“Katie is five. Her judgment may not be reliable.”
Melissa laughed, feeling something loosen in her chest. They were going to be okay. She didn’t know how, exactly—didn’t know where they’d end up or what they’d be doing or how any of the logistics would work out. But she knew, with bone-deep certainty, that they would face it together.
“I want to be part of a team,” Becsul said quietly. “Whatever I do next. I want to work alongside others who share my values. People I can trust. People who trust me.”
“Like a crew?”
“Perhaps. Or something similar.” His hand found hers, his claws carefully avoiding her skin. “I have been alone in many ways for a very long time. Even surrounded by others, I was… separate. Holding myself apart.”
“You don’t have to be apart anymore.”
“No.” He looked at her, and there was something raw in his expression—vulnerable in a way he rarely allowed himself to be. “I do not. And I find that I want… connection. Community. A place where I belong not because of my function, but because of who I am.”
“Then we’ll find that.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Both of us. Together.”
In his makeshift crib, Robbie stirred and made a small sound—not quite waking, but close. Becsul’s attention shifted immediately, his posture adjusting to readiness.
“He’ll sleep another few minutes,” Melissa murmured. “He’s just dreaming.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve learned his sounds. That’s his ‘processing the day’ noise, not his ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘something’s wrong’ noise.”
“There are different noises?”
“At least a dozen. You’ll learn them.”
“I want to.” The intensity in his voice made her look up. “I want to learn all of his sounds, and all of yours. I want to know when you are happy and when you are merely pretending. I want to recognize your dreams from your nightmares. I want to spend years discovering the small things that I have not yet noticed.”
“That’s…” She swallowed hard. “That’s either the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me, or incredibly creepy. I haven’t decided which.”
“I hope romantic. I was attempting romantic.”
“You succeeded.” She kissed him again, longer this time. “Fair warning, though—my snoring is apparently legendary. My college roommate complained about it constantly.”
“I do not require sleep in the same way humans do. I can simply… appreciate the sound.”
“You can’t possibly appreciate snoring.”
“I can appreciate anything that confirms you are alive and beside me.” His arm tightened around her. “That you are real. That this is real.”
They sat together in the quiet cabin, their son sleeping nearby, the stars streaming past the viewport in rivers of light. Tomorrow they would arrive at the Patrol station. Tomorrow the real challenges would begin—the questions, the investigations, the impossible task of building a new life in an unfamiliar universe.
But for now, there was only this: warmth and connection and the fragile, precious certainty that she was exactly where she was meant to be.
Dinner that nightwas a communal affair, all of them crowded around the galley table while Trevan presided over a complicated dish involving something that looked vaguely like rice and something else that definitely wasn’t chicken but tasted surprisingly similar.
“My grandmother’s recipe,” Trevan explained, ladling generous portions onto plates. “Modified slightly for multi-species digestion. The original would have killed anyone without Cire intestinal flora.”
“Comforting,” Wei-Lin said dryly, but she ate with enthusiasm.
Katie was sitting between Koss and Becsul, demanding that they take turns making faces at her between bites. Robbie was in Melissa’s lap, gnawing contentedly on a teething ring that Sarah had somehow produced from her own meager possessions.
“My son had the same one,” Sarah had said, pressing it into Melissa’s hands. “I kept it for Katie when she was small. She doesn’t need it anymore.”
The small kindness had made Melissa’s throat tight.
Now she watched her strange, mismatched family eat together and felt a swell of something like joy. They were battered and exhausted and traumatized, all of them. They had no idea what came next. But in this moment, they were together, and that mattered.
