“Not everyone sees it that way.” Her thumb traced circles on the back of his hand. “Her father loved her, but he also tried to control her. He wanted her to be the daughter he’d imagined rather than the person she actually was. It made things difficult between them sometimes.”
“I won’t make that mistake.”
“I know.” She looked up at him, hazel eyes serious. “You see people clearly. Who they are, not who you want them to be.”
“And who are you, s’kara?”
“Someone trying very hard not to fall for an alien warrior she met two days ago.” But her smile said she was already falling.
He cupped her face gently, careful of his strength and her fragility. “And if I’m falling too?”
“Then I guess we’ll figure it out together.”
He kissed her, slow and deep and thorough, pouring twenty years of loneliness into the touch. She rose on her toes to meet him, her free hand fisting in his uniform, pulling him closer despite the physical impossibility of their size difference.
From the other room came Anya’s disgusted voice: “I can still hear you!”
They broke apart, breathless and smiling.
“We should stop,” she said, but she didn’t move away.
“Probably.”
“Anya will never let us forget this.”
“Undoubtedly.”
They kissed anyway, consequences be damned.
CHAPTER NINE
The data pad slipped from Corinne’s fingers and clattered against the desk.
“Anya, what does this say?” She pointed to a line of Galactic Standard text, but the symbols swam in front of her eyes like fish darting through murky water.
Anya leaned over her shoulder, squinting at the screen. “Something about… ship protocols? I think that symbol means ‘safety,’ but I’m not sure about the rest.”
Three days aboard the patrol ship, and her brain felt stuffed with cotton. The written language program Tarak had provided was thorough—exhaustingly thorough—with modules covering everything from basic greetings to complex navigational terminology. She’d thrown herself into it with the same determination she’d once applied to learning Shakespearean sonnets for her dissertation, but Galactic Standard had a logic that defied everything she knew about language.
The grammar shifted depending on the speaker’s species. Verb tenses included options for past events that might still beongoing in alternate timelines. And the written form used characters that looked like someone had let a spider crawl through ink and then dance across the page.
Mikoz fussed from his crib, pulling himself up on the side. He was doing that more and more often these days. She saved her progress on the language module and crossed to pick him up, cradling his warm weight against her chest.
“Hey, little one,” she murmured. “Ready for breakfast?”
He babbled eagerly as she mixed up a small quantity of nutrient powder with water to make a cereal-like paste. He would be eating solid food soon, she thought as he slurped eagerly at the spoon-like utensil Selik had provided, and her eyes threatened to fill with tears. He was growing up so fast and she wanted to be there for every minute of it.
Anya had returned to her own studies, bent over a data pad with fierce concentration. The girl attacked learning with the same intensity she applied to everything else—all or nothing, complete focus or complete refusal.
The door chimed and Anya’s head snapped up, wariness flooding her features. Three days of relative safety hadn’t erased the instinct to treat every unexpected sound as a potential threat.
“It’s probably Selik,” she said, trying for reassurance she didn’t quite feel.
“He usually doesn’t come until evening.”
True. Selik had established a pattern over the past few days—checking on them in the morning before starting his shift, then returning in the evening to share a meal and conversation. Hefrequently lingered after the children were asleep, but he hadn’t spent the night again. Midday visits were unusual.
“Enter,” she called.
