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Rumours spread around the N109 Zone like wildfire, so when the fearless Onychinus leader showed up to a business meeting with stickers all over his face, there was talk of the unshakable commander going soft. What they didn’t realize was that Sylus Qin simply had more to protect.
It wasn’t until he stepped into the sleek briefing room, its polished metal walls reflecting the faint blue tint of holo-screens, that he realized the full extent of the damage. A pastel constellation of unicorn stickers trailed from his cheekbone to the angle of his jaw, one stubbornly clinging to the bridge of his nose like it intended to colonize him.
“I see the little ones have been… enthusiastic this morning,” a rival faction leader muttered, struggling to maintain composure.
Sylus didn’t look embarrassed. He rarely did. Instead, he peeled off his gloves with slow precision, not indicating that anything in the universe could rattle him. Only the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed the truth. “They were practicing their ambush techniques.”
Delivered in that signature flat tone, it left half the room unsure whether to laugh or stand at attention.
You had warned him earlier that morning that if he tried to leave before breakfast was over, the kids would consider it a “mission objective.” Their words, not yours. And Sylus, who had survived ambushes from various enemies and bio-engineered horrors, had underestimated the sheer tactical brilliance of two small humans armed with a sticker book.
Valentina and Thea had insisted, with the unwavering authority only toddlers possessed, that the stickers stay on his face for the entire day. This wasn’t unfamiliar territory for him. There had been one regrettable incident where he removed the stickers before returning home, which had resulted in such a catastrophic tantrum that even he, the infamous Onychinus commander, had learned his lesson. And Thea hadn’t even been born yet.
Sylus’s patience remained famously thin with most of the world, but for his kids, he would wait out a siege. He would sit for hours while they smeared your makeup across his face or painted every fingernail with the peel-off polish they’d begged him to buy. Stickers were hardly a challenge. If anything, they were a small price to pay for the sound of their infectious giggles.
For the way your smile softened every sharp edge in him.
Back in the meeting room, he tapped a report open, the interface blooming to life above his palm. A holographic projection of the N109 expansion routes flickered into view, and everyone instinctively straightened. Sticker-covered or not, he was still Sylus Qin. Leader. Strategist. The man who walked through chaos as though it bowed to him.
But when he spoke, his voice held a gentleness so subtle most would miss it– a tone that didn’t exist in the early days of Onychinus.
“I’ll handle the negotiation personally,” he said. “I want the transport lanes secure. My family uses those routes.”
Glances shifted around the table, some amused, some quietly moved. The legendary Sylus Qin, who once risked everything without hesitation, now calculated differently. Grappled differently. Lived differently.
And when the meeting adjourned, he didn’t head for the command deck. He headed home. His family lived on the top floor of the base, after all, and he wanted nothing more than to check on his wife and the newest life growing inside her.
Even the penthouse had changed dramatically since the day you first collided with his world, when he saved you from being kidnapped for the protocore in your heart. The space was still dark as night, the way he’d preferred it back then, but now colour lived everywhere. Touches of you softened each corner. And once the kids came along, the pristine order he once maintained dissolved beneath a rainbow tide of toys, plushies, and Bluey merchandise.
There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for the three, soon to be four, of you.
He stopped in the doorway, letting the moment wash over him. You were seated on the couch, reading aloud in a soft voice. The toddlers were already fast asleep, their small bodies curled against fluffy blankets, but you kept going, one hand resting on your pregnancy as you read to the child still nestled beneath your heart.
His shoulders loosened. The hard lines of duty melted away.
You didn’t look up until his arms slipped around your waist and his palms rested on your belly. The baby kicked right against his hand, prompting a quiet, breathy chuckle. “He’s an active one today.”
“Must be an avid reader like his mama,” you teased, turning your face toward him for a kiss.
A rare, low laugh rumbled from his chest, the kind he saved solely for you. He leaned in for another kiss, gentler but no less hungry, before settling beside you. You leaned into him, finishing the story for your son while Sylus watched his daughters on the opposite couch, each clutching their Grumpy Crow and Smiley Dino plushies like tiny guardians of their dreams.
Maybe the N109 Zone thought he’d gone soft.
But the truth was simpler: Sylus Qin had finally found something, someone, worth softening for.