Her breath evens out against my neck, the rise and fall of her ribs syncing with mine. I stare at the smoke-stained ceiling, one arm pinned beneath her, the other draped across the dip of her waist. Her hair smells like the lavender soap she insists on making every spring, though I’d never admit how the scent clings to my shirts long after she’s gone.
Somewhere down the hall, a floorboard creaks. Joren’s nightmares, probably. Kid’s been jumping at shadows since the harvest raid. I count seconds until the soft pad of bare feet follows—Aria, always slipping into his room to hum those off-key lullabies. Their murmurs drift through the thin walls, a language I still don’t speak fluently.
Kelli stirs, her knee brushing the old blaster scar on my thigh. I freeze, but she just nestles closer, her exhale warm against my throat.
Strange, how the weight of her doesn’t set my nerves alight. Ten years of sleeping with one eye open, and now I’m here—letting a woman with vengeance in her bones and two half-wild strays she calls siblings press their luck against my ribs. The hearth’s glow paints the rifle propped by the door, the security system blinking green near the windowsill. All the traps I’ve laid, and still, the tightness in my chest isn’t about perimeter breaches.
Kelli mutters something, a half-formed word that might be my name. My arm tightens around her on instinct.
Mercs don’t retire. We bleed out or burn up. But this—her heartbeat under my hand, the kids’ muffled laughter at dawn, the godsforsaken rooster that pecks my boots each morning—it’s not an ending. It’s a ceasefire. A stolen rhythm I’ve started grafting to my bones.
The fire dims. I should move, bank the coals. Instead, I count the freckles on Kelli’s shoulder and memorize the way the moonlight cuts across the crib in the corner—empty still, but not for lack of trying, that's for sure.
