Chapter 22 #2
“Different… large.” His tail tightened briefly around her. “But I find I like it. The quiet. The sense of possibility.”
Katie looked up from her game with Robbie. “Mr. Becsul, can you make a scary face?”
“Katie—” Sarah started, but Becsul was already tilting his head, considering the request.
“I have been told my normal face is frightening to some species.”
“That’s not scary,” Katie said with the authority of a five-year-old. “That’s just your face. I mean a scary face. Like this.” She pulled her features into an exaggerated grimace that made her look like a very determined potato.
Something that might have been amusement flickered in Becsul’s black eyes. He leaned forward, pulled his lips back to reveal his full array of sharp teeth, flared the ridges above his eyes, and let out a low, rumbling growl.
Katie shrieked with delight. Robbie, apparently deciding this was the best thing that had ever happened, began bouncing enthusiastically in his spot on the floor.
“Again! Again!”
“Perhaps later.” But Becsul’s voice was warm, and his hand came to rest on Melissa’s knee with easy familiarity. “I do not wish to frighten the young one.”
“Robbie’s not scared,” Katie reported. “He’s laughing. See?”
He was, in fact, laughing—the full-body, gasping kind of baby laughter that was impossible not to smile at. Melissa watched Becsul watch her son, watched the way his harsh features softened, and felt her heart expand in her chest.
This is what I want, she thought. This warmth. This family. This life.
Now she just had to figure out how to build it.
The afternoon found Melissa curled up in the small cabin she shared with Becsul and Robbie, datapad in hand, while Robbie napped in his makeshift crib—a cargo container lined with thermal blankets that Koss had enthusiastically modified.
She’d been reading for hours, absorbing everything she could about galactic reproductive medicine.
The field was vast, far more complex than anything she’d encountered on Earth, but the underlying principles were familiar.
Biology was biology, even when the biology in question involved egg sacs or genetic exchange or whatever that cellular merging thing was called.
I could do this, she thought, scrolling through an article about a fertility clinic on some planet she couldn’t pronounce. I could learn the new science, get the new credentials, build something real.
The door slid open and Becsul entered, moving quietly to avoid waking Robbie. He’d been helping Trevan with some maintenance task in the engine room, and his skin showed smudges of what might have been lubricant or might have been some kind of alien engine fluid.
“You’re filthy,” she observed.
“The captain assures me this is a sign of honest work.” He looked down at himself with something like bemusement. “I have never been… filthy before.”
“Never?”
“Warriors maintain their equipment and their bodies with precision. Disorder is not tolerated.”
“Well, now you’re tolerating disorder.” She grinned at him. “How does it feel?”
“Strange.” He considered for a moment. “Not unpleasant.”
He moved to the small cleaning station in the corner of the cabin, using a cloth to wipe down his skin while Melissa watched. There was something hypnotic about the way he moved—all that controlled power, the economy of motion that spoke to decades of training.
“Becsul?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking about the future.”
He paused in his cleaning, turning to face her fully. “I have as well.”
“We should probably talk about it.” She set down the datapad, pulling her legs up onto the narrow bunk. “I mean, at some point we’ll have to figure out what we’re actually going to do. Where we’re going to live. How we’re going to support ourselves.”
“Yes.” He resumed cleaning, but his attention remained fixed on her. “What have you been thinking?”
“I want to work. In my field, I mean. Reproductive medicine.” The words came out in a rush, as if she’d been holding them back.
“I know I’d need new credentials, new training, and I have no idea how to even start that process.
But it’s what I’m good at, Becsul. It’s what I love.
And out here, with so many species struggling with fertility—”
“Including my own.”
“Including yours.” She met his eyes. “I want to help. I want to make something good come out of all this horror. Is that… is that stupid?”
“It is not stupid.” He crossed to her, settling onto the bunk beside her with a care that still surprised her—this massive warrior, so gentle with everything he touched. “It is one of the things I most admire about you. Your desire to help. To heal. To create life where there was none.”
“It’s not going to be easy.”
“Nothing worth doing is easy.”
“And I don’t know how long it would take.
Getting credentials, building a reputation, finding clients—if that’s even how it works out here.
” She laughed, a little shakily. “I’m basically starting from nothing.
Worse than nothing. I’m starting from ‘I have no legal status, no money, and I can’t even read most of the languages I’d need to know. ’“
“You will learn.” His certainty was absolute. “You are the most intelligent, determined woman I have ever encountered. If anyone can build a new career in an unfamiliar galaxy, it is you.”
“I love your faith in me, but—”
“It is not faith. It is observation.” His tail curled around her waist, a warm anchor.
“I have watched you negotiate for the welfare of strangers. I have watched you maintain your composure under impossible circumstances. I have watched you mother your son with grace and love even when you were exhausted and terrified.”
“That’s just… that’s just what you do.”
“No. That is what you do. And I know you will succeed at this as well.”
She leaned into him, letting his solid warmth ground her. “It would take money. I don’t know how much, but definitely more than nothing.”
“I have some funds.” His voice was careful, measured. “Not a fortune. My warrior’s salary was modest, and I sent most of it to support the reproductive facility. But I have savings. Enough to begin, perhaps.”
“I can’t take your money—”
“It is not ‘my money.’“ He pulled back to look at her, his black eyes serious. “It is our money. We are mates. What I have is yours. What you have is mine. That is how it works.”
“That’s how it works for Cire.”
“That is how it works for us.” His hand came up to cup her face. “Unless you object.”
“I don’t object.” Her voice came out smaller than she’d intended. “I just… I’m not used to partnership. Real partnership. Where someone actually shares the burden.”
“Then you will become used to it.” He pressed his forehead to hers, a gesture that was becoming familiar, comforting. “I will not let you carry this alone, Melissa. Not ever.”
She closed her eyes against the sudden sting of tears. God, she was tired of crying. But these weren’t the tears of fear or grief or exhaustion—they were something else. Something softer. Something that felt like hope.
“What about you?” she asked, when she trusted her voice again. “What do you want to do?”
“Want?” He said the word as if it were foreign. “I… have not considered it.”
“You haven’t thought about what you want?”
“I have spent forty-seven years doing what was required. What was necessary. What my people needed.” He paused, his brow furrowing in that way that meant he was truly thinking. “No one has asked me what I want since I was a child.”
“Well, I’m asking now.”
He was quiet for a long moment. She let the silence stretch, sensing that he needed time to find the answer within himself.
“I want to be useful,” he said finally. “I want to contribute something meaningful. Something that matters.”
“You were a captain. You led warriors.”
“I led warriors in service of a facility that was failing. I gave orders and maintained discipline while our species continued to die.” His voice held a bitter edge she rarely heard. “I want to do more than that. Better than that.”
“What does ‘better’ look like?”
“I don’t know.” The admission seemed to cost him something. “I have skills—combat, tactics, leadership. I know how to protect and how to fight. But I do not want to return to war. I do not want to spend my remaining years preparing for battles that may never come.”
“Then don’t.”
“It may not be that simple. My skills are specific. My experience is narrow.” His tail tightened around her waist. “I am not certain what value I offer outside of violence.”
“Becsul.” She put her hands on either side of his face, forcing him to meet her eyes.
“You are so much more than your fighting skills. You’re strategic.
You’re observant. You’re good with people—don’t give me that look, you are.
You made alliances with everyone from the pilot to the supply workers. That’s not nothing.”
“That was survival.”
“It was leadership. Real leadership, not just the kind that comes from giving orders.” She smiled at him. “Captain Trevan clearly respects you. Koss thinks you’re fascinating. Even Wei-Lin—and I don’t think she respects anyone—listens when you speak.”
“I had not noticed.”
“Because you’re too busy being humble to see your own worth.” She kissed him, soft and quick. “Whatever you decide to do, I’ll support it. If you want to become a freighter captain or a security consultant or a children’s entertainer who makes scary faces on demand—I’m with you.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I do not think children’s entertainment is my calling.”
“Katie would disagree.”
“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.