I don't think anyone answered the question. It is about whether it can be exposed without a VPN, not whether it is safe to expose.

In my limited knowledge, I think it is possible, but I'm not really sure what do you mean by "VPN". You will at least need a tunnel. If your concern is paying for VPN, just for the use case, you don't need a full fledged VPN. A wireguard tunnel will do.

You may get a better answer if you can elaborate your question with more details. Good luck.