Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Tell me what’s going on with you and your female,” Athtar said, not looking up from the vegetables he was chopping with rather terrifying speed.
He’d intercepted Doren on the way to dinner and insisted that he needed his help in the kitchen.
Apparently what he really needed was an opportunity to cross-examine Doren about Emma.
“There’s not much to tell. She was a captive on the Ithyian ship. She found the baby before I did.” He studied his fingertips. “She’s been useful.”
“Useful.” Athtar’s pale eyes glinted with amusement. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
“What else would we call it?”
“I could smell your scent all over her the moment you stepped off that ship.” Athtar shot him a quick look before returning to his chopping. “And hers on you. So don’t fucking bullshit me, Doren.”
His jaw tightened. “Fine. We’ve been... close. It was a small ship and a long journey.”
“Close.”
“Do you want a detailed description? I didn’t think that was your preference.”
A rumbling laugh escaped. “I think I know you well enough after all these fucking years to recognize when you’re deflecting. You’ve never brought a female here before. Or a child, for that matter.”
“I didn’t have many options. The Grorn—”
“—are a convenient excuse.” Athtar cut him off. “You could have dropped them on any number of worlds and continued on your own. Hells, you could have sold the baby to the highest bidder and retired wealthy. That’s what the Doren I met fifteen years ago would have done.”
The worst part was that Athtar wasn’t entirely wrong.
After the desperate poverty of his childhood, Doren had been driven by only two things—finding the key to the Vault and accumulating wealth.
The second objective had led to his ill-advised attempt to take over Athtar’s ship when he’d been part of the crew.
The fact that they’d somehow overcome that was something of a miracle.
“People change,” he said quietly.
“That they do.” Athtar put down his knife and studied him for a long moment. “So what’s your plan? Find the Vault, claim untold riches, and then what? Ride off into the fucking sunset alone while your female and the baby wave goodbye?”
“She’s not my female.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Athtar reached for the bottle of spirits on the shelf next to the stove and poured two generous glasses.
“I’ve known you since you were argued your way on to my crew with nothing but a fucking attitude.
I’ve watched you charm your way out of fucking prison cells and into treasure vaults.
I’ve seen you bluff Kaisarian commanders and seduce information out of sources who should have known better.
But I’ve never—never—seen you look at anyone the way you look at that female. ”
He took the offered glass and drank deeply, letting the burn of alcohol give him something to focus on besides Athtar’s too-accurate observations. “It doesn’t matter how I look at her.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not...” He trailed off, unsure how to articulate the tangled knot of feelings in his chest. “I’m not built for the kind of life she wants. Settled. Domestic. Whatever you want to call it.”
“You think I was?” Athtar snorted. “When I found Faith, I thought the only thing that mattered was my ship and my freedom.”
“What changed?”
“I realized that freedom meant being free to choose her.” Athtar swirled his drink, staring into its amber depths. “Not a ship or a lifestyle, but her.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“It was terrifying,” Athtar said softly.
“Letting someone in like that. Trusting them with the broken parts of you. But it was also the best fucking decision I ever made.” He looked up, meeting Doren’s eyes.
“I have three children now. A home. A mate who knows exactly what kind of fucking monster I am and loves me anyway. Do you think I’d trade that for all the treasure in the Vault? ”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.
“You’ve been chasing that damn Vault since before I met you,” Athtar continued. “What is it you actually want from it? The wealth? The knowledge?”
“It’s not about what’s inside.” The words came out before he could stop them, dredged up from somewhere deep and raw. “It’s about proving... proving that I’m worth something. That my father was wrong about me. That I’m not just a bastard’s mistake.”
Silence stretched between them. Athtar’s expression shifted into something that might have been pity, or might have been understanding.
“Your father was a cold-hearted bastard who didn’t fucking deserve your mother, let alone you,” Athtar said finally.
“And spending your life trying to prove something to a dead male who never appreciated what he had is a fucking waste of a good life.” He drained his glass and turned back to the stove.
“But you already know that. The question is whether you’re fucking brave enough to do something about it.
Now get out of here while I finish dinner. ”
He nodded and walked out onto the terrace with the Precursor disk, running his thumb over the etched symbols.
Such a small thing to carry so much weight.
This artifact, combined with Ari’s apparent ability to activate Precursor technology, represented everything he’d spent his adult life chasing.
Accessing the Vault felt closer than it had ever been.
But Athtar’s words echoed in his mind. What do you actually want from it?
He’d told himself for years that the Vault was the goal.
The end point. The thing that would finally silence the voice in his head that whispered he wasn’t good enough, that he would never be good enough.
But standing here on the terrace, surrounded by the evidence of his friend’s unexpected domestic happiness, he found himself questioning assumptions he’d carried for decades.
What do I actually want?
The image that appeared in his mind was not the Vault, but Emma’s face as she’d looked at him that morning, sleep-soft and smiling. Ari’s tiny hand wrapped around his finger. The warmth of having somewhere to belong.
Dangerous thoughts, he told himself. Foolish thoughts.
But he couldn’t quite make himself believe it.
Dinner was chaos.
Athtar and Faith’s three children ranged in age from about two to eight, and they possessed the combined energy of a small supernova.
The oldest, a girl with her mother’s pale skin and her father’s eyes, peppered him with questions about his ship, his adventures, and his weapons.
The middle child, a girl who seemed to have inherited her mother’s curiosity in abundance, was far more interested in Ari, hovering near Emma with naked fascination.
And the youngest, a boy who was an exact miniature of Athtar, spent most of the meal attempting to climb various pieces of furniture.
“Get down from there—” Faith’s voice cut through the noise as she snatched the toddler from the back of a chair. “I swear, Rastran has no self-preservation instinct whatsoever. He gets it from his father.”
“I have excellent self-preservation instincts,” Athtar protested from his place at the head of the table. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
“Through sheer dumb luck and my intervention.” But Faith was smiling as she settled the squirming child on her hip. “And stop teaching Laella how to hold a knife like that. She’s eight.”
“I was killing my own dinner at eight.”
“You were on a fishing boat when you were eight.”
“Where I killed my own fish.”
He watched this exchange with something between amusement and aching envy. He’d always avoided the noise and mess and complication of family life. He’d told himself he didn’t want it and he was better off alone.
He was beginning to suspect he’d been lying.
Across the table, Emma was deep in conversation with the middle child, Taresa.
She had Ari balanced on her lap and was showing the girl how the baby liked to grip fingers, demonstrating the slight webbing between Ari’s tiny digits.
Her face was alight with genuine joy, the stress of the past week smoothed away by simple domestic pleasure.
She looked beautiful. She looked like she belonged. She looked like everything he’d ever wanted and been too afraid to reach for.
“Uncle Doren.” Laella’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “Is it true you once stole a ship from a Kaisarian commander while he was still on it?”
“Laella!” Faith’s scandalized tone was somewhat undermined by her obvious curiosity.
“It’s mostly true,” he admitted. “Though ‘stole’ is a strong word. I prefer ‘liberated.’ And technically, he was in the refresher at the time.”
“That’s even better.” Laella’s eyes were huge. “Will you teach me how to fly a ship?”
“When you’re older.”
“I’m almost nine!”
“When you’re older and your mother won’t murder me for corrupting you.”
“She wouldn’t murder you. She likes you.”
He caught Faith’s eye and winked. “That’s because your mother has excellent taste in friends.”
“That’s debatable,” Faith said dryly, but she was smiling.
The meal continued—a seemingly endless parade of dishes that Athtar had prepared with obvious care.
Doren recognized some of them as Sheraen cuisine, and he suspected that others were attempts to recreate human recipes.
The combination shouldn’t have worked, but somehow it did, resulting in a meal that was both familiar and exotic.
Like Emma herself.
He watched her throughout dinner, unable to help himself. She caught him looking and raised an eyebrow. He didn’t look away.
What do I actually want?
The question had been haunting him all evening, but watching Emma laugh at something Taresa said, watching her gentle hands adjust Ari’s position, and watching the firelight play across her features, he finally admitted the truth to himself.
He wanted this. All of it. The noise and the mess and the terrifying vulnerability of letting someone see the broken parts of him.
I want Emma.
The realization should have scared him. Instead, it felt like setting down a weight he’d been carrying for far too long.
After dinner, the protesting children were herded off to bed with Precious trotting after them, and the adults settled in Athtar’s sitting room with drinks and the comfortable silence of good company.
Faith curled against Athtar’s side on one of the massive couches, while Emma sat across from them with Ari drowsing in her arms.
He stood by the open window, letting the ocean breeze cool his skin while he pretended not to watch Emma’s reflection in the glass.
“She’s asleep,” she said softly, looking down at Ari. “I should put her down.”
“I put a crib in the connecting room,” Faith said. “It’s a little battered after three children but it’s solid.”
“Thank you. For everything. I can’t tell you how much it means to be here. To have...” She trailed off, swallowing hard.
“To have another human around?” Faith’s smile was understanding. “I understand. There’s something about knowing you’re not alone that makes everything else more bearable.”
Emma nodded, blinking rapidly. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up and this will all be a dream. That I’ll be back in my classroom, preparing lessons for first-graders, and worrying about parent-teacher conferences and whether I remembered to buy milk.”
“Do you miss it? Your old life?”
“Parts of it. My students. My routine. The certainty of knowing what each day would bring.” She looked down at Ari’s sleeping face. “But I think... I think maybe I was using that certainty as a shield. Keeping everything small and manageable so I wouldn’t have to risk anything.”
“And now?”
Emma lifted her gaze, and he knew she wasn’t looking at Faith anymore. She was looking at him.
“Now I’m starting to think that maybe safety isn’t worth as much as I thought it was.”
The air between them seemed to thicken, charged with unspoken tension. Athtar cleared his throat loudly.
“Right. Faith, we need to check on the children.”
“We do?” Faith caught sight of her mate’s pointed expression. “Oh. Yes. The children. Definitely need to check on them. All three of them. Thoroughly.”
She untangled herself from Athtar’s side and crossed to Emma, gently taking Ari from her arms. “I’ll put her down in the nursery. You two... take your time.”
Athtar followed his mate out of the room, pausing at the door to give him a look that somehow managed to convey amusement, encouragement, and threat all at once. Don’t fuck this up, that look said.
Then they were gone, and he was alone with Emma.