Page 112 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

I hate that she sees it.

Brakk scratches behind one ear. “I could maybe coach you through the collar interface, big man, but by the time I explain the delicate parts, we’ll all be decorative smoke stains.”

I look between them, then down at Sira kneeling in the field below. The problem arranges itself with brutal clarity. Anita is the key to both the archive and the rescue. That makes her valuable, vulnerable, and unavoidable.

“Fine,” I say.

Anita’s shoulders drop with relief.

I point at her before she speaks. “You move only when I tell you. You do not improvise unless the alternative is death. You do not chase data. You do not confront Rolaev through any open channel. If the route collapses, you fall back to Brakk.”

She nods. “Okay.”

“That was too easy.”

“I’m learning.”

Brakk snorts. “She is lying, but sweetly.”

Anita shoots him a tired look. “You are not helping.”

“I am providing moral seasoning.”

We spend the next several minutes preparing inside the alcove while the Choir works below. Brakk cannibalizes the planted relay tap, two sensor fragments, and a coil from his cutter harness to build a crude pulse jammer. His hands shake once, then steady as anger gives him focus. Anita kneels beside him and helps calibrate the resonance ping from the archive case, her face tight with concentration. I check weapons, divide ammunition, and map kill zones across the galleries below.

When the plan is ready, there is nothing left to do but wait for the next patrol shift.

Anita sits beside me with her back against the balustrade, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. The white light from below turns her profile sharp and pale. For once, she does not fill the silence with argument.

I offer her a water ration.

She takes it and drinks carefully. “Thank you.”

“Your hands are steadier.”

“Fear is focusing.”

“That is not ideal.”

“Nothing about this day has been ideal. I got kissed in a maintenance chamber under a planet full of cosmic secrets, and somehow that is not even in the top five weirdest things that happened.”

Despite myself, I look at her mouth.

She notices.

Her cheeks color beneath the dust. “You keep doing that.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to retreat about it again?”

“I am considering several bad options.”

That draws a small, real smile from her, and the sight eases something in me that had been clenched since Sira vanished.

Anita looks down at the water ration in her hands. “When you said you couldn’t lose me, I believed you.”

The simplicity of the statement leaves me exposed.