Page 92 of Scaled Daddy's Secret Heir
Not just the war.
Not just the loss.
I survivedmyself.
And what I made out of that survival is this boy. This life. This bright, impossible child who still believes in heroes and builds traps for imaginary pirates and whispers “goodnight” to the stars.
He is my proof that love remains, even without closure.
Even when the story stops too soon.
And I’ll keep telling that story as long as he needs it.
Because maybe someday—maybesoon—he’ll need to know the truth.
But not today.
Today, he needs to dream.
And I need to let him.
CHAPTER 29
KALEV
The cell hums again, same as always. It’s a faint, high-pitched vibration at the edge of hearing—like a machine’s trying to whisper something it isn’t allowed to say. I’ve learned to count time by that hum. Not in seconds, not even in hours, but in shifts of pitch. The higher it gets, the closer I am to sleep. The lower it sinks, the sooner they’ll come to remind me I’m still theirs.
I don’t bother to rise when the lights pulse awake above me.
But I’m already alert. Muscles coiled under skin that hasn’t seen the sun in nearly two years. My cot, a slab of something harder than plastic and less forgiving than stone, groans as I shift. Air smells like sterilized nothing—scrubbed too many times, recycled too many ways.
Today should be the same. It always is.
But there’s a pause.
A gap in the rhythm.
No footsteps. No barked orders. No rattle of meal trays shoved through slits by faceless guards with laser-straight postures.
That’s the first sign.
I sit up slowly, feet hitting cold floor with the dull slap of bare skin on alloy. My toes flex. No pain. No chill. Everything here is neutral, engineered to suck feeling out of flesh.
And yet my pulse starts to gallop.
Something’s changed.
I run a hand over my face. Stubble, sweat, and a scar across my jaw that still itches in high humidity. Not that there’s any of that down here. The Alliance doesn’t do weather in its prisons. They do control. Sterility. Routine.
So why the hell is my cell door hissing open?
A low hiss of hydraulics, too smooth to be accidental. No alarms, no warning lights. Just the soft mechanical sigh of the impossible happening.
I rise, slow, cautious. The door slides away to reveal a man who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.
He’s not a guard. Too soft. Too clean. His uniform’s a slate-gray that screams “civilian contractor.” He holds a slate, eyes flicking to me and away again like I’m something he read about once and didn’t want to believe was real.
“Vorlien,” he mumbles, not quite looking at me. “You’re... you’re being transferred.”
