Chapter 43
BELLA
The first thing I feel is breath. Mine. Rushing into lungs that ache like they’ve never worked before.
Everything hurts, but it’s the kind of hurt that says I’m alive.
Not code, not light, not thought twisted into war—but flesh.
Blood. Skin that tingles with returning nerve endings.
I smell antiseptic, overheated wiring, something faintly charred.
And under that, stronger than all of it, I smell him.
Kage.
His arms are wrapped around me, trembling. Not with effort, not with pain—but with relief. I hear the hitch in his breath, feel the way his huge frame folds in like he’s praying with his whole body. His voice cracks, barely a whisper in my ear.
“Bella.”
I open my mouth. Don’t speak. Just breathe. I can’t stop shaking. My fingers flex like they’re learning how to move again. My spine arches, instinctive and raw, and then I sag against him.
He makes a broken sound, something between a sob and a laugh, and buries his face in my neck. His tears burn hot, sinking into my skin. I don’t stop him. I need him.
“Don’t ever—” he rasps. “Don’t ever do that again.”
I want to say I won’t. That I promise. But we both know I would. If it meant saving her. I’d do it again in a second.
A little voice cuts through the heavy quiet.
“Mommy?”
We both turn toward the other medbed. Natalie’s eyes flutter open, groggy and rimmed with silver lashes. But the glow is gone. Her voice is soft, uncertain.
“Is it over?”
I crawl across the gap, every movement agony and miracle all at once. I cradle her against me, forehead to forehead, breathing her in like oxygen.
“It’s over, baby,” I whisper, tears falling freely now. “He’s gone. You’re safe.”
She starts to cry. Quiet at first, then full-body sobs. And Kage wraps both of us up, pulling us into the curve of his chest. We just hold each other, shaking, snotty, whispering nonsense and names and I love yous and I’m sorrys until it feels like we might fall asleep in the tangle.
We don’t.
The ship hums gently around us, drifting without destination, just a silver ghost in the vacuum beside a burning blue gas giant. I look out the port window. The stars seem closer now. More personal.
I let out a half-crazed laugh.
“Did we just save the goddamn galaxy?”
Kage presses his lips to my temple. His voice is raw velvet.
“Yeah. And each other.”
Back on Glimner, things move fast.
The minute the story gets out—what we did, what Natalie is, what Nulegion was—the newsfeeds erupt like someone lit a match in a fireworks factory. Speculation. Panic. Worship. Fury. Conspiracies by the dozens.
I’m not hiding anymore.
I release the holovid. Uncut. Brutal. Honest. Our story—Natalie’s rescue, the war, the peace we found between species and scars. I show Kage’s hands holding mine. Show Natalie transforming and still being a child. Still being our child.
“No one should be the enemy just because they were born somewhere else,” I say in the final frame.
It hits the net like a meteor. Goes viral in half a dozen systems within the first hour. Comment sections crash. Petitions light up the Alliance courts, demanding full rights for hybrid children. Demanding citizenship for Grolgath warriors who risked everything for peace.
Kage gets his papers.
Natalie gets her protection order—hybrid status fully enshrined in law.
And me?
I get an invitation.
To the Unity Summit. The same one that banned Grolgaths from Glimner twenty years ago.
I laugh when I read it. Then I cry.
Then I say yes.
But only on one condition: I bring my family.
The shuttle rises through Glimner’s upper atmosphere, carrying us toward the waiting cruiser that’ll take us to the summit. It’s quiet up here. The kind of quiet you earn.
Natalie presses her nose to the viewport, fogging the glass with excited breath.
“Do you think they’ll let me pet a space yak?”
Kage chuckles behind her. “If they don’t, I’ll start a rebellion.”
“Rebellions are cool,” she declares, kicking her little boots like she’s already halfway to leading one.
He pulls her into his lap, ruffling her hair. She snuggles in like she never had a parasite in her chest. Like she wasn’t once the eye of an AI storm.
And then, like it’s the easiest thing in the universe, she looks up at him.
“Wanna know a secret?”
He glances at me, then back at her, eyebrows raised.
“Always.”
She leans in, cupping her little hands around his ear like she’s shielding a galactic state secret.
“I think you’re my Daddy.”
Kage goes very still.
The kind of still that comes right before tectonic plates shift.
Then he laughs. Just once. Choked. Wet.
“I think,” he says hoarsely, “I’ve always known.”
I reach across the aisle and take both their hands. His in mine. Hers in his.
And together, we rise.