Because it was where I belonged right now. With the people who were living with the aftermath. With the harm that could not be undone.
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 myselffeelanything 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 equipmenthummed 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.
