Thoryn
Aweek. Solren had said a week minimum, and he’d meant it. Every time I’d tried to leave the medbay before day seven, he’d threatened me with sedatives. Not an idle threat. The Rokavai medic had a disturbing collection of knockout drugs rated for “large, stubborn reptiles.”
Now, day eight, I was officially released. No more biobeds. No more monitors. No more twice-daily lectures about “respecting the healing process.”
I stood in the corridor outside my quarters, testing my body.
The plasma burn on my shoulder had healed to a patch of slightly paler scales.
They’d darken eventually. Probably. The vibro-blade wound was just a thin line across my ribs.
Just a week ago, both injuries had been killing me by degrees.
Now they were just scars. Add them to the collection.
The important thing: no pain.
I rolled my shoulders. Flexed my claws. Took a deep breath without anything tearing. Pain scale: zero. First time in eight years I could honestly say that.
The bond hummed between Maris and me, clean and warm.
No static. No agony. No war between conditioning and nature.
Just the steady awareness of her somewhere on the ship.
The observation deck, if I was reading the bond right.
She’d been spending time there, watching stars and avoiding Deyric’s attempts to get her to decrypt things faster.
I found her exactly where I’d expected, standing at the massive curved viewport.
She’d claimed a corner of the observation deck as hers—a chair, a small table, a half-empty bottle of something that probably wasn’t water.
She was staring at the stars, but I could tell she wasn’t really seeing them.
That thousand-yard stare that meant she was running calculations in her head.
“Inventory or tactical assessment?” I asked.
She didn’t turn. “Both. This ship has fourteen escape pods, six emergency suits, and three separate backup life support systems. Also, Zevik owes me forty credits from cards last night.”
“You played cards with Zevik?”
“I was bored.” She finally looked at me, and her expression shifted. “You’re vertical.”
“Solren ran out of threats.”
“Doubt that.” She moved toward me, stopping just out of reach. Studying me. “You look...”
“Devastatingly attractive?”
“I was going to say ‘less like death warmed over,’ but sure.” Her hand lifted, hesitated. “Can I—?”
“Maris.” I caught her hand, placed it against my chest. Right over the scales that used to lock and scream. They stayed perfectly emerald under her touch. “No more pain.”
She pressed harder, like she was testing. The bond sang between us, nothing but warmth and want and her particular brand of exhausted affection.
“No more pain,” she repeated. Then, quieter: “Took us long enough.”
“Nine years, eight months, and approximately fifteen days. But who’s counting?”
“You are, apparently.”
“I had a lot of time to think.” I pulled her closer. She came willingly, fitting against me in that way that still felt like coming home. “Eight years in a cell gives you plenty of time for math.”
“Your math is terrible.”
“Your face is terrible.”
She laughed, and I felt it resonate in my chest. Her relief. Deep, bone-deep relief that we were here, alive, together, and whole. Or as whole as two broken people could be.
“Your quarters or mine?” she asked.
“Yours are bigger.”
“Yours don’t smell like Zevik’s cologne from when he was hiding from Jessa.”
“Why was he—never mind. Yours it is.”
Her quarters were bigger. Slightly. The Raptor wasn’t built for luxury, but Maris had somehow negotiated for the executive officer’s cabin. It had an actual bed instead of a fold-down bunk. A desk. A viewport. Almost civilized.
She locked the door behind us. Not that anyone would interrupt—the crew had learned to give us space—but the gesture mattered. This was ours. Private.
“How do you feel?” she asked. “Really.”
I considered lying. Saying I was fine. But she’d know. And besides, we were past lies.
“Like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I admitted. “Eight years of pain, then that hellish fight to get to us, then a week of healing... and now... nothing. No pain. No crisis. No one actively trying to kill us. It feels wrong.”
“I know.” She sat on the bed, started pulling off her boots. “I keep checking the door. Counting exits. Waiting for someone to kick it down.”
“But no one’s coming.”
“No one’s coming.” She looked up at me. “We’re safe, Thoryn. Actually safe. At least for now.”
Safe. The word felt foreign. When was the last time either of us had been safe? Before my capture? Before her empire? Maybe never.
I sat beside her, the bed dipping under my weight. “So what do we do with safe?”
She turned to face me, and there was something in her eyes I hadn’t seen before. Not desperation. Not grief. Not even the sharp edge of survival. Just... want. Simple, uncomplicated want.
“We enjoy it,” she said, and kissed me.
This kiss was different from all the others. Not the desperate clash in the tunnels when we were fighting my conditioning. Not the urgent heat at The Haven when we thought we had hours to live. This was slow, thorough, like we had all the time in the universe.
We did, I realized. For the first time, we had time.
Her hands went to my shirt, tugging it up. I helped, pulled it off, and her hands immediately went to my chest. Tracing scars, old and new. Her fingers found the pale patch where the plasma burn had been, the thin line from the vibro-blade.
“Battle damage,” she murmured.
“Distinguished characteristics.”
“Is that what we’re calling them?”
“Would you prefer ‘sexy scars’?”
She snorted. “Never say that again.”
I pulled her shirt off in return, taking my time. She had her own collection of scars now. The knife fight on her forearm. The plasma burn on her shoulder. A new one across her ribs from our escape. I traced each one, memorizing them.
“We match,” I said.
“Couple goals.” Her voice was dry, but her hands were gentle as they moved over me. Exploring without urgency. We’d had desperate. We’d had necessary. This was just... because we wanted to.
When she pushed me back on the bed, I went easily. When she straddled me, I let her set the pace. Slow. Patient. Like she was learning me all over again without pain or desperation clouding everything.
“I missed this,” she said, rolling her hips in a way that made thinking difficult. “Just... this. Without everything else.”
I knew what she meant. The simple pleasure of touch without consequence. The bond hummed between us, a feedback loop of sensation and emotion, but it was warm instead of agonizing. Enhancement instead of punishment.
When I flipped us over, she laughed. Actually laughed, not the dark humor we’d been trading but genuine amusement. I raised an eyebrow.
“You used to do that exact move,” she explained. “Before. When we were just mercenaries with a bed and no sense.”
“We still have no sense.”
“True. But now we have a better bed.”
I kissed her to stop the terrible joke I knew was coming. She responded immediately, wrapping her legs around me, pulling me closer. The kiss deepened, and the playfulness shifted to something hungrier.
Not desperate. Just... ready.
When I pushed inside her, we both stilled. Not from pain—there was no pain—but from the sheer rightness of it. The bond sang between us, complete and perfect and ours.
“No pain,” Maris breathed, wonder in her voice. “Thoryn, there’s no—”
“I know.” I pressed my forehead to hers. “I know.”
We moved together, finding rhythm without the frantic edge of before. This wasn’t about proving something or fighting conditioning or stolen moments between disasters. This was just us. Finally. After everything.
The bond amplified every sensation, every emotion, until I couldn’t tell where I ended and she began. But it didn’t hurt. It just... was. Perfect synchronization, like we’d been meant for this all along.
When she came apart beneath me, it triggered my own release, and for a moment we were one being, one breath, one heartbeat.
After, we lay tangled together, neither willing to move. The room was quiet except for our breathing. Peaceful. Safe.
“We should probably go to the briefing,” Maris said eventually.
“Probably.”
Neither of us moved.
“Deyric will be insufferable if we’re late.”
“He’s insufferable anyway.”
“True.” She traced patterns on my chest, absent and content. “But he did wait a week to analyze those data caches. Least we can do is show up.”
“The least we can do is nothing. We’re very good at nothing.”
“We’re terrible at nothing. You lasted thirty seconds of retirement before volunteering for a suicide mission.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“You were in danger.”
She went quiet at that. Something shifted. Not bad, just... thoughtful.
“We’re really bad at safe,” she said finally.
“The worst.”
“But we could learn.”
“Could we?”
She sat up, looked down at me. “Let’s find out.”
The briefing room was crowded. Serak at the head of the table, stoic as always.
Jessa beside him, managing to look maternal even in tactical gear.
Ressh and Alix, joined at the hip as usual.
Solren, who gave me a medical scan with his eyes the moment I walked in.
Zevik, spinning in his chair because sitting still was against his religion.
And Deyric, surrounded by multiple screens and looking like he’d discovered the meaning of life.
“Finally,” Deyric said when we entered. “Do you know how hard it’s been to sit on this for a week?”
“Devastating, I’m sure,” Maris said, taking a seat. I stood behind her, hand on her shoulder. Presenting as a unit.
“Your sarcasm is noted and ignored.” Deyric pulled up the first display. “These three data caches are, as Maris suggested, the Rosetta Stone. Individually, they’re just shipping manifests, financial records, and sensor logs. Together...”
He overlaid the data sets. Lines of connection appeared, forming a web of information.