34. Leah
LEAH
My mouth is dry.
The kind of dry that cracks, that aches, like I’ve swallowed desert glass instead of words.
I stand there, spine iron-straight, arms folded like a barrier I know won’t hold.
Kalev watches me with a stillness that makes everything louder—the hum of the fridge unit, the tick of the wall regulator, the whir of the wind at the sill.
My pulse hammers behind my ribs like it’s trying to break free and run.
I can’t stall anymore.
So I say it.
“I didn’t just survive.”
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t blink.
I try again, voice rougher. “There was something I had to survive for.”
Still nothing.
Only that knife-edged quiet and his eyes—steady, dark, too aware.
“I didn’t know for sure until after Spuel,” I say. “But I knew something was different. And by the time your name was on every casualty list, I was sure.”
Still he waits.
So I take the leap.
“I had a son,” I say. “We had a son.”
The words land wrong. Flat. Too small.
Like I’ve tried to name a supernova and all I’ve got is a birthday candle.
His face doesn’t change.
But something in him does.
He goes utterly still.
The kind of still that’s louder than movement. Like the whole world’s been sucked out of the room and he’s the last thing left holding its shape.
I feel it hit him.
Like watching a faultline give out underfoot—no tremor, just instant collapse.
I want to fill the silence, patch it, soften the blow. But I don’t.
Because this moment matters.
So I let it stretch.
And when I finally turn and start walking, I know he’s following before I hear his boots.
The hallway’s narrow, low-ceilinged, the light warm and dim. My bare feet move soundlessly on the polymer floor. His don’t. His steps sound heavier now. Like gravity’s just gotten personal.
At the end of the hall, I stop in front of the door.
It’s not locked.
It never is.
But my hand hesitates on the knob like it suddenly weighs a thousand tons.
“You don’t have to—” Kalev starts behind me.
“I do,” I say.
And I open the door.
The scent of synthwood polish and linen greets me first—sun-warm and faintly sweet. There’s a stack of colored blocks on the floor, toppled in a lazy arc. A few picture books scattered across the rug. And right in the center of it all, cross-legged on the floor mat, is Clancy.
He looks up.
Solemn, quiet, curious.
Big dark eyes that match Kalev’s so precisely it’s like the universe is playing a cruel joke.
But there’s wonder in it, too.
That odd, breathless awe of seeing something you never thought you’d live long enough to meet.
Kalev stops behind me.
And he breathes out.
Not a word.
Just a sound—like the air’s been punched out of him sideways.
Clancy tilts his head. “Mama?”
I step aside.
Kalev doesn’t move forward.
He can’t.
His whole body is a sculpture now. Carved from something rigid and aching. His eyes—gods, his eyes—are caught between reverence and devastation. Like every inch of him is collapsing and rising at once.
“That’s him,” I say softly.
“I know,” Kalev whispers.
The look on his face…
I’ve seen him gutted in field med bays. Seen him bloodied and stitched half-conscious. I’ve seen him swear battlefield vows with a rifle in one hand and shrapnel in the other.
But I’ve never seen him break.
Not like this.
His hands tremble at his sides.
Clancy’s still watching him with that wide, unblinking calm that always makes him seem older than he is.
“How old?” Kalev manages.
“Six.”
He lets out a shaky breath.
“I missed everything.”
“Not everything,” I say, though it feels like a lie even as I speak it.
“First words?” he asks, voice thin.
“‘Light,’” I say. “He kept pointing at the ceiling panels.”
Kalev huffs something like a laugh, but it sounds more like grief wearing a cheap mask.
“First step?”
“On the sandbar out back. He ran toward a fish and faceplanted.”
He closes his eyes.
“Bedtime stories?” he asks.
“Every night.”
“Which ones?”
“Old Alliance folk tales. The ones with the trickster bugs and the gravity wells.”
He swallows hard.
“I told him about you,” I add.
He looks up, fast.
“Not as a hero,” I clarify. “Just… as a good man. A brave one. Someone who did hard things because he believed in protecting people.”
His voice is a whisper. “You didn’t tell him I was dead?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t know,” I say. “Not really. And I couldn’t kill you twice.”
He closes his eyes again, and this time I see a tear slip down the line of his scar.
I don’t touch him.
I just let him stand there, grief pouring in behind awe, reshaping everything he thought he knew about what he’d come home to.
And when Clancy finally stands and walks over—small bare feet padding across the rug—it’s like the universe breathes in with us.
Clancy stops just short of Kalev. Looks up.
“You’re my dad?” he asks.
Kalev nods.
But his voice cracks when he tries to answer.
Clancy studies him for a long beat.
Then he says, very seriously, “You’re really tall.”
And just like that, something in Kalev breaks wide open.
But it’s not grief.
It’s love.
Raw. Staggering. Impossible. Alive.
And it’s written all over him.
He doesn’t rush it.
He doesn’t reach or speak or break the moment with anything as blunt as urgency.
He kneels.
Like he’s approaching something holy and dangerous all at once. One knee hits the floor with a thud soft enough to be reverent, and when he lowers his hands to his thighs, I see the fine tremble in them. Not fear. Not quite. More like... recalibration.
Clancy tilts his head and narrows his eyes, evaluating this new piece of reality like a puzzle box.
He doesn’t step back. Doesn’t fidget. Just stands there, chest out, arms loose at his sides.
Ready. He’s always been like that. Balanced between instinct and boldness, like the world’s just something to be walked straight into.
Kalev takes him in.
And I swear I can see it happen—fatherhood arriving not as a swell of sentiment but as orientation. A realignment. A hard reset. His whole frame shifts, just slightly, like his weight’s been redistributed around a new center of gravity.
Threat vectors.
Future vectors.
Permanence.
Everything in him refocuses like a lens snapped into place.
Clancy leans closer. “Do you have a scar on your back?”
Kalev blinks. “I… yeah. I do.”
“I saw it in a picture. Mama said it was from a bad mission.”
He nods once. “That’s right.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Yeah, kid. It hurt.”
Clancy hums like that satisfies something, then drops cross-legged onto the floor like okay, good talk.
Kalev huffs a laugh through his nose, all the air still trapped somewhere behind his ribs.
I stay in the doorway.
Can’t make myself move.
My body’s buzzing with something I don’t want to name.
Something jagged and bright and loud that isn’t relief, not really.
More like terror in a new costume. Because here he is, this man I buried, standing in my house, building eye contact with our son—and all I can feel is the tight coil of what if I lose you again tightening around my spine.
He looks up at me.
And I know he sees it.
Not the specifics.
But the fear.
He gestures, a small tilt of his head. “Come here.”
I shake my head.
His brows draw together. “Leah.”
“I can’t,” I whisper.
He stands slowly. Crosses to me with that same war-mind grace I remember—the way he moves like he’s always tracking exits and threats even when there aren’t any.
When he’s close, he drops his voice to something only I can hear.
“Talk to me.”
I force the words out. “I’ve been scared every day since he was born.”
His jaw tenses. But he listens.
“Not of him. Of what loving him means. Of what it costs. Every time he laughed too loud, I flinched. Every time someone lingered too long near the gate, I saw blood in my head. I kept our lives stitched tight around invisibility, because I knew if the world saw him, they’d want him. Use him. Like they used you.”
“I know,” he says.
“Every time I looked at him, I thought about you.”
“I hoped you would.”
“No, Kalev. Not in a way that brought comfort. In a way that made me grieve. Because I couldn’t keep you both. I couldn’t. And I was so damn sure I’d lose him too.”
He reaches out. Touches my elbow. Not soft. Just steady.
“And now?”
I shake my head again. “Now I don’t know what to feel.”
He nods like that’s fair. Then: “The war already took its cut.”
I blink at him.
“It doesn’t get another,” he says.
I laugh. One sharp, disbelieving exhale. “You think we get to choose that?”
“Yes,” he says. “Now we do.”
I stare at him.
At the worn face and battle-mapped arms and the shape of him still familiar in ways that twist me.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we stop waiting for the next fracture.”
“You want—what, a white picket fence?”
“I want a future with you. With him. With doors that stay unlocked because we’re not planning to run. With routines. And names. And contingency plans that don’t end in blood.”
“You’re dreaming.”
“I’m deciding.”
God.
It’s too much.
It’s everything.
“You want now,” I say.
“Yeah,” he replies. “Not someday. Not when the Alliance falls. Not when we’re done surviving. Now.”
I look at him, really look, and something in me gives way.
Not in surrender.
In choice.
“I don’t know how to live like that,” I say.
“We learn together.”
His voice is firm. Certain.
“I’m still angry,” I say.
“I know.”
“I’m still scared.”
“Me too.”
“I might hate you a little.”
“I can take it.”
I laugh again, raw and wet. “You always were too damn calm under fire.”
He steps closer. His hand lifts and hovers just near my face. “You want me to stay?”
I nod.
Not big.
Just once.
And then he does the thing I didn’t know I needed.
He touches my face. Just one hand. Warm. Rough-palmed. Thumb brushing a tear away like it’s sacred.
And for the first time in years?—
I let myself believe.
That maybe this isn’t a countdown.
Maybe it’s the start of something.
Hope rises.
Not loud.
Not triumphant.
But like sunlight cracking through a war-damaged window.
Enough to see by.
Enough to begin.
Wordlessly, I take his hand and lead him to the bedroom. By mutual unspoken accord, we must consummate this reunion in the most ancient way.
He kisses me like I’m the thing that wrecked him and the thing that’s going to put him back together—slow, deliberate, unbearably gentle.
There’s no angle he hasn’t thought through, no pressure point he isn’t already reading from the line of my breath.
His hands curve around my hips like he’s memorizing them. Like they’re home.
We don’t rush. We don’t speak.
Not at first.
Because something about this moment feels like it’ll shatter if we get too loud. Like noise will wake us from whatever impossible miracle this is.
He leads me backward, slow and patient, until the backs of my knees hit the edge of my bed. We never took our eyes off each other. Not once.
His fingers find the hem of my shirt. Pause.
“You sure?” he asks, voice sandpaper-soft.
I nod. “Yeah.”
And then I say it again, clearer. “Yeah. I want this.”
The shirt comes off slow.
So do his hands.
They follow every inch of skin revealed like a blessing, not a demand. When his thumbs trace under the band of my bra, I don’t flinch. Not this time. I let him.
The way he breathes changes.
Rougher.
Like he’s swallowing awe and can’t quite finish.
He leans in and kisses the hollow at the base of my throat, then the curve of my shoulder, then lower, lower, until he’s on his knees again and I’m standing there, naked to the waist, shaking like a leaf in the wind.
“Kalev,” I whisper.
He presses his forehead to my stomach. Just rests there. Breathing.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs. “You’re safe. You’re real.”
My hands find his hair, thread through it, hold him there like maybe he’ll disappear if I don’t.
And then we move. Together.
I’m on the bed, legs curled around his hips, and we’re shedding the rest of our clothes like they’re too heavy for this room.
When he finally lays over me, the weight of him makes me gasp. Not because it hurts. Because it grounds me.
His cock rests hot and heavy against my thigh, and my whole body flares to life in response.
“You still with me?” he asks.
I nod again. My breath’s coming fast now.
“Need to hear it,” he says, low.
“Yes,” I say. “Gods, yes.”
He shifts, guiding himself to my entrance with a hand that trembles only slightly.
And then he’s inside me.
Slow.
Steady.
Stretching me open like it’s the first time.
And maybe it is.
Maybe this is the only time that counts.
He groans, low and broken, as he bottoms out.
I clench around him involuntarily, and the sound that leaves him is not polite.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “You feel…”
“Don’t you dare say tight like a cliché,” I gasp, grinning through the heat in my face.
His laugh is a scrape of joy against my skin.
“I was gonna say—like coming home.”
And gods help me, I break.
Right there.
Tears slip sideways from the corners of my eyes, not from pain, not from fear—just from the unbearable weight of being held like this. Of being wanted like this. Of being known.
He notices.
Wipes them with his thumb.
Kisses me like a promise.
Then moves.
He fucks me like we’ve got time.
Like every thrust is a conversation, every pause a breath between syllables.
His cock glides deep, thick and unhurried, filling me in a way that makes me tremble.
There’s no rush. No frenzy. Just presence.
“Still good?” he murmurs.
I nod, then gasp as he hits just right. “Better than good.”
My legs tighten around him.
His rhythm shifts—deeper now, more deliberate. He braces one hand beside my head and the other spreads low across my belly like he’s holding something precious.
“Can I—?” he starts.
“Yes,” I pant. “Whatever it is, yes.”
He tilts his hips just enough and the angle makes stars burst behind my eyes.
“Oh, fuck?—”
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Let go. I’ve got you.”
I do.
I do.
I come with a cry that rips from my chest like something primal.
My body locks, pulses, clings to him.
And he follows me down.
Groaning my name like it’s a prayer, he spills inside me, hips stuttering once, twice, then stilling.
We collapse together.
Sweaty. Shaking. Breathless.
But whole.
He stays inside me as long as he can. Kisses the corner of my mouth. My jaw. My neck.
Neither of us speaks.
Not for a long time.
When he finally rolls us to our sides, I curl into him without thinking.
My head rests over his heart.
And for the first time in years?—
I sleep without fear.