Page 29 of Koha'vek
“Because men from that same group tried to take my human mate.” I found myself nodding. “She hasn’t asked to go back to town. Not once. I think she knows what they’d see when they looked at me.”
“Mine knew, too,” he said. “But she stayed.”
A beat passed. Then another.
“They change us,” I murmured.
“Or remind us who we were,” Veklan said.
We sat in silence for a few breaths—just two males who had walked out of the same war with different wounds, but the same ache for something better.
“If they deny the request…” he began.
“Then we move and survive,” I said quietly. “But not alone this time.”
“No,” he agreed. “Not alone.”
I could hear wind in the background of his transmission, children laughing, the creak of leather straps, and timber—life.
“We’ll be ready,” he said. “For whatever comes next.”
And I believed him.
“Stay sharp, Veklan.”
“You too, old ghost.”
The channel went quiet.
And I sat there a moment longer, holding the com link like it was more than a tool, like a thread between two lives that almost never connected again.
I looked up as Ava stepped onto the porch, her eyes warm, quiet, knowing.
Shedidn’t ask what we talked about.
She didn’t have to.
Ava
I stepped out onto the porch just as he ended the call.
He was still holding the com link in one hand, staring at it like it had said something personal—something that didn’t quite fit in the world outside his head.
He didn’t look up when I came out, but he didn’t have to. His shoulders relaxed, just a little, like he could feel me there.
“I didn’t mean to listen,” I said quietly.
He finally turned toward me. His expression wasn’t guarded—it was open in a way he didn’t often let himself be. “But you did.”
I nodded. “Only a little.”
He didn’t seem bothered.
I stepped closer, wrapping my arms around myself as I leaned against the post beside him. The late sun was still warm on our faces, but I could sense the weight of the conversation hanging in the air between us.
“He called you an old ghost,” I said. “Was he a friend?”
He didn’t answer right away. “We were soldiers,” he said eventually. “But never friends. He called me a ghost because I couldmove through a battlefield like a ghost. We followed different codes. I believed in restraint. He believed in command. But he left before I did. I used to think he betrayed everything.”
