Page 57 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
CHAPTER 18
LEAH
Iknow he’s back before I see him.
It’s not the comms ping, not the alert on the perimeter grid. It’s something else—cell-deep awareness, a shift in the air that pulls my spine straight like a wire’s been tripped.
And then he’s there.
Six paces into the command deck, just inside the secondary door like he belongs, like he never left. Kalev in full tactical black, a travel-worn jacket slung over one shoulder, eyes scanning and landing—on me.
I freeze.
My hand stills over the surveillance console. Heat floods my chest, blooming into my throat, and for a second I can’t breathe past the pounding in my ears. He's real. He's here.
No warning. No protocol. Just a man carved in steel and regret, standing in the place he walked away from without a word.
“What the hell,” I say.
He blinks, slow and deliberate. “I’m back.”
“No shit.” I shove away from the desk, boots scraping loud against the grating. “You couldn’t message? One line, Kalev. You know how to type.”
“I sent a burst.”
“Yeah, I got it,” I bite out. “Three cryptic lines. ‘The stars mean nothing,’ what even is that? You ghosted me.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice.” My voice cracks around the edges, a sharp thing trying to sound steady. “You just didn’t pick me.”
Silence.
The kind that presses against your ribs and won’t let up.
He steps forward. “It wasn’t safe.”
“And this is?”
“I was under black anchor. There were no goodbyes. No context. Just in, execute, extract.”
I cross my arms, but my hands won’t stop trembling. “I ran this op alone. You left me holding the bag without even a tactical handoff.”
“You held it,” he says quietly. “Better than anyone else would’ve.”
My laugh comes brittle. “Don’t flatter me.”
“It’s not flattery. It’s fact.”
I stare at him—at the crease between his brows, the tension in his shoulders, the bruise darkening along his jaw. He looks like hell.
But he’s here.
That counts for something. Ithasto.
“I thought you were dead,” I whisper.
“I know.”
