Chapter 5
Astra
The water in the shower runs cold because I've been standing here long enough to exhaust the heater. My lips still taste like him. Copper and ozone and six years of wanting what I shouldn't want.
I kissed him. Pressed my mouth to his like I was trying to swallow the words he was about to say, like I could silence six years of absence with my teeth.
My hand fisted in his shirt, I felt the warmth of his skin through the fabric, felt his heart hammering beneath my palm, felt the exact moment his control snapped and he kissed me back.
I wanted more. That's the part that makes me want to put my fist through the shower wall.
I didn't just want the kiss, I wanted his hands on me, wanted him to push me against that wall in my quarters, wanted to find out if his body still remembers mine the way mine apparently remembers his.
The wanting was a living thing in my chest, clawing up my throat, and I pulled away before I could let it devour me whole.
And the worst part—the part I can't scrub off no matter how hard I try, is that I still hate him.
The hate didn't go anywhere. Didn't soften or transform into something easier.
I hate him for leaving me. I hate him for coming back.
I hate him for standing at my door at midnight with that photograph in his hands and saying my name like he had any right to it.
The fury is a constant hum beneath my ribs, so familiar it's almost comfortable.
All of these things are true simultaneously, and I don't have the space in my head to untangle which one matters most.
I scrub my mouth until my lips are raw. It doesn't help. Nothing helps. The water beats against my shoulders and I count the ways I'm compromised. Forty-seven. No. Fifty-three. I lose track somewhere between I let him touch me and I didn't want him to stop.
The shower cuts off. I stand dripping on the tile, staring at nothing.
My quarters smell like gun oil and the recycled nothing of station air.
The bed is still made. I didn't sleep. Didn't even try.
Just stood at the viewport watching the stars wheel and remembering the taste of his mouth, the way his bioluminescence flared when I kissed him, the sound he made when I pulled away.
I put on my uniform. Piece by piece. Sports bra first, compression layer, tactical pants with the knife pocket at my thigh. The fabric is familiar. Safe. I'm Head of Security. I run this station's defenses. I've killed more people than I've kissed, and the ratio isn't even close.
Last night was an anomaly. A glitch. It won't happen again.
I check myself in the mirror. Red hair pulled back so tight my scalp aches. Green eyes that give away nothing. The scar on my left shoulder visible above the neckline, the burn mark peeking through like a warning.
No sign of last night's weakness.
Good.
The corridor outside my quarters is empty. Morning cycle just starting, most of the station still sleeping off the night shift. My boots don't make sound on the deck plating. Old habit. Moving quiet, moving careful, always ready for the ambush you don't see coming.
I make it three meters before Talia St. Laurent rounds the corner.
Zane's partner. The former debtor who survived her own captivity, her own transformation, her own impossible choice to stay with a monster. She's carrying coffee. Two cups. One of them is probably for Zane. The other—
I stop. Turn to face her. Her dark brown eyes are sharp, assessing, missing absolutely nothing.
She's been where I am. Owned by a Torrence who can feel everything, who knows every shameful want before you've finished having it.
She survived becoming something she didn't recognize. She knows the signs.
"Late night?" Her voice is carefully neutral. Deliberately so. The kind of neutral that says she already knows the answer and is giving me the option to lie about it anyway.
I could. Should, probably. Keep this contained, professional, nobody's business but mine.
Instead, I meet her eyes. One survivor to another.
"Investigation," I say.
The word sits between us. She knows it's not the whole truth. She also knows better than to push.
"Mmm." The sound carries weight. Acknowledgment. Understanding. No judgment, but recognition. She's felt this particular brand of complicated, the man you hate tangled with the man you want. She's lived through the impossible math of choosing a monster while knowing exactly what he is.
That sound. It carries weight. She knows something. Saw something. Or Zane felt something through his connection with Dexter and told her. The brothers are close. Close enough to share emotional frequency across the station when one of them is feeling something strong.
And what I felt last night, when my mouth was on his—
"He's in the briefing room," Talia says. Offering information I didn't ask for. "Just so you know."
I don't ask how she knows. Doesn't matter. The brothers probably sync their schedules, their operational rhythms, the way they've synced everything else since they learned to walk.
"Thank you."
She nods. Steps aside. I walk past her and feel her watching. Assessing. One human woman to another. We've built something tentative. Not friendship. Mutual recognition. Shared experience navigating Empri power dynamics.
I don't look back.
What matters is keeping my composure when I walk through that door.
The briefing room smells like coffee and the ozone ghost of too many bodies in too small a space. Strategic displays glow on the walls. Webb's known locations, his patterns, his likely hideouts mapped in red.
Dexter sits on the opposite side of the table.
His turquoise skin shows darker in the blue-tinted light. His marks—concentrated along his temples and down his spine—pulse with his heartbeat. Steady. Controlled. He doesn't look at me when I enter.
Good.
I take the seat farthest from him. Pull up the tactical display. Webb's last confirmed location: Station Gamma-7. Mining station. Rough clientele. No law except what you can enforce yourself.
Zane walks in. Talia behind him, carrying the coffee I saw earlier. She sets one cup in front of her partner. Keeps the other. Neither of them mentions me standing in a corridor looking like I hadn't slept.
"Webb." Zane's voice is flat. All business. "Confirmed sighting three days ago. Departed before we could establish surveillance."
"Heading?" Dexter asks. His voice sounds normal. Clipped, efficient, military cadence. Nothing in his tone suggests he had his tongue in my mouth twelve hours ago.
"Unknown. But he transmitted a message before he left. Encrypted. We're still breaking it."
I pull up the encryption analysis. The linguistic patterns don't match any known cipher. Webb's been busy. Learning new tricks. Or someone taught him.
"We'll need to move fast," I say. My voice sounds normal too. Professional. "If he knows we're tracking him, he'll go deeper into contested space."
"Agreed." Zane's pale eyes flick to me. To Dexter. Back to me. He knows something. Of course he knows something. His brother was feeling things last night, and Zane probably tasted the echo.
The tension in the room is thick enough to cut.
Talia clears her throat. "I have contacts on Gamma-7. Debtor networks, information brokers. I can reach out."
"Do it." Zane's hand finds hers. Brief contact. His marks pulse once, bright.
I watch the exchange. The casual intimacy of it. Two people who've learned each other's rhythms, who trust without thinking about it.
I used to have that.
The knowing, the ease, the casual certainty that someone would be there when you reached for them.
Six years ago, I had it. Before ninety seconds collapsed everything.
Before the thirty percent chance that wasn't good enough to justify trying.
Before I learned that trust was just another word for naive.
I force myself to look at Dexter. My eyes meet his electric blue ones across the table, and I find him already watching me.
Of course he's already watching me. He's been watching me since I walked through the door, tracking my every movement with those vivid blue eyes that see too much.
His expression is neutral, professional, but his bioluminescent marks pulse faint along his temples, a tell I've learned to read over the years of serving in close proximity to the Torrences.
He's waiting. Waiting for something. Waiting for me to crack, maybe, or to acknowledge what happened between us last night.
The weight of his attention is a physical thing across my shoulders.
I don't give him the satisfaction of looking away first.
"We leave for Gamma-7 in six hours," I say. "Full tactical kit. Small team. Fast insertion."
"Agreed."
That's it. That's the whole exchange. Professional. Tactical. Two soldiers coordinating an operation. The kiss is irrelevant. Ancient history. A mistake made in exhaustion and proximity and the ghost of what we used to be.
Except I can still taste him on my lips. The faint copper-ozone flavor of Empri biology that I've spent six years trying to forget and never quite managed to purge from my cellular memory.
Except his marks just pulsed, once, a single bright flare along his temples, when our eyes met across the table. A tell I recognize. A tell that means I'm not the only one remembering.
Except my pulse is hammering in my throat loud enough that I'm half-convinced the whole room can hear it, and I'm fighting the urge to touch my mouth, to check if the evidence of what we did is somehow still visible on my skin.
The kiss is irrelevant.
I'm a terrible liar.
Except everyone in this room can feel that something happened, even if they don't know what.
Zane dismisses us. Talia follows him out. I'm halfway to the door when Dexter's voice stops me.
"Astra."
I don't turn. "What."
"Nothing." A pause. The kind of pause that has weight. "Just... six hours. Don't be late."
Like I've ever been late for an operation.