Page 88 of Enslak

"You stubborn, impossible male," she grumbled, and I heard the tears she was refusing to let fall thickening her voice. Her hands were already moving across my chest, her touch careful and systematic, pressing gently at the worst of the burns to test the depth. "You could have died."

"But I didn't." I tried to find her eyes and hold them. "Neither did you."

She looked up at me then, and for a moment neither of us said anything. Her expression was complicated in the way it often was when she felt too much at once and didn't know which part of it to hand to me first.

"The ship," I said, forcing my legs to move. "We have to—"

"I know." She slipped under my arm without being asked, taking my weight against her small frame with that quiet, matter-of-fact strength that still caught me off guard every time. "Come on. Lean on me."

I did.

Niki slammed the hatch controls as we stumbled up the ramp. The metal door hissed shut behind us, the locks engaging with a series of heavy clicks that felt, in that moment, like the most beautiful sound I'd ever heard. Sealed inside. Breathing. Alive.

"Sit," she ordered, steering me toward one of the seats with a firmness that left no room for argument.

I wanted to argue anyway. I wanted to get us moving, to put distance between us and the Ulkommenians, to be useful instead of broken. But my body had stopped consulting me. The adrenaline was draining away, and what it left behind was something I didn't have a word for yet—a specific kind of exhaustion that went deeper than muscle or bone.

I sat.

She pulled a compact medi-unit from a nearby cabinet, her movements quick and practiced, and activated it with the easy familiarity of someone who'd used one too many times. The soft light it cast made the angles of her face look less sharp, the tension around her mouth slightly less severe. She started scanning my injuries with focused, methodical efficiency, and I watched her instead of watching the readout.

"This is going to hurt," she said, positioning the unit over my shoulder.

It did. Sharp and searing as the device cauterized and sealed tissue, knitting flesh back together in a process that felt less like healing and more like controlled punishment. I kept my eyes on her face throughout it. The furrow between her brows. The small, determined set of her mouth. The way she caught her lower lip between her teeth when she concentrated on something that mattered to her.

She had fought beside me tonight without hesitation. When her weapon ran dry, she'd used her hands. She'd refused to let me face them alone, and I hadn't been able to talk her out of it, and somewhere in the middle of watching her take down three Ulkommenians in under a minute, I'd stopped trying.

"Niki," I said quietly.

She glanced up from the medi-unit, meeting my eyes.

I didn't know yet how to say the thing I meant. The words for it felt too large for what I'd managed to reclaim of myself, like reaching for something on a shelf I wasn't sure I could trust to hold my weight. But I knew what was true. I knew that when I'd watched those soldiers close in on her tonight, something in my chest had gone very still and very certain in a way that had nothing to do with the fighting.

"I don't know how to be without you," I said. The words came out rougher than I intended, honest in the clumsy way that things are honest when you haven't rehearsed them. "I don't remember everything yet. There are still pieces missing. But I know that." I held her gaze. "I know that clearly."

She was quiet for a moment, something moving through her expression that I couldn't fully name. Her hand, still holding the medi-unit, stilled against my side.

"Yeah," she said finally, her voice soft. "I know that too." She didn't look away. "You're not getting rid of me, Enslak. I need you to understand that."

It wasn't a declaration. It wasn't a promise dressed up in ceremony. It was just Niki, telling me the truth the same way she always told me the truth—straightforward and without performance.

It landed harder than anything else could have.

"Good," I said.

The corner of her mouth curved, not quite a smile but close. She turned back to my wounds and kept working, and I let her, and for a while the only sounds were the soft hum of the medi-unit and our breathing evening out in the quiet of the ship.

She kissed me, gentle and tender, her hand cupping my face. When she pulled back, she rested her forehead against mine for just a moment, and I felt that connection between us pulse and strengthen.

Then the proximity alarm shrieked.

We both jumped. Niki crossed to the viewport in three quick strides, her entire body going rigid.

"A shuttle," she breathed. "Alliance markings."

I moved to stand beside her, ignoring the fresh pain in my wounds, ignoring the way my vision swam. Through the viewport, I could see it descending—a sleek military vessel bearing the Bardaga insignia, its hull gleaming in Avalon's strange light.

"They found us," Niki whispered.