One day, the shelter's alarms started beeping—a sound they'd never heard before. Rhea was the first to spot the source: a tiny, battered escape pod drifting near the ruins of a shattered moon. Alex's stomach twisted with worry, but they couldn't just ignore it. Carefully, they brought the pod aboard.
Inside, they found two survivors. Mara was older and sharp-eyed, the kind of person who seemed to size up a room the second she walked in. She introduced herself as a linguist, and her younger brother, Jonas, barely said a word—just glared at everyone, arms crossed, like he was daring them to make the first move.
The system nudged Alex with a gentle prompt: [Integrate newcomers]. He wasn't sure what that meant in practice, but he welcomed Mara and Jonas anyway. The shelter seemed to stretch overnight, adding a couple of new rooms as if it already knew what they'd need.
Mara was quick to get involved, but she also brought a new kind of energy—sometimes exciting, sometimes exhausting. She didn't just follow orders; she wanted to know why the system did what it did, and she asked Alex hard questions he wasn't always ready to answer. Jonas kept to himself at first, clashing with the older kids, but eventually Lin took him under her wing. She let him help in the engine room, and slowly, he started opening up—at least to her.
With Mara and Jonas around, everything shifted. The group had to renegotiate their routines and make space for new opinions and personalities. There were more disagreements and awkward silences, but also more laughter at the dinner table, more hands to help when things broke down. The harem's bonds stretched to make room for new trust, new rivalries, and the complicated, messy business of growing into something like a real family.