Page 262 of Commander’s Mate

“They’ll want us to be okay.”

“Yes.”

Zoe’s eyes filled.

“I don’t know if I can be the missing girl who came home and lived happily ever after.”

Scarlet’s voice went hard.

“Then don’t be.”

We looked at her.

“We survive,” she said. “We go home if we can. We stay if we want. We come back out here if that’s what we choose. We fall for fluorescent-haired aliens if our judgment completely collapses.”

“Scarlet.”

“What? His hair is objectively fluorescent.”

I started laughing.

Nora joined me.

Zoe did too.

Scarlet held out longer than any of us and then lost it.

Four Earth women sat in an alien registry room the night before a slave-mine assault, laughing hard enough that Tivid opened the door, looked inside, and immediately closed it again.

When the laughter ended, we were still afraid.

Breskaa was still waiting.

Earth was still lost.

But we had finally said it aloud.

If home came back, we would not have to disappear into it.

“I was Army for ten years.”

“On Earth.”

“That counts.”

“It counts for not panicking when people start shooting. It does not count as knowing how their armor works, their weapons work, or which alien button vents you into space.”

Zoe looked between us. “I hate it when Harper becomes sensible.”

“So do I,” Scarlet said.

The staging-bay announcement called final armor seal.

My stomach dropped.

Zared stood with his ground team while techs locked the last plates into place. His armor made him look less like the man who slept beside me and more like the warrior who had walked into Ursaga.

I knew now those were not different men.