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“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” Ma’kro growls. Thalias should have known not to start her line of questioning with an explosive demand—it only makes him defensive—but if there is one thing that Ma’kro has always been good at, it is lighting the fuse to her temper.
“You’re a commodore,” she states, willing her voice not to tremble with emotion. “You shouldn’t be making reckless decisions.”
“It isn’t reckless if it saves my crew,” he spits. He can’t cross his arms like he usually does with one arm still in a sling. His decision had, impressively, saved every soul aboard his ship. However, it had resulted in him being crushed and nearly left for dead. He is lucky to be alive. He spent days in a tank on Naporar only to be called to Csilla for a Tribunal—heroism isn’t recognized if rules are still broken, especially when broken by a pain in the ass officer who made it to flag rank by the sympathy of the Syndicature and Admiralty after his first near-fatal injury.
“Damnit, Ma’kro!” She throws her hands up in exasperation.
To her pleasure, his eyebrows twitch.
They glare at each other, a battle of wills, before Thalias takes a deep breath and locks everything behind her durasteel politics mask. “I know,” she begins slowly and steeples her fingers in front of her—a habit she now has to show that she is unarmed while speaking. “That our duties will always come first, as they should, we protect too many people for it not to be that way. But I cannot stand by and let you throw yourself about like you mean nothing. Not when you mean—” she cuts herself off and begins anew. “Not after all these years. Maybe I misunderstood something, but…” she trails off and the tears that she had been so valiantly holding back, win their battle and stream victoriously down her cheeks. She swipes them away hastily. “You’re invaluable to the Navigator program. Act like it.”
He steps forward, his defensive posture melting away. “Thalias.”
She holds up her hand. “Save your empty apologies.”
He catches her hand and holds it in his own. Ma’kro has always run warm. She used to joke that it was all the anger that he held inside—now she knows it is his dedication that keeps him burning with such intensity. “Do you know what my last thought was?”
For her own sake, she knows, he doesn’t describe the horror of what he had thought his final moments would be. Nevertheless, her mind provides plenty of images of him laying there, cold, alone, dying . “What?” she rasps.
He presses her hand to his chest, over his heart, and runs calloused fingers over the back of her hand. “That I never fucking said anything,” he whispers and reaches up to wipe away more tears that have fallen on their own accord. “My first action will always be for the Ascendancy, but my last thought will always be of you.”
Her eyes flutter shut and she squeezes his uniform tunic before stepping further into his orbit. “I can’t lose you, too.”
He tilts her chin up to face him. “I can’t promise that one day you won’t, but until then.” He rests his forehead against hers. “My honor is yours.”
Her breath catches and she throws his arms around his neck. He catches her with a grunt, and pulls her closer, though a little to the side to remove some of her weight from his injured arm.
“As is mine yours.” She pulls away, just enough to see that rare Ma’kro smile—the one that is not at all predatory, but open and honest and kind.
He leans down and kisses her. It isn’t at all how she imagined their first kiss to be. She had expected it to be heated, a rush to get the others clothes off, the tension that has been building finally reaching its combustion point. But this is soft, caring, almost shy. His fingers cup her chin and his thumb gently strokes her jaw line as he opens his mouth tentatively. She melts into him, one hand fisting his uniform and the other reaching up to tangle in his hair.
He pulls away and rests his forehead against hers.
“I’m still mad at you,” she breathes.
“That’s fine,” he says, though he sounds a little breathless.
“But I’m going to kiss you again.”
“If this is what you’re like when you're mad,” he says and she can feel his smile as he continues, “then I’m gonna do it more often.”
She presses her lips to his again and cherishes the way he envelops her, the way his uninjured arm wraps around her and his hand splays across her back. “I’m always mad at you,” she murmurs, her lips grazing his with each syllable.
“Lucky me.” He pulls her impossibly closer and she thanks the stars once again that he is alive, that he survived, and that they will continue fighting together.