1
MICAH
I waspissedat Ziggy Andromeda.
It was an unfamiliar, uncomfortable feeling. I’d never been trulymadat him before—not when he was refusing to admit he had obvious feelings for me, not even when he’d put me to sleep to fight Astrum Force Command by himself.
Clearly, he needed me as backup then…
But noooo—today,I had to stay behind.
My angry muttering nearly drowned out the echo of my Han Solo boots stomping down the metal gangway of the Lodger 79, but no one was around to hear me anyway.
Since I’ve been underestimated once again.
The worst part was, my Space Daddy was thelastperson I ever thought would do me dirty like that. Even with Zig being a lone-wolf mercenary before we met, he’d always made it clear no matter what happened—no matter what skinsuit he wore or what roles we had to play—we werepartners.
Equals in every way.
Jk, I guess.
Thanks to this swoon-worthy mutual respect, I’d assisted him on every mission since the day I first hitched a ride to Stellaria with his Celestial Cube. Granted, my man had no choice at first, thanks to a little white lie about me exploding if he moved out of range, butstill.
What babygirl wants, babygirl gets!
I angrily huffed as I refocused on my self-appointed task of carrying yet another armful of Ziggy’s seemingly endless collection of guns from the weapons room to the kitchen.
Besides keeping me distracted—kind of—from my self-pity spiral, there was a reason for my cleaning frenzy. We’d landed on Marox hours ago for a high-level mission—to rescue a mysterious alien baby so coveted, an anonymous someone was willing to pay big money to steal it from someone else.
Kind of dramatic, if you ask me…
But what do I know?
In my opinion, we had a bigger issue than intergalactic babynapping. The Lodger only had one sleeping pod, and no way inhellwas I giving up Tendril Touchy Time for our guest to have somewhere to sleep, nomatter how adorable.
During our journey to Marox, I’d pointed out the obvious—that a baby needed a nursery. Ziggy had responded by flinging open the door to the goddamnboiler roomand impatiently gesturing inside. In his mind, the warmth from the nine thousand degree equipment would create the perfect cozy cocoon for our tiny, helpless guest.
Space Daddy chose violence.
At the time, I responded by taking several deep breaths, all while reminding myself my alien didn’t possess a nurturing bone in his borrowed body, through no fault of his own.
‘Blame Theo’ is the company motto.
I grumbled under my breath as I dumped my deadly haul on the kitchen table. Even though it pained me, I could begrudgingly acknowledge the Stellarian responsible for Ziggy’s emotional constipation had sufficiently groveled since our last space adventure.
My man’s still thebetterman, though.
As pissy as I currently felt, I was incredibly proud of Ziggy foracceptingthis apology. Putting aside hundreds of years of resentment in favor of forgiveness showed immense personal growth on his part, even if other factors might have dropkicked the process.
Like the tropical island forced proximity situation, plus the subtle and not-so-subtle nudges from me and Theo’s stellar collisions, supervillain twins Andre and Gabriel Suarez.
Aaaaand an unexpected kiss between Gabe and I that was resonance-induced and approved of by all parties involved.
Just stellar collision things.
My lips tingled at the memory—followed by my asshole clenching at the memory of Ziggywreckingme afterward—and before I knew it, my phone was in my hands.
My original hop into the final frontier had been a little…spontaneous,so I hadn’t fully worked out how to stay in touch with family and friends. My return to space was way more planned, so I’d had time to invent a satellite feature for theLodgerthat kept us connected to select cell phones back on Earth.
