Page 264 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

No voice tells me I chose correctly.

That is probably good.

I stand, my knees stiff, my feet freezing against the floor. The containment room feels smaller now, only a room again: fields, glass, metal, protocols, a dangerous shard resting under many locks. I turn off the unauthorized private review log, then hesitate and reopen it long enough to add a note.

Unreleased contact fragment remains sealed pending multi-witness ethical review. Reviewer experienced high emotional pressure toward disclosure and declined unilateral release.

I stare at the sentence.

Then I add:

No thrones.

I close the file.

When I step into the corridor, the warmer air hits my face like mercy. The station’s night-cycle remains quiet. A maintenance drone hums past, pauses as if judging my coat and bare feet, then continues. I walk back through the sleeping corridors with my arms folded against the chill, feeling ridiculous, humbled, and more certain of my uncertainty than I was when I left.

The door to our quarters opens at my palm.

Inside, the room is dim. Ghar is awake.

Of course he is.

He sits on the edge of the bed in loose sleep trousers, bandages pale across his chest, golden eyes catching the low light. He does not look angry. That almost makes me feel worse.

“You went to the shard,” he says.

I stop just inside the door. “Yes.”

“Alone.”

“Yes.”

His gaze moves over me, noting the bare feet, the coat, the cold hands, probably the guilt trying to climb out of my face and file a report. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you lying?”

“Not about that.”

He exhales through his nose, then holds out one hand. “Come here.”

I cross the room and take it.

He pulls me gently between his knees, then wraps both arms around my waist and rests his forehead against my stomach. The gesture is so openly tired and affectionate that my throat closes. I put my hands on his shoulders, careful of the healing wounds.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Tell me.”

So I do.

I tell him about the preserved layers, the faint echo, the question of cowardice, the line about value emerging without assignment. I tell him I wanted to release it. I tell him I did not. I tell him I wrote no thrones in the review log like a woman trying to staple ethics to her own sleeve.

He listens without interrupting.

When I finish, he lifts his head. “You returned.”