Page 93 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
I squint at him. “To where?”
He blinks. “You’re not cleared for that information.”
No one ever says that unless they think you’re dead meat.
I step out, slow, careful. There’s no shock collar around my neck, no restraints on my hands. I feel naked without them.
The hallway's clean, too clean. Lights brighter than usual. No bootsteps echoing ahead or behind.
Two guards fall in behind me as I walk. They don’t say a word. Their eyes are hidden behind black visors that reflect just enough of my face to make me flinch.
We take a route I’ve never seen. Past corridors I’ve only ever heard rumors of. One has a red stripe across the ceiling—military level. Another features a pair of cameras that track every step like sentient insects.
Something itches between my shoulder blades.
They’re not taking me out.
They’re taking mesomewhere worse.
We reach a shuttle bay. The ship waiting for us is matte black, unmarked. Old Alliance design, low-altitude jump model, wide enough to seat prisoners, slim enough to disappear into a radar blink.
I board without being told. There are others here—three prisoners. Real ones. Shackled, beaten, eyes swollen shut. They look at me like I’m a ghost.
I slide into the only unchained seat, and that alone tells me this isn’t about justice. It’s a performance.
The shuttle rumbles to life, vibrations crawling up through my boots, settling into my spine like a memory I’d rather forget. For a moment, I see Leah. Her face blurry from my last concussion. Blood on her lip. That last moment she whispered my name, a promise wrapped in tragedy.
I clench my jaw.
Focus.
There’s no window, but I feel the shift as we rise. Pressure changes. A low mechanical snarl beneath us, like the ship’s angry to be awake.
Thirty-seven minutes pass. I count them by the flicker of a readout light above the door, blinking steady like a heartbeat.
We land without ceremony.
The hatch opens. Sunlight blinds me, filtered through high-altitude fog. Not prison sun. Civilian grade.
They haul me out. Not roughly. That’s the worst part—they’re gentle, like I’m already something delicate. Something owned.
Waiting at the edge of the tarmac is General Dowron.
He’s taller than I remember. Thinner, too. His eyes are the kind that have seen too many chessboards and too few battlefields. He smiles, tight-lipped and weaponized.
“Kalev Vorlien,” he says, extending a gloved hand.
I stare at it.
“I wasn’t aware I had fans.”
He lowers it slowly, still smiling. “Come. We have much to discuss.”
His office is too cold. Chrome and glass and artificial light bouncing off everything like a scalpel. I sit across from him, spine straight, eyes locked.
“You’re being released,” he says without ceremony.
My laugh is a dry rasp. “And pigs fly.”
