My husband ordered them to drain my core while I was carrying our spirit cub. The ship AI screamed a highest-level red warning: a 97.4% fatality rate for the gestating host. Kael overrode it anyway—to save Lyra. When I fought the chamber locks and begged for one second more, he cut our mental link, sealed the door, and told them to continue extraction as our cub cracked apart inside my mind. That was the moment I chose not to die as his resource. I burned the last of my strength, broke free, and launched myself toward the Maw—a black hole everyone else called certain death. The price was immediate: my child was gone, my body was failing, and the woman who had trusted the Empire’s protections died with that escape. Three years later, when Kael came to beg a higher civilization for salvation, he found me sitting above him in judgment.