Page 97 of Fated in A Time of War
Krall doesn’t look at me. His voice, when it comes, is gravel and resignation. “I’m not theirs anymore.”
There’s no bitterness in his tone. Just absolute clarity.
His words fall around me, echoing like a promise. My throat tightens. I don’t say anything. I don’t need to.
My hand finds his, our fingers thread together. It’s heavy warmth on cold metal, and it tells everything. It says I’m here. I stay. It says we’re together, not as soldier and doctor, not as memory and name—but as two broken souls glued by reckoning and hope.
We rise higher, piercing the thinner air, until the view beyond shifts from haze to darkness. Stars spill across the screen—pinpricks of light hugging solos and constellations I don’t recognize. Space doesn’t care who we are or what we did. It just is.
The hum of the engines in the background, the steady breathing of life around me—it should feel like victory.
It doesn’t.
Not yet.
But it feels like something better.
Possibility.
And for now, that’s enough.
We sit there, side by side, ascending into the unknown. I lean my head against his shoulder. He doesn’t move. I don’t want him to.
Because here—in the absence of orders, in the echo of that abandoned beacon—we’ve found something neither war nor the world could ever take from us.
Our own small hope.
On the viewport, blue shadows yield to slow gold. League space beckons ahead. We punch the course into the nav console—first to the outer fringe where Ataxians and exiles have carved out a home among ruins that look nothing like what we left behind. It’ll be quiet there. More importantly, it’ll be free.
I trace the jumps: Waypoint 1, align vector, watch for the gravity wells of abandoned moons. The hum of the console under my fingertips is electric promise. My fingers tremble—part nerves, part wonder. Krall’s hand slips into mine, grounding everything.
“Ready?” I whisper, even though the engine’s already whining to life.
He nods. Not because he needs to; I see the light in his eyes, steady and feral. He watches my brow furrow as I compensate for vector drift, account for solar wind. He memorizes the shift in my shoulders when the nav readout glows green. He knows. She’s not just his mate. She’s his compass.
When I look at him, he catches my gaze and doesn’t look away.
“You’re incredible,” he says, voice low and rough, like he’s testing the words on his tongue for the way they feel.
I flush, normally shrug the compliment off—but not now. Not with the future hanging untold before us. I reach up, brush a fingertip across the scar near his jaw—one that’s jagged, stillpink around the edges, sunrise etched into his skin. He closes his eyes at my touch.
“You’re my peace,” he says.
Heat blooms in my chest. It’s real. Not something forged in need or desperation. It’s softer. Harder to wield. It’s been built in the echoes of moments like this one—rudderless and still, finally steady.
“I’m yours too,” I reply, voice quiet, but raw.
He shifts closer, shoulder brushing mine. His breath is steady in my hair, warm. The engine drone hums louder, and the starfield outside warps into a tunnel of light. We slip through the threshold without a word.
Silence falls between us, not empty, but full. Full of every decision that led us here. Every horror. Every mercy. Every quiet moment we’d snagged amid chaos. That’s cultivated something new. Something sacred.
The console pings again—arrival time approaching. Lease coordinates. Docking port reserved. Our new chance.
Krall squeezes my hand, and I slide my thumb over his knuckles, committed. He doesn’t say anything. I don’t need words.
I glance at the nav log. Our destination isn’t perfect. It’s not home—not yet. It’s a place where we can begin stitching ourselves together again. A place of atonement, community, exile and home.
He shifts, whispering, “Whatever happens next?—”
