POV: Malia Moon
The principal's office feels smaller with Commander Reid standing in it, though the moment the door clicks shut behind me, all the careful formality from the training yard melts away entirely, like watching one man step out of another man's skin.
"There she is." Reid's whole posture shifts, shoulders dropping, the rigid command presence replaced by something warmer, more familiar. "Come here."
I cross the room without hesitation, and he pulls me into a hug that feels like the first genuinely safe thing I've experienced since arriving at this academy, solid and certain in a way that has nothing to do with politics or bloodlines, the same steady warmth I remember from childhood visits when he'd sneak me sweets my mother never approved of.
"Look at you," he says, pulling b
