Chapter 349: Allison’s Lap

Looking up through the tree canopy, Luke realized it was still daytime. Sunlight slipped between the leaves in golden threads that danced across his face, and the distant call of birds felt like an echo of a dream refusing to fade. Then he felt something warm and soft beneath his head. When he turned, he froze. He was lying on Allison’s lap.

For a moment, he didn’t move. His heartbeat spiked, thoughts scrambling to make sense of the situation.

How… did this happen?

Allison stirred. Her lashes fluttered before her eyes opened, and a quiet yawn escaped her. She stretched lazily, utterly at ease, as if the world beyond the trees didn’t exist. Luke scrambled to sit up, his face hot, nearly tripping over himself in the process.

He coughed lightly, pretending composure he didn’t feel. “Looks like the war hasn’t started yet,” he muttered, trying to sound casual, though his mind was still spinning. He had no idea how his head had ended up in her lap while she slept, but he decided not to ask too directly.

“You’re awake,” she said, studying him. “You were making some weird faces in your sleep. Looked like you were having a nightmare.”

“At first, yeah. But then… it turned into something else. A memory, I think. One of those that hurts, but still pushes you forward. Guess that’s what it was, regret mixed with motivation.” He hesitated, then added, “Did you… put my head on your lap?”

“I did,” she said simply, without the slightest hesitation.

Luke blinked, thrown off by how easily she admitted it. “You shouldn’t… do that with just anyone.”

“My adoptive mom used to do it when I had bad dreams,” she said softly, smiling faintly at the thought. “And you’re not just anyone, Luke. You’re my friend.”

Her words carried a warmth that disarmed him more than any fight ever could.

This was the real Allison, not the commander surrounded by followers, not the strategist in those tense war meetings. This was the one he’d met long ago, the one who smiled without walls, the one who still believed in small comforts.

He considered retreating into the cave but didn’t move. The calm in her eyes, so at odds with the coming battle, said enough. Maybe she, too, was fighting her own private war, a quieter one no one else could see.

Luke sat beside her. “You nervous about… the war?”

“Something like that,” she said, lying back on the grass and gazing at the treetops.

For a while, only the sound of wind through the leaves filled the air. The silence between them wasn’t awkward; it carried the easy kind of trust that didn’t need words.

Then she asked, her voice quiet but sincere, “What was it like… growing up with your adoptive family?”

Luke lay down beside her, eyes fixed on the same patch of sky. They both knew what the question really meant. Depending on how the next few hours went, this might be the last real conversation they ever had.

“It was hard,” he said finally. “Because in my head, I wasn’t a kid who needed adopting. One day my mom was there… and the next she was gone. And she never came back.”

He exhaled slowly, the memories heavy but steady. “I grew up confused.”

“You were a kid,” she murmured.

He gave a quiet laugh through his nose. “Yeah. But honestly? Until about a minute ago, I don’t think I’ve been any less confused since I was five.”

After a pause, he added, “Living in the house where my mom used to work… it always felt strange. I never knew what I was supposed to be. Was I a guest? A burden? A son? Did they see me as the kid of an irresponsible maid who disappeared, or as someone they truly wanted to keep?”

Memories stirred within him. “That’s what made everything so confusing while I was growing up,” he said. “They didn’t go to an orphanage to adopt me. I was just left in that house. I wasn’t their son by blood, and I wasn’t chosen either. I was simply dropped off with a promise that my mom would come back for me.”

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He drew a slow breath, as if testing the shape of the words before letting them go. “And I was scared. Scared of loving that family, only to find out I was just a guest to them. I think that’s why I grew up the way I did, why I couldn’t accept the idea that anyone besides my mother could care about me. Because deep down, I was terrified of being disappointed again.”

The sound of the forest filled the silence that followed, leaves shifting, distant birds calling somewhere beyond sight. Allison watched him quietly, her expression soft but unreadable.

It was the truth he’d spent years avoiding, the one that had shaped him more than he’d ever wanted to admit.

“I was afraid of the day they’d tell me they didn’t want me there anymore,” he continued. “So I pushed away every bit of kindness they tried to give. I didn’t know what I was supposed to be. Should I forget my mother? Accept their love? Was I a guest? A son? A burden?”

Luke’s voice cracked, but he didn’t stop. He let the breath out slowly, the sound thin and exhausted.

“That’s how I lived, from five to eighteen,” he said. “And now, after a year away from them, I just want to go back. Hug them. Tell them they weren’t the only ones who adopted me. I adopted them too, my family.”

Allison stood and looked down at him. “So it took you fourteen years to realize they loved you all along? And you still complained about the system calling you dense?”

He cleared his throat. “When you say it like that, it makes me sound… kind of dense.”

She flicked his forehead lightly, a smile tugging at her lips. “Don’t worry. We’ll make it back to Earth. Once we activate the third mechanism, the portal should open. If everything goes right, all eighteen hundred of us will return.”