Page 142 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz
She nods once, as if sealing something inside herself. “Then let’s burn this place down. All of it.”
We plant the charges together.
As we walk back to the ship, the base behind us hums with the promise of erasure. The ghosts will finally have somewhere to rest.
Yara pauses at the airlock, looking back one last time.
“I used to think innocence was something worth protecting,” she says. “Now I think it was just ignorance with better branding.”
I rest my hand at the small of her back. “You’re not innocent.”
She looks up at me, not offended. Not sad.
“Good,” she says. “I’m sovereign.”
The explosion lights the horizon as we lift off, a silent bloom against the black.
And for the first time since this war began, I believe her when she says no one will ever come for what we’ve built again.
CHAPTER 27
YARA
The city sleeps, but my body refuses to follow suit.
Even now, hours after the blast radius on that ghosted moon has cooled into memory, my veins feel wired with fire and triumph. Victory isn’t always quiet—sometimes it thumps like a heartbeat in a locked chest, desperate to escape. I can almost taste it on my tongue: the sharp sweetness of success, mixed with something deeper, richer, more primal.
I should be exhausted.
The dossiers, the tracking, the confrontations—it should have worn me down to bone and breath. But instead I feel alive. Not merely sustained. Not merely breathing. Thriving.
The door to my penthouse slides open with a designated-access buzz, and there he stands—Grau—cloak folded over one shoulder, boots silent on the threshold, eyes tracking me with that look he gets when he’s quietly assessing me, like he’s savoring my shape against the light of the skyline.
We’ve fought wars together.
We’ve chased ghosts.
We’ve watched men fall.
We’ve rebuilt empires.
But tonight… tonight feels like a different kind of gravitation.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.
Two steps, and I’m beside him.
“You did good,” he murmurs—not proud, not loose with flattery, just the raw foundation of how he speaks truth.
“We did good,” I correct, and there’s no defensiveness in it. Just joy—pure, unabashed, warm and spreading like dusk light over water.
I can taste it in the air—the tang of victory, the sweet undercurrent of desire that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with connection.
I reach for him first.
Not because I need reassurance.
Not because I’m wounded.
