Chapter 13
I woke two hours before ship-cycle, staring at a ceiling that looked the same as it always had.
The Starbreaker was quiet. Not the tense silence of red alerts or the heavy stillness after battle; just quiet. The kind of quiet that came when nothing was actively trying to kill us. The kind I still hadn't learned to trust.
Two weeks since the ambush. Two weeks since I'd knelt on that shuttle deck with Kaedren's blood soaking through my clothes, my hands pressed against wounds that wouldn't stop bleeding. Two weeks since Lyrin had pulled me away from the surgical suite doors and told me to sleep.
Hadn’t done much good. Sleep was hard to come by.
I rolled onto my side and pulled up the daily status reports on my data tablet. Ship systems nominal. Supply levels adequate. Crew morale holding steady. And there, near the bottom, Kaedren's recovery notes.
Patient is responding well to regeneration therapy. Mobility improving. Cleared for light activity. Psychological assessment pending.
I read the exact words I'd read yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that.
Lyrin updated the reports every morning. I checked them every night. It had become a ritual. Clinical, careful, and safe. A way to know Kaedren was healing without actually having to face him.
I sat up slowly, the sheets pooling around my waist. When was the last time I'd visited him alone?
Not the group check-ins where all four of us crowded into his recovery suite and made awkward small talk.
Not the status updates delivered through Lyrin or relayed through the Tether's distant hum.
When had I actually sat with him? Looked at him?
Let myself feel anything beyond the tight knot of controlled relief I'd been carrying since he opened his eyes?
You haven’t.
Oh, good, you’re back.
Never left, babes. I pop up when you need that extra push.
He needs rest. He needed space to heal without the pressure of my presence, my expectations, my barely-contained need to touch him and confirm he was still breathing. I'd told myself I was being a good leader—giving him room, not hovering, trusting the process.
You know none of that is true.
I got it, thanks.
Do you, though?
Yes.
Wink. I have to say the word cause I can’t, you know, actually wink.
I sighed.
She was right. The truth was uglier. Simpler.
I'd stayed away because I didn't trust myself.
Because every time I thought about walking into that room, I felt the flood of everything I'd been holding back.
The terror, the relief, the desperate, selfish joy that he was still alive, and I didn't know what I'd do with it.
If I let myself feel happy that he'd survived, did that minimize what it cost him?
If I touched him, would it feel like something required after I'd almost lost him?
I'd been so careful, so controlled, and so determined not to make his recovery about me.
And in doing so, I'd abandoned him.
The realization slapped me in the face. Love withheld wasn't respect.
It was avoidance. It was cowardice dressed up as consideration.
And Kaedren, quiet, stoic, self-sacrificing Kaedren, had probably spent the last two weeks wondering why I'd pulled away.
Hell, I had pulled away from the tether.
The last thing I wanted was my guilt transferring to him.
I threw off the sheets and stood.
Time to put on my big girl panties.
The recovery suite was dim when I entered, the lights set to the soft amber glow that Lyrin insisted promoted healing.
Medical equipment hummed in the corners—monitors, regeneration nodes, the quiet machinery required to put a body back together.
The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and something warmer beneath it. Something that was just Kaedren.
He was awake. Sitting up against a pile of pillows, a data tablet abandoned on the bed beside him. His four arms were no longer restrained—Lyrin had removed the casts days ago—but he still moved carefully, favoring his right side where the worst of the shrapnel had torn through.
His eyes found mine the moment I stepped through the door.
"Kira," he said, his voice surprised but cautious, like he'd been expecting someone else. Like he'd stopped expecting me at all.
That hurt more than I'd anticipated.
"Hey." I closed the door behind me and leaned against it for a moment, taking him in. He looked better than the last time I'd seen him. Color had returned to his skin, and the lines of pain around his eyes had softened. But there was something else there, too.
Something guarded. Uncertain.
"Is everything alright?" he asked. Already shifting into tactical mode, already preparing to solve whatever problem had brought me here. "The ship—"
"The ship is fine." I pushed off the door and walked toward the bed. "Everyone is fine. Nothing is on fire, no one is attacking us, and Voss hasn't sent any frigates after us in at least three days." I stopped at the edge of his bed. "I'm not here because something's wrong."
He watched me with those four dark eyes, waiting. Patient. Kaedren had always been patient.
"Then why are you here?"
The question wasn’t accusatory, Kaedren didn't do accusatory, but there was something beneath it. A vulnerability he was trying very hard to hide.
I sat on the edge of the bed, close enough that my hip pressed against his thigh through the thin medical blanket. "Because I've been avoiding you. And I'm sorry."
His expression flickered; surprise, then something that looked painfully like relief, quickly suppressed. "You haven't been—"
"I have." I reached out and took his upper right hand in both of mine. His skin was warm, his fingers rough with calluses. "I told myself I was giving you space. Letting you heal. Being respectful." I met his gaze. "But that's not what I was doing. I was scared."
"Scared of what?"
"Of this." I lifted his hand and pressed it against my chest, right over my heart.
"Of how much guilt I felt when you woke up.
Of how badly I wanted to crawl into that bed with you and never leave.
I was scared that if I let myself be happy you survived, I'd somehow be.
.. dismissing what it cost you. Like celebrating would mean I didn't understand how close we came to… "
I swallowed the words and looked down.
Kaedren was quiet for a long moment. I could feel his heartbeat through his palm, steady and strong.
"I thought—" He stopped. Started again. "I thought I had changed something. Between us. That what I did on the shuttle... that you saw me differently now."
"I do see you differently."
His hand tensed against my chest.
"I see you as someone who would give up anything for me," I continued.
"Someone who saw a grenade coming for the people he loved and didn't hesitate.
Someone who almost died because he refused to let us die first." I leaned closer.
"You didn't lose my affection because of what happened, Kaedren. I almost lost it because you almost didn’t make it. "
Something shifted in his expression. The guardedness cracked, and beneath it I saw the fear he'd been carrying—the same fear I'd been carrying. The terror of being left behind. Of being loved less after the cost became real.
"Kira." His voice was rough.
"I'm not here to check on you," I said. "I'm not here as a leader of the ship or your medic or whatever professional distance I've been hiding behind. I'm here because I want you. Because watching you recover has been harder than the waiting, and I'm done pretending I don't need to touch you."
I shifted closer, bringing my free hand up to his jaw. His skin was warm under my palm, and I felt the slight catch in his breath.
"Tell me if this is too much," I whispered. "Tell me if you're not ready, or if it hurts, or if you need me to stop. But please don't tell me you don't want this. Because I need you to know that you're still wanted. Exactly as you are. Right now."
His answer was to pull me toward him.
The kiss was gentle at first. Careful, and conscious of his injuries. His upper hands cradled my face while his lower arms wrapped around my waist, drawing me closer with a restraint that made my chest ache. He was holding back. Still protecting me, even now.
I pulled back just enough to look at him. "Stop being careful."
"Kira—"
"I mean it." I climbed onto the bed properly, straddling his thighs with my knees bracketing his hips. The medical blanket bunched between us, and I pushed it aside. "I'll be careful with your injuries. But I need you to stop treating me like I'll break."
Something flickered in his eyes, dark, hungry, suppressed. "You don't know what you're asking."
"Then show me."
He moved faster than I expected, faster than someone two weeks out of surgery should have been able to move. His lower arms tightened around my waist while his upper hands slid into my hair, tilting my head back. When he kissed me this time, there was nothing careful about it.
I gasped against his mouth, and he swallowed the sound.
His tongue swept against mine, tasting, claiming.
Not demanding, Kaedren was never demanding, but thorough.
Deliberate. Like he'd been starving for this and finally allowed himself to feast. Like he intended to kiss me until I forgot my own name.
Heat pooled low in my belly, liquid and urgent. I pressed closer, needing more contact, more of him, needing to feel every hard line of his body against mine.
My hands found the hem of his medical tunic and slipped beneath it.
His skin was warm, the muscles of his abdomen taut and trembling under my fingertips.
I traced the edge of a regeneration patch, the raised border where new tissue was still knitting together, and he hissed softly, his hips jerking beneath me.
I froze. "Did I—"