“They let me out when they finally figured out that I didn’t understand anything about Diniki politics,” he answered wryly.
She brightened. “Do they need help negotiating?”
“No, I think they were simply trying to understand everything that happened,” he said.
Her face fell again. “Oh, well I think I’ll walk around the ship while you eat.”
He was confused by her statement for a moment until he remembered that they were in the galley. “I came here to find you, not because I’m hungry. I’d like to show you around the ship.”
The corners of her lips lifted in a smile. “That would be nice.”
When he held out his hand, she tangled her fingers with his. Even though he liked how she looked wearing his pants and shirt, she needed clothes that fit. Looking down, he noticed her shoes. She was still wearing the too large shoes she’d found in the room on his gunship.
“Let’s go shopping first,” he said, leading her out of the galley. He gave Saris a small nod to indicate his gratefulness. The warrior nodded back before standing and heading to a different set of doors. He was probably going to work a shift somewhere.
Miran felt mildly guilty for not working as hard as his fellow warriors, but he also knew they didn’t hold it against him. Every single one of them wished they could take time off to spend with a Decanted mate.
It didn’t take them long to get to the correct storage room. Nova pulled in a shocked breath when they walked in.
“It’s like a store!” she exclaimed, dragging him to the nearest rack of clothes.
“At first, every warrior would buy Hissa-style outfits in hopes of getting to gift them to a Decanted woman,” he explained as she started rifling through the clothes with her free hand. “But that was a problem because they’d end up being too big or toosmall. Our section commander decided to have an entire storage room dedicated to items instead. That way, the humans could find what they liked best and what fit. Further in there are shoes and at the very back there are items like cleansers and hair ornaments.”
She began pulling out an outfit only to freeze in place and look up at him. “Do they offer time credit or do I need to pay for everything all at once?”
He made an encouraging sound. “You don’t pay for anything. You could take one or two of everything in here if you like, although that would be a lot to pack later.”
“You can’t mean that,” she said with a little shake of her head. “Some of these look like they’re made out of soliman silk. What if I went through and picked out all the silk pieces?”
“Then we’d simply buy more,” he said, feeling a little confused. “But if you only choose garments made of soliman silk, they won’t all fit.”
Her expression turned indulgent, as if she was about to explain something to a child. “But I could sell them later.”
He still didn’t understand. “Why would you want to do that? If you want credits, I can give them to you.”
“You would?” she asked.
“Do you have a data pad in your bag?” he asked. This was an easy thing to prove.
Her brows furrowed with worry. She shoved the garment back onto the rack, let go of his hand, and started talking quickly.
“I have the one from my room in the gunship, but you said I could use it, and I took it over to the Assist because you said we wouldn’t be able to go back and forth so I grabbed a lot of things and…”
Her words trailed off, and she scowled when he started laughing.
“The data pad was yours to keep,” he said, holding out his hand. “I wasn’t accusing you of anything, I only needed to see it.”
Grumbling, she dug around in her bag until she found the data pad and thumped it down into his open hand. He ignored her annoyance and quickly accessed the credit section of the data pad. It didn’t take him long to transfer half the credits in his personal account to the one on the data pad.
“Please try not to lose that,” he said, handing it back. Because the transfer was marked as free-use, anyone could use it if they had access to the data pad.
She gave him a skeptical look as she accepted the data pad and looked at the display. She gasped, fumbled, and almost dropped the device.
“That…that can’t be real!” she stuttered. She gripped the edges tightly and looked up at him with an angry expression. “This is a joke, right?”
He would’ve laughed if he didn’t know that would make her more upset. “I would never joke like that. The number you see is real. It’s all yours.”
“I could buy a small outpost with this amount of wealth!”
