bites her lip. She looks like she’s trying to work up the courage to say something. My heart slams in my ribs.
Say it. Tell me. Tell me she’s mine.
Instead she says, “Thank you for helping. I know you don’t have to.”
Something deep in me snarls. You’re wrong. I do.
Before I can answer, Pepper runs back, trips over a prop wire, and slams her knee into the floor. My entire body lunges—but she sits up immediately, face scrunched, and—
Growls.
A perfect, tiny, Reaper-cub growl.
She stands, wipes her knee, and says, “I’m fine.”
I stare. Liora stares too, horror and awe warring on her face.
Pepper sees our expressions and frowns. “Why are you both looking at me like that?”
I kneel. “Because you’re brave.”
She grins, showing her teeth. Sharp—not literally, but the attitude is there. The spark. The fight.
I feel something inside me loosen.
That night, when I sleep, I dream.
Not of death. Not of the Maze. Not of losing Liora in fire and smoke.
I dream of a little girl with braids and fire in her hands. A little girl laughing at me. Calling me something I’ve never heard out loud but feel in my bones:
Papa.
And when I wake, I’m smiling.
Smiling like a man who’s found what he lost.
Smiling like a father.
When I arrive at the set the day after my dream, things are…
complex between myself and Liora. The air between us is thin, charged.
Every time I step close to her, I feel the current—tight wires humming, ready to snap.
I carry a scar in my chest where she kissed me in the park.
The memory stings like a burn. But the truth still lies unspoken between us, and she flinches every time my shadow stretches toward it.
We’re on set again, lunch break under the stage lights. I stand near the load-in door, the smell of hot rigging and stale coffee in the air. Liora sits at a folding table, script in hand, eyes red. She’s toggled between being brilliant and breaking lately. I watch her. She doesn’t meet my gaze.
I chew a burger—synthetic patty, but I pretend it tastes like something alive. She bites her lip. She’s fiddling with the coffee cup I gave her this morning. I walk over.
“You okay?” I ask. My voice soft—too soft.
She looks up. “I’m fine,” she says, but the lie drips like acid.
I don’t reply. I sit across from her. She closes her script. “We should… talk,” she says.
I raise an eyebrow. “We should?”
She clears her throat. “About Pepper.” And there it is. The word. Pepper. The almost-truth.
I hold my breath. The burger tastes dry. I swallow. “What about her?”
She frowns. “I just—” She stops. She doesn’t finish.
I let space fill the room. The crew laughs somewhere behind the walls. Lights click. The smell of engine grease drifts in from the rig.
“I want you to know,” she finally says, voice quiet, “I’m doing this for her. For both of you.” She looks at me. My heart thumps.
“Then why hide?” My voice is steady, not cruel—but sharp. She flinches.
“I… it’s not that simple.” Her eyes flick to the script on the table. “I’m protecting her. Protecting us.”
I stare. The quiet is heavy. I pick up the coffee cup, drink. Bitter.
“I understand protection.” I draw the word out. “But hiding isn’t always protection.” I lean forward. Her pulse echoes in my ears. The studio hum, the buzz of frames, the faint beep of the jam-counter in Pepper’s inducer.
She exhales. “I know you’re not here for the cameras.”
My jaw tightens. “Then don’t act like you are.”
She looks away. “It’s not that easy.”
I hold my hand up. “I’m not asking you to make it easy. I’m asking you to make it real.” I touch her arm lightly. She doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t lean in either. “Let me in.”
She closes her eyes. I feel the soft exhale. I taste the flavor of tears unshed. The smell of her perfume—vanilla and something else—fills me.
“I’m scared,” she whispers.
That word cracks something in me. I place my forehead against hers. “So am I.” My voice trembles. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
She opens her eyes. The green-hue of an old light reflects in them. “I need time.”
I nod. “You have it.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know if I deserve it.”
I kiss the top of her head. The armor plate beneath my hand is cold. “Yes, you do.”
We sit… side by side, no script, no cameras. Just us. The trailer rumble in the background. The studio lights dim for the next take.
When the call-out comes, I rise. “We should get back.” I pull my jacket on.
She rises too. “Thanks, for understanding.”
I nod. “Anytime.”
Later, I leave the set with Pepper because it’s a late shoot and I offered again to babysit.
Liora gave me a small, grim smile and handed me a juice pouch for Pepper.
I carry her across the lot, her hand gripping my finger.
The engine drones of passing hover-cars.
The smell of hot tarmac, metal, and night.
Pepper kicks her legs, giggles when a drone flies close. I shield her with my jacket. “Watch the sky, little star.” She tilts her head. “Are you a star?” I grin. “Yeah. Spread your wings.”
She laughs. “You have wings too, Gyon!”
We walk under flickering street-lamps. My boots echo. She hums a lullaby. My lullaby. I nearly swear. I almost stop her. Instead I ask: “Want to try the hover-rack tomorrow?”
She nods eyes bright. “Yes.”
I ruffle her hair. I feel hope flicker. I taste it in the air—metal and faint ozone. I feel something like family forming.
That night, I don’t sleep. I lie on the back deck of my temporary quarters—studio housing—watching the stars bleed into dawn. I inhale the night air, smell the faint trace of ash from nearby scrub fires, feel the stillness in my bones.
I repeat it like a mantra: I earned patience. I earned time. I’ll earn her truth.
And I will.