I blinked. "He wants to see me?"
"Apparently watching you drag his two-hundred-kilo ass through a hostile derelict while fighting off raiders made an impression." Bea's mouth twitched toward a smile. "Something about you being 'magnificent under fire.' His exact words, though the painkillers might have lowered his usual emotional filters."
Heat flooded my face. Magnificent. Vaxon thought I was magnificent.
The man I'd gotten shot thought I was magnificent.
I didn't know what to do with that information. How to fit it into my carefully constructed narrative of inadequacy and guilt.
Jalina nudged my shoulder. "Go talk to him, Elena. You'll both feel better."
"I don't know what to say."
"Start with 'I'm glad you're not dead,'" Dana suggested. "Work from there."
Er'dox rumbled agreement. "Warriors appreciate directness. Tell him what you're thinking. He can handle it."
Could he? Could Vaxon handle knowing I'd been fighting my attraction to him for months? That every time he looked at me with those intense blue eyes, I wanted to either kiss him or run away? That watching him nearly die had cracked something open inside me I'd been trying to keep sealed?
Probably not. But Bea was still waiting, and somewhere behind that door, Vaxon was asking for me.
So I nodded. Took a breath. Walked toward the medical bay with my friends watching like they were witnessing something significant.
Maybe they were.
The medical bay was dimmer than usual—Bea kept the lighting low for recovering patients. Two stasis pods occupied the far side of the room, their displays showing stable vitals. Will and Lisa, finally safe. Finally home.
Vaxon occupied a recovery bed near the center, his massive frame making the medical furniture look inadequate. Regeneration fields glowed around his injured shoulder, accelerating the healing process. Someone had removed his armor, leaving him in the black undershirt that clung to his muscled torso.
Even injured, even sedated, he looked dangerous. Powerful. Like violence barely contained.
His eyes tracked me as I approached, not quite focused, painkillers still affecting his system, but aware. Awake. Alive.
"Elena." My name sounded rough in his voice, abraded by exhaustion and medication. "You're hurt."
I stopped beside his bed, looked down at myself. Still covered in his blood. Still shaking from the adrenaline crash and delayed shock. "I'm fine. You're the one who got shot."
"Plasma burns. Minor damage." He tried to sit up, grimaced, and settled back down. "Status of the survivors?"
"Stable. Bea's running full diagnostics, but initial scans show they should recover fully." I clasped my hands together to stop them trembling. "Will jury-rigged the stasis pods to last months. It's... it's brilliant engineering. He saved them."
"He saved them because you found them." Vaxon's eyes locked on mine with an intensity that hadn't been dulled by painkillers. "Because you never stopped looking. Never stopped hoping."
"I should have looked sooner."
"You looked when you could." He reached out, slow, careful, giving me time to move away, and wrapped his enormous hand around both of mine. The touch was warm, solid,grounding. "Elena, you saved three people today. Will. Lisa. And me."
"I got you shot."
"I got shot doing my job. Protecting my team. Making tactical decisions under fire." His thumb stroked over my knuckles, the gesture almost absent, like he wasn't entirely conscious of doing it. "You rerouted shuttle power while under hostile fire. Piloted us out of a debris field with no shields. Dragged my unconscious body to safety despite the size difference making it physically improbable. That's not getting me shot. That's being extraordinary."
Extraordinary. The word settled into my chest, warm and uncomfortable and completely unbelievable.
"You're on painkillers," I said weakly. "You don't know what you're saying."
"I know exactly what I'm saying. Have since the moment you dragged me behind cover and told me to shut up and stay down. I watched you fight, Elena. Watched you protect me while simultaneously hacking shuttle systems one-handed. You were..." He paused, searching for words. "You were everything I didn't know I needed to see."
My heart was doing complicated things in my chest. Flipping and stuttering and trying to escape through my ribcage. "Vaxon?—"
