Page 43 of Alien Warrior Chef… With Benefits
We keep moving.
By the time we hit the third trial round, our chaos has become choreography. I toss him ingredients mid-stride, he catches without looking. He slides a pan into the oven, I adjust the temp with a flick. Our rhythm isn’t perfect, but it’s ours—and it feels like flying.
Vonn whistles from the prep sink. “Well I’ll be damned. They’re not trying to kill each other.”
“Give it time,” Lyrie says, scribbling notes on her datapad. “They’re still in foreplay.”
I hurl a spatula at her.
Rekkgar catches it one-handed before it hits her, places it calmly on the counter, and keeps whisking.
Showoff.
Eventually, the timer buzzes.
We stare at the final product—twelve precision-piped galactic fusion macarons, dusted with nebula shimmer and filled with layered starfruit-jasmine ganache. Perfect. Glossy. Uniform.
I exhale, stepping back to admire the tray.
Then I feel him behind me again, closer this time.
“They’re... beautiful,” he says.
I look up at him. “You helped.”
“I followed instructions.”
“Yeah, well. That’s half of love, too.”
The words slip out before I can catch them.
He doesn’t flinch. Just studies me for a moment longer, his expression unreadable.
Then he nods once, solemn. “You teach well.”
It’s not a confession. Not yet.
But maybe... it’s a beginning.
By the time the sun begins to dip beneath Novaria’s steel-blue skyline, the bakery looks like it’s been looted by flour-hungry pirates and caramel-crazed sugar demons.
There’s a thin sheen of powdered sugar on every surface, including my eyelashes. The industrial mixers are coated in streaks of violet glaze. One of the ovens is hissing ominously. Lyrie has retreated upstairs muttering about needing “a wine bath and a prayer circle,” and Vonn is in the back, passed out with an ice pack on his forehead after losing a brief but impassioned argument with a very aggressive bag of chia-snap batter.
And me? I’m leaning against the marble prep table, panting softly, my apron plastered to my hips with sweat, flour, and pride.
We did it.
We didn’t kill each other. We didn’t burn the place down. And somewhere between spilled frosting and singed pastry bags, something shifted.
Rekkgar wipes his brow with the back of his arm, leaving a clean stripe across his soot-dark skin. A dusting of cocoa clings to his jaw like war paint. His apron—pink, because Lyrie has no shame—is crooked across his massive chest, the words “FLUFF MASTER” blinking in glitter script over one pec.
I stare at him for a moment longer than I should.
Then I take the rag from the sink, cross the floor, and reach up to wipe a smear of caramel from his cheek.
“Hold still,” I murmur.
He does. But there’s a stillness beneath the stillness, something coiled and breathless.
