Page 70 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“Don’t make it sound like that unless you’re planning to do something about it.”

The line leaves my mouth before wisdom can intervene.

For several seconds, neither of us moves.

The silver light pulses across the chamber walls. The archive case hums at my feet. Above us, the Choir hunts through stolen routes. Below us, impossible truths wait in the dark.

Ghar’s voice is rough when he answers.

“If I do something about it now, it will not be because of the bond.”

My pulse trips.

“Then why?” I ask.

He looks at me like the answer costs him.

“Because I want to.”

That should not be enough to move the ground beneath me.

It is.

Brakk’s voice slices through the charged silence from the chamber entrance. “I hate to interrupt whatever terrifyingly attractive nonsense is happening over there, but our traitor left us another present.”

“Of course they did.”

Ghar steps back with visible effort.

The distance feels like tearing cloth.

I grab the archive case and follow him toward Brakk and Sira, though my hands no longer feel steady for entirely different reasons. The work still waits. The danger still waits. The truth still waits, enormous and merciless beneath us.

CHAPTER 10

GHAR

The passage below the crescent chamber widens into a throat of black stone large enough to swallow a capital ship’s spine.

Cold pours upward from the descent in steady currents that carry mineral damp, machine ozone, and the stale bitterness of air sealed away for longer than civilizations have names. Our lamps barely touch the walls. Their beams slide across vast surfaces and vanish into the distance, revealing only fragments of architecture too large for mortal scale: ribbed supports taller than launch towers, suspended bridges crossing empty shafts, and layered galleries descending into darkness beneath our feet. Silver lines pulse under the stone in slow synchronized patterns, as if the planet’s buried systems have a heartbeat and we have finally reached the artery.

Anita stops beside me at the lip of the structure, clutching the archive case against her hip while the glow from its damaged core leaks through the seams. The memory of her body against mine leaps into my mind, unbidden.

We have not spoken about it yet, but inevitably we must. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the Bond is profound enough that it requires no discussion.

I am worried for her. Dust streaks her face. Exhaustion darkens the skin beneath her eyes. Her jaw, stubborn as ever, sets itself against fear with the kind of defiance that would be admirable if it did not keep trying to get her killed.

Brakk peers over the edge and immediately steps back. “Nope.”

Sira stands near the threshold with her pale hands folded, her eyes following the descending spiral as it disappears into blackness. “This structure leads far below the mapped excavation levels.”

Brakk points his fusion cutter toward the void. “That was a beautifully diplomatic way to say hell has a basement.”

Anita breathes out slowly, and I hear the strain she tries to hide. “The archive case is pulling toward it.”

I look down at the case. The silver light inside pulses in time with the lines beneath the floor.

“Can you stop it?” I ask.