Page 29 of Star Bright
“Wanting more connection, for yourself and for them, doesn’t seem like a bad thing. I admit, the Intergalactic Dating Agency still seems a bit…strange to me, but the solar storm and the cryo malfunction and the crash had nothing to do with hoping to find someone—a date, a match, a…mate, whatever.”
He reflected on that. “I wish I’d done more to make sure this would be right for the fledglings.”
“Well, this is your chance now.” She gave him another squeeze then loosened her hold.
But before she could pull away, he caught her hand. Bowing to her, he touched his forehead to her knuckles.
He’d meant it as a gesture of respect and thanks, since draklings were a rowdy, sometimes pugnacious species who found it hard to be vulnerable with outsiders. But her fingers were scented with something sweet, a fragrance he’d noted on Yadira. Second only to flying was a drakling’s love of the sugary energy that readily fueled flying.
The beast wanted to lick her fingers.
He wouldnotcrash land on her lawn, unleash his unruly offspring, and thenlick her.
But he had to clamp his teeth on the inside of his lips to stop himself.
When he raised his head, she was watching him, her brown eyes wide enough to catch the reflections of the snow falling outside in silvery shimmers. Draklings were not heartless killers, but they had evolved from hunters who rarely missed their aim. Something in her sensed that hunter, even though neither of them were what their respective species had started as—and both of them had changed past the simple creatures they’d once been.
And still she did not move, and he did not let her go.
Darcy was not his aim, he reminded himself and his beast. Even before he’d realized how his plan had gone awry, he been contracted with some other bride.
The storm blows, but the heart knows.
It was an old drakling saying that Shanya would sometimes throw at him when one of them or the fledglings felt excessively dramatic. He’d somehow thought that meant they would be together forever, come any storm. Losing his love to a lightning bolt seemed the cruelest sort of irony.
But it sounded as if Darcy had suffered no such storm, that the bond with her chosen one had never quite strengthened, never bloomed. Was that withering worse than the traumatic loss he’d suffered?
Maybe it wasn’t a matter of which hurt more or less; just, as she’d said, taking the chance to try again.
Calling on all the strength that had come back to him since the crash, he forced his hand open. The cold was worse, but he would weather that, as he’d done the loneliness after Shanya’s death. He would hold his children close. He would face what wasto come, awake and joyful and remembering every moment even when it was hard.
He stepped back with another little bow.
Curling her other hand over the one he’d held, she blinked at him. “I… I do have some tasks to see to. If everything is okay here…”
Okay? The meaning of the word translated instantly through his implant, and he understood the expected reply. “We are okay.”
She nodded. “I’ll see if Kong can get you an update on the message to planetary authorities or when we can expect a rescue ship.”
“Then we shall let you return to your private holiday.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to kick you out. That’s not…” Then she seemed to reconsider. “That’s probably for the best. This is all just so strange and unexpected, for you and for me. It’s no surprise we’re all feeling a bit confused.”
“Just so,” he agreed.
It was storms of the sky and the heart that had brought him here, and maybe now they all deserved a little peace.
+ + +
Unfortunately for his good intentions, his fledglings seemed set on chaos.
Yadira woke first from her nap but she stayed in her fort, and from the instructional voice coming from the datpad that Darcy had found for the fledglings, she was searching for “one hundred standard sols of interstellar history” and “how to make ice cream”.
But when Atsu emerged from his nest, yelling, “Where is everybody?” and Yadira replied, “We rebuilt the spaceship and flew back in time,” the afternoon went amok.
So when Darcy appeared, her arms overflowing with outdoor clothing, he could’ve wept with relief. “I thought we might go outside so you can experience a Montana winter,” she announced. “Atsu, I’m sorry but we don’t have anything in your size from the equipment closet, so we’ll have to make do.”
The heavy jacket, puffy and sleek like the one Darcy had worn, came down almost to Atsu’s feet. He laughed and swirled around, the hem flaring. “I have wings,” he announced, then immediately and guiltily looked at his sister. “Not really though.”
