Page 40 of Crash Landed with My Weredragon

"I'm staying. Not permanently; there'll be rotations, visits, and ongoing exchange. But someone needs to be here for the foundation work, and I know this Colony, these people, and the science better than anyone else on the crew."

"What about the rest of us?" Dr. Vasquez asked from behind Rowan. "Some of us might want to stay too."

Marina hadn't expected that. She'd prepared for arguments against staying, not requests to join her.

"Anyone who wants to volunteer for the Dobromian posting is welcome. The terms include housing, medical care, and full communication access. But it's voluntary. Nobody stays who doesn't want to."

The screen erupted. Not chaos, but enthusiasm. Patel's hand went up first, surprising no one. Two xenobiology researchers raised theirs immediately after. Garcia, the communications technician who'd been teaching herself Dobromian from relay transmissions, asked if she could apply. Sorenson, the cook who'd invented cave moss risotto, said she'd been cross-training with the Colony's food preparation staff and could she please stay because the Dobromian ingredients had given her ideas she'd need a lifetime to explore.

By the time the conversation ended, eleven crew members had volunteered. Eleven out of forty-seven. Nearly a quarter of the crew, choosing to remain on an alien planet because the work was meaningful, the people were worth knowing, and the cave moss porridge was better than anything on the Vulcana.

Peter's face appeared in the corner of the screen. His arm was still in the sling, the Weredragon healing compound doing its work. He'd been listening from the medical bay.

"I'm going back to Earth," he said. His voice was steady, the words clearly prepared. "Someone needs to debrief command and prepare for the supply shipments. And I think I'll be more useful there than here. For a lot of reasons."

Marina heard what he wasn't saying. He was giving her space. Removing himself because staying would mean watching her every day with someone else, and he loved her enough to not put either of them through that. The grace of it; the quiet, uncelebrated decency, made her eyes sting.

"Thank you, Peter," she said. She meant it for everything.

"Don't thank me. Just make sure the alliance works. I didn't get carried through a volcano by a dragon for nothing."

Toren, beside her, made a sound that was almost a laugh. Peter heard it.

"Was that him laughing?" Peter asked.

"Yes."

"Tell him I still don't like him."

"He knows."

"Good. And Marina; be happy. That's an order."

"You can't order me to be happy. You're not my commanding officer."

"I'm the man who got hit by a ceiling for you. That earns me one order. Be happy. Vulcana out."

The screen went dark. Marina sat in the relay station in the quiet that followed and felt the bond hum in her chest. Eleven volunteers, Peter's grace and Rowan's repair. The alliance was real, and it was already bigger than she'd imagined.

* * *

The first food shipment arrived two days later.

Toren flew the transport which was a modified Weredragon cargo vessel loaded with grain from the Vulcana's stores, plus seeds that Patel had selected for compatibility with Dobromian growing conditions. Marina coordinated the distribution from the Colony's main storage caverns, working alongside Goruth's agricultural team and a newly formed human-Weredragon logistics crew that communicated in a mix of English, Dobromian, and hand gestures that were somehow more effective than either language alone.

The grain went to the outer settlement refugees first. Marina had insisted on this, and Boradrith had agreed without argument. The people who'd lost their surface homes needed it most. Goruth's team distributed the food with the efficient care of people who understood what hunger looked like and who weren't going to let protocol slow down the feeding.

Marina stood in the storage cavern and watched bags of Earth grain being carried through tunnels carved from alien stone, handed to families from another world, and she thought about Toren's words on Ceylara. They were the words that had made her see something she'd missed about her own species. Your first instinct is to set up a table and feed everyone. Including the aliens.

He'd been right. This was what humans did. They fed people, they shared what they had and it wasn't strategic. It wasn't even conscious. It was the thing you did when someone was hungry and you had food.

A Weredragon woman approached Marina during the distribution. She was carrying a dragonling, maybe two cycles old, small enough to fit in the crook of one arm, with pale blue scales and enormous dark eyes that tracked everything with the intense curiosity of the very young. The woman held out a bundle wrapped in cloth.

"From the outer settlements," she said. Her English was accented but clear she'd been learning. "We heard what you did. The alliance, the food. My family was in the third settlement evacuated during the earthquake. Your people helped carry my mother, who cannot fly anymore." She pressed the bundle into Marina's hands. "A gift. From those who were carried."

Marina unwrapped the cloth. Inside was a necklace. It was a thin cord strung with tiny volcanic glass beads, each one a different color, each one carved with the geometric patterns she was learning to read as Weredragon storytelling. The beads were warm, like everything made from Dobromian glass, and they caught the bioluminescent light and scattered it in miniature rainbows.

"It tells the story of the settlement," the woman explained. "Each bead is a generation. My grandmother made the first one. I made the last." She touched the final bead which was a deep amber, the color of the Colony's bioluminescent morning light. "This one is for the new chapter. The one that begins with you."