Chapter 29
TROKA
Idon’t sign.
I stare at the damn enlistment holo until the image goes grainy with screen burn and the recruiting officer starts side-eyeing me like I’m about to piss on the desk.
But I don’t sign.
I almost do.
My claw hovers over the authorization glyph, that little pulse-glow begging to be pressed. It’d be easy. Too easy. The galaxy’s still spinning in blood and fire out there—another theater of war always needing another weapon to throw at the front. I know how to be that. I was that.
And gods, part of me misses it.
Misses the orders. The clarity. The simplicity of kill or don’t. Move or die. No feelings. No longing. No three-foot-tall soft-skinned babies with gold-flecked eyes and a giggle that makes my heart seize like a rusted gear.
I don’t sign.
I walk.
Barrakus air hits like a slap. Dry, sour, full of rust and reactor soot. The wind kicks up dust devils in the street, grit scraping my scales like penance. I don’t even bother brushing it off.
I sleep on Larek’s couch that night. He doesn’t ask questions. Just slaps me on the back hard enough to bruise and throws a synthblanket over my legs.
“You want something stronger than water?” he asks, nodding toward the cabinet.
“Yeah.”
He pours something neon green and dangerous. It tastes like antiseptic and regret.
I drink it anyway.
Days blur.
Odd jobs. Temporary labor. Whatever lets me lift heavy things and break light ones. Warehouse loading. Fuel cell hauling. For two days, I’m even a bouncer at a club that blasts music so loud I can feel it in my teeth.
I toss a guy out by his spine for trying to grope the dancer-bots.
Boss fires me before the body even hits the pavement.
“Too much liability,” he says. “And you broke the synth rail.”
I shrug. “It was already cracked.”
“You ripped it out of the floor.”
I leave without arguing. That’s growth, I think.
Or exhaustion.
The nights are worse.
That’s when the silence creeps in. No battlefield noise. No orders. No boots pounding dirt beside mine. No Alaina yelling at me from across the apartment about the price of diapers and why the hell did I leave the fridge open again.
Just me.
And the ghosts.
I dream of her.
Every night.
Sometimes she’s laughing, and it splits me in half. Sometimes she’s screaming, and I wake up with blood in my mouth and no idea where it came from.
One night, I dream I’m holding the baby—our baby—and he looks up at me with those golden eyes and asks, “Why didn’t you stay?”
I wake up biting my hand, trying not to scream.
Larek doesn’t mention the bloodstain on the couch. Just flips the cushion over.
I don’t message her.
Not once.
Because if she wanted me, she’d come.
I told her where I go when I don’t know who I am. I left the trail wide open. Gave her the last sliver of my damn pride and said find me.
But she hasn’t.
So I wait.
And I rot.
And I pretend like I’m okay because the alternative is punching holes in walls and getting tossed in holding again.
“She’ll come around,” Larek says, passing me another drink. “Or she won’t. Either way, you need to eat something that’s not fermented.”
“Food’s for people with hope,” I mutter.
He snorts. “You Vakutans are so dramatic. She’s probably scared, not cruel.”
“She lied,” I growl.
“She panicked.”
“She told me it wasn’t mine.”
“And you believed her?”
My jaw clenches hard enough to pop. “Didn’t need to. I knew. But hearing her say it felt like being gutted with a dull blade.”
“Then why didn’t you call her on it?”
“Because I wanted her to tell me without being cornered. I wanted to be chosen.”
He pours another drink. “That’s your problem. You want everything to be a war you win. Sometimes love ain’t about victory, brother. Sometimes it’s just about standing still long enough to be seen.”
“Spare me the philosophy,” I mutter.
But the words stick. Like burrs in my thoughts.
Standing still long enough to be seen.
I keep thinking about the list.
Not the one I left her.
The one I didn’t write.
The list of things I was afraid to say…and never said.
I just left a list and walked out like I was being deployed again.
Coward.
One night, I sit at the edge of the canyon.
The same one I showed her once. The wind’s slicing cold. Carries the scent of metal and distant ozone from a nearby transport yard.
I stare down into the dark.
It’s the kind of place you can lose yourself in.
Or find something else entirely.
I feel her in the wind. Not like a memory—like a presence.
And I wonder if she’s out there, pacing her apartment, holding our son, wondering if I’d still come back if she just opened the door.
I wonder if she’s thinking about that kiss in the storage room. About the way I said her name like it was holy.
I wonder if she’s hurting.
Because I am.
Every hour.
Every second.
And I’m running out of ways to hide it.