Cam’s gaze sharpens. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I mumble.
Sterling’s voice cuts in, dry. “She’s lying.”
“Et tu, Ghost,” I mutter.Fucking traitor.
Lila’s eyes narrow. “You went gray, babe. Sit.”
I stay standing. Telling them was always going to suck. There’s no version of this where I ease into it with them, and it doesn’t turn into a round of strategy. “Actually…” I exhale. “There’s something we need to talk about.” Cam goes rigid, bracing for impact. Lila sets her cup down. Sterling doesn’t move at all, but I can feel him, like a live wire at my side. I take a deep breath. Then another.Okay, here goes nothing. “I’m pregnant,” I say, not softening the blow. Just the truth, dropped in the center of the table like a live grenade.
For a heartbeat, no one moves; then the reactions hit at once. Cam takes off his glasses as Lila’s mouth falls open and then snaps shut sohard I can almost hear her teeth click. “You’re…” Lila starts, then corrects. “How sure?”
“Pretty sure,” I say. “Medical confirmation, sure. It’s still early.”
Lila sucks in a breath, eyes suddenly bright and very, very sharp. “Are you okay?” she demands. “Like, actually okay. Not your bullshit, I’m fine.”
“Physically? So far,” I say. “Emotionally? That’s a longer answer.”
“Okay,” Lila smiles softly. “We’ll circle back to the long answer. And if any of those labs touched a Cicada server, I’m burning a building down.”
“They didn’t,” I assure her. “I was careful.”
Cam finally finds his voice. “This…” He stops, swallows, tries again. “This changes things.”
“And there goes the normalcy,” I groan.
Cam grimaces. “You want me to say it or not?”
“Yeah, go ahead.”
Cam leans forward, forearms on the table, fingers laced like he’s holding himself together with his own hands. “What I mean,” he says slowly, “is that I am not willing to run point with you in the same way when you’re pregnant. We were already pushing your odds of survival harder than I like. Now the margin for error is smaller, and I refuse to pretend it isn’t. You’re stubborn, and you don’t listen, Ki.”
“Newsflash,” I smirk. “That’s been true since you met me.”
“And I’ve been rethinking this ever since,” he says, a flash of humorless honesty cutting through. “Kiera, I’m serious. You don’t stop being you. You don’t stop fighting. But the way you fight has to change at least for a little while. No more walking into an active fire. No morevolunteering as the test subject every time we hit a wall. We have other assets. We use them.”
Lila nods, jaw set. “He’s right,” she agrees. “You’re not getting sidelined. You’re getting promoted. People in charge of strategy don’t get to die in stupid ways.”
“That’s not how that usually works,” I point out.
“It is now. I refuse to let my niece or nephew suffer from their parents' lack of self-preservation.” Lila’s really in a mood right now.
Sterling finally speaks, voice low but steady. “You already know where I stand.” His eyes graze over me. “You keep this, and we change the war. You don’t, we still change the war. Either way, we’re done letting Cicada write endings for you.” Silence settles over us, thick and humming.
“I’ve decided.” The words feel like stepping off a ledge and trusting the landing will be there. “I’m keeping it,” I blurt out. Lila sucks in a sob, trying not to cry.
Cam shuts his eyes for a second, then opens them, something fierce and resigned in the set of his mouth. “Okay, then we plan around that.” He flips the tablet around, showing a rough schematic he’s been building in the short time of this conversation. Places of safety, ones where the baby and I can be safe—Mara’s, a few safe houses, new safehouses. There are blank spaces where new safe houses will go, paths between them like veins. “We put other people on the front lines,” he says. “Me. Lila. Contacts we can trust. We make you and Sterling the brain and the shadow.”
The anger at the program, at my mother, at all of it, burns low and constant. But underneath that, there’s something else. The stubborn, newly loud part of me that wants to live. That wants this kid, this innocent baby, to have a version of me that isn’t just a weapon. “I hate this,” I say.
“I know,” Cam says. “That’s how I know you’re going to be fine.”
Lila reaches over and flicks my forehead, gently. “You’re still the sharpest thing in the room,” she says. “You’re just… sharpening from a safe distance.”
Sterling uncrosses his arms, steps closer, not quite touching me, but close enough that I can feel the heat of him. “On your terms, Thorn,” he says. “From here on out, it’s on your terms.”
I look at all of them, the people I never should have had, standing in a warehouse that was never meant to be a home. Tears stream down my face at all the possibilities that we could have had. “This changes everything,” I sob, echoing Cam’s words. It feels good. Because for the first time, I’m the one changing the rules. This is now my game to play.