Page 42 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
That lands. Heavy. Real.
She doesn’t joke.
Doesn’t look away.
Just nods once, slow.
“Alright,” she says. “Then let’s not waste time.”
The transition’s smooth.
Smoother than I expect.
I thought she’d hesitate—trip on the weight of it. But she steps into the role like it was tailored for her. The first time she routes the comm buffer through the decoy channel and loops it back to our private net, I almost forget to breathe.
She works like shebelongsin the ops chair.
Because she does.
That should make this easier.
It doesn’t.
Because every second I watch her at that console, something in me knots a little tighter.
It’s not just the competence. It’s the way shecarriesit. Unapologetic. Unpolished. Sharp.
Dangerous.
To me.
I start adjusting protocols. Redoubling professional structure. No more shared meals. No more casual touches. I reroute our bunk cycles to stagger by two hours. Less overlap. Less proximity.
I stop telling her the personal stuff. The offhand comments, the war stories that thread between sleep shifts. I kill them mid-thought now. Bite down before they make it out.
She notices.
Of course she notices.
But she doesn’t say anything.
Which somehow makes it worse.
Two days later,she hands me a folded schematic with the same tension I use when I handle mines.
“South tunnel ingress,” she says. “I flagged a potential leak in the coolant line. Might be how they’re masking their thermal trace.”
I take it. Our fingers brush.
Static.
Real.
She pulls back like I burned her.
I pretend not to feel it.
“You want me to vet it?” I ask.
