Chapter 5
ALAINA
The first thing I notice is the cold.
Not the air—it’s always cold in the storage room. The cooling system back here’s half-broken, so it either freezes or bakes you alive depending on which fuse wants to act up.
No, the cold’s inside me. A hollow sort of chill that creeps into my stomach and settles behind my ribs.
Because I’m alone.
The far wall’s still damp with the heat of our bodies. My shirt’s buttoned wrong. One of my boots is tipped on its side near the stacked crates of powdered meat substitute, and the sour-sweet stink of industrial cleaner and synthetic whiskey clings to the space like regret.
But he’s gone.
Not a note or a goodbye. Just vanished like smoke.
And that’s fine.
It’s fine.
I drag myself upright, spine stiff from the metal floor and a thousand little decisions I don’t want to analyze too closely.
My thighs ache in that way that’s part satisfaction, part self-recrimination.
I smooth down my clothes and try not to think about how warm his scales were.
How his breath hitched when I whispered his name.
How, in that final second before he kissed me, it almost looked like he felt something.
Dumb.
Vakutans don’t feel. They fight. They take. They leave.
I knew this.
Still hurts, though.
I step out into the bar like nothing happened. Just another bartender finishing her break. Jorla’s swearing at the keg pressure line again. Someone in the corner booth is snoring loud enough to rattle glasses.
Everything’s normal.
Except me.
The shift blurs by in clinks and clatters. I scrub the counter like it insulted my ancestors. Every time I pass that back hallway, I catch myself glancing toward the storage door. Hoping. Dreading.
He doesn’t come back.
And I keep telling myself that’s good.
“Rough night?” Jorla asks as we’re locking up. Her lekku twitch with curiosity.
I force a grin. “Rougher morning.”
She snorts and tosses me a cleaning rag. “Go home before you start talking in riddles.”
I do.
I go home. I strip. I shower until the water runs cold and my fingers wrinkle. I wrap myself in a blanket and sit on the floor, knees to my chest, staring at the one framed photo I keep—my mom, younger than I am now, grinning wide with her arm slung around a man I never met.
And I don’t cry.
Because crying is pointless.
Days pass.
He doesn’t come back.
I don’t look for him. But every time the door hisses open at the bar, my heart kicks like it’s trying to bolt out of my chest. Every tall shadow makes my throat tighten. Every deep voice makes my fingers tremble just enough that I blame it on caffeine.
“You’re twitchier than a spooked dratha,” Jorla mutters as we restock bottles. “You knocked over the bourbon shelf twice.”
“Gravity’s got a grudge,” I snap, then wince. “Sorry.”
She eyes me. “You sick?”
I shake my head.
But I feel sick.
Not always. Just sometimes. Mornings, mostly. When the air smells too strong, or my stomach turns at the scent of fried krelln strips. I snap at customers. Snap at myself. Can’t tell if it’s stress or hormones or some deeper, nastier kind of ache I haven’t faced yet.
Then one night—about a week after the storage room mistake—I sit down to eat and my stomach rebels so hard I barely make it to the fresher in time.
My knees hit tile. My dinner hits the bowl.
And I know. I just know.
The test is standard issue. Cheap. Discreet. I buy it from a kiosk on the walk home, tucked between a vape cartridge dispenser and a vending machine selling fake engagement rings.
Back in my room, I rip open the foil, shove the stick under my tongue, and pace like a madwoman while the timer ticks down.
I don’t pray. I don’t hope.
I just wait.
When the screen flashes green, I stare at it.
Pregnant.
That word looks like a gunshot. Sharp. Loud. Fatal.
I laugh. A tiny, broken sound. “Well, fuck me sideways.”
Half-Vakutan.
I run through the implications like a security drill. Genetics. Gestation. Birth complications. Cultural implications. Legal complications. I don’t even know his surname. I don’t know his squad ID. He didn’t even leave a way to contact him.
Assuming I wanted to.
Which I don’t.
I shouldn’t.
But still…
My hands shake as I set the test down. Not from fear. From rage.
Because he left without a word. Because I let myself get caught off guard. Because I’m not this girl. The clingy one. The regretful one. The pregnant one.
But here I am.
Knocked up by a seven-foot alien who probably forgot my name the second he zipped up his pants.
No manual prepares you for this.
No guidebook on interspecies pregnancy in the damn Athenaverse tells you what to do when the father of your child is a warbound phantom with gold eyes and enough emotional suppression to choke a gorrak.
I scream into a pillow.
Then I breathe.
Then I sit.
And when the silence stretches too long, I speak into it.
“Okay.”
It’s a whisper, but it’s mine.
“Okay,” I say again, louder this time.
I’m not running.
I’m not hiding.
I’m sure as hell not going to let someone else tell me how to raise this kid—this half-Vakutan little mystery.
I’m going to do it my way.
Alaina Southland doesn’t crumble. She rebuilds. Stronger. Meaner. Smarter.
So let the galaxy spin.
Let the father disappear into the stars.
I’ve got a new mission now.
And it starts with me, in this shitty little room, staring down the biggest fear of my life—and saying yes.