Page 14 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

"The acid isn't just defensive," Patel explained, her eyes bright behind safety goggles. "It's a digestive enzyme. They dissolve rock to extract minerals. The entire ecosystem on this planet runs on acid chemistry. It's brilliant, Marina. It's completely unlike anything we've seen."

"Brilliant and terrifying aren't mutually exclusive," Marina replied.

"They rarely are. That's what makes biology fun."

Marina added Patel's findings to the growing database of Ceylara research and tried not to think about Toren.

She failed.

*** Marina ***

Peter found her sitting on the cargo bay ramp and watching the twin suns set. She'd been doing this more often lately; finding quiet moments at the edges of the day when the heat dropped and the light turned soft and the planet looked almost beautiful instead of relentlessly hostile.

"Mind if I sit?" Peter asked.

"Go ahead."

He sat beside her. He was holding two cups of the instant coffee that had become the crew's reluctant staple. He handed her one without asking if she wanted it, which was very Peter; attentive without being pushy, kind without requiring acknowledgment.

"How are the preparations going?" he asked.

"On schedule. Rowan's confident about the titanium. Patel wants to bring half her lab to Dobromia. Athena's already packed, which means she packed three hours ago and has been cleaning her weapons ever since."

Peter laughed. "She cleaned them twice yesterday. I counted."

They sat in comfortable silence for a moment. The smaller sun dropped below the horizon first, leaving the amber glow of the larger one to paint the sky in shades of copper and rust.

"Can I say something?" Peter asked. His voice had shifted. Still gentle, but there was something underneath it. Something he'd been holding.

"You can always say something, Peter."

"I'm worried about you." He wasn't looking at her. He was looking at the sunset. "Not about the trip or the aliens. About Toren specifically."

Marina's chest tightened. She'd been expecting this conversation, in the same way you expect a storm when you see the clouds building; you know it's coming, you just don't know when.

"What about him?"

"You like him." Peter said it simply, without accusation. "I'm not blind, Marina. I've watched you with him. The way you talk to him is different from the way you talk to anyone else. The way you look at him when you think nobody's paying attention. It's different."

"Peter…"

"I'm not jealous. Well." He paused. "I am, a little. But that's my problem, not yours. I've liked you for a long time, and you know that, and we've never talked about it because we're both professionals and there's never been a right moment. I'm not bringing it up now because I think there's a right moment. I'm bringing it up because I care about you, and I'm worried that you're making decisions with your heart instead of your head."

Marina took a slow breath. Peter deserved honesty. He'd always deserved it, and she'd always given him almost-honesty instead; the kind that acknowledged his feelings without addressing them, that kept the door neither open nor closed. It wasn't fair. She knew it wasn't fair.

"You're right," she said. "I do like him. I don't know what that means yet, and I don't know where it goes. He's an alien prince from a dying planet, and I'm a scientist with a broken ship. The logistics are insane."

"The logistics aren't what worry me. What worries me is that you're the person everyone on this crew depends on. Forty-seven people, Marina. If something goes wrong on Dobromia; if this alliance falls apart, if his father doesn't like us, if it's a trap, you need to be thinking clearly. Not thinking about how his scales look in the starlight."

The comment was so accurate that Marina almost laughed. She'd been thinking about exactly that last night, and the fact that Peter had noticed made her feel both seen and exposed.

"I hear you," she said. "And you're not wrong. But I've thought about this, Peter. The trip to Dobromia makes strategic sense regardless of how I feel about Toren. We need their metals, they need our food, and both species benefit from cooperation. The personal feelings don't change the math."

"They change the risk tolerance. You're more willing to trust him than you would be if he were ugly."

"He could look like a Drog and I'd still trust his data. The alliance argument holds."

Peter turned to her for the first time. His expression was complicated. It was sad, fond, resigned, and fiercely protective all at once. "Just be careful, okay? Not for my sake. For yours. And for the forty-seven people who need you to come back in one piece."