Finn sat up as Brit leaped out of bed. Was she off to fetch birth control of some sort? No, advanced tech prevented pregnancy as well as disease. She was safe from him, if not with him.

Aye, not safe at all. Chuckling, he laced his fingers behind his head and waited for her return.

The door remained closed. He wished she’d hurry and get her sexy ass back to bed. He wanted to hold her while he dozed and recharged for round two. And round three, if there would be enough time. He’d make sure she’d sleep before being back on duty.

From inside the bathroom came the sound of water. She kept running it. And running it and running it. No one ran water longer than him, but that was in the shower, not at the sink.

He hopped out of bed and walked to the bathroom. The water didn’t quite drown out a soft, unhappy moan.

He folded his arms and leaned against the door. “It was good for me,” he teased. “Was it good for you too?”

Nothing. A flicker of worry invaded then. “Brit, open the door.”

“Not necessary. I’ll be fine. Please go.”

“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m not feeling well.” The water turned off, and a cup clattered.

“Do you think it’s something you ate earlier?”

“What do you mean?”

Of course she wouldn’t know what he’d meant. Nano-meds took care of food poisoning or viruses. No one had been sick since coming on this ship, thanks to Doctor Kell. “Never mind. Come out and I’ll give you a back rub. That’ll make you feel better.”

She groaned.

“Perhaps it’s what you haven’t eaten. You skipped dinner, drank wine. And you just expended a lot of energy on an empty stomach.” He chuckled. The water came back on. Then he heard splashing, as if she were throwing it on her face. “Tell me what suits your fancy, and I’ll find us some food. I’ll bring it back here, and we can eat. I for one have worked up an appetite.”

“No. I’d rather you go.”

“You want me to leave.”

“Yes. Please.”

You sure have a way with the ladies, Rorkken. Exhaling, he picked his scattered clothes off the floor and dressed.

“I’ll leave with one condition—you’ll comm me if you feel any worse,” he told her, pulling on his boots. “I’ll make sure you get to the sick bay.” What was he talking about? She was in charge. “No, Doctor Kell will come to you—even if I have to carry him from his bed to here.”

“Don’t do that.” Her disapproval gave strength to her voice. “I’ll be fine. Good night.”

The sound of splashing started all over again.

Sighing, he shrugged. Never had such great sex ended so badly. Finn rolled his eyes to the heavens. “Are you laughing now?” he muttered to the gods. Someone up there must have a sense of humor.

He let himself out, waiting until he’d heard the security lock move into place before walking down the corridor to his quarters.

Once inside, Finn stripped out of his clothes and went directly into the shower. He stood there for a long moment while deliberately cool water drummed down on his head. It didn’t keep him from reacting physically to an image of Brit writhing under him as he’d made love to her. Gods, he was hard again. He fisted his hands to keep from grabbing his cock and finishing the job. Doing so would somehow cheapen what he’d experienced with her. Instead, he forced his thoughts to the way she’d embraced him right before she came, pouring her soul into that kiss. The memory blazed in his mind.

He didn’t understand why she’d kept her eyes squeezed shut before that point. For him, it was the emotional connection he craved during sex. He didn’t experience it much; his situation had rarely allowed for it, but when he’d sensed one was there—to some degree—it had added exponentially to his physical pleasure. He hadn’t wanted his time with Brit to be “just a fuck.” He’d wanted it to be different from his past encounters, and it had been in the end—gods, far better than those other times, because she was different. They were different. It was peacetime now; his personal rules of engagement during war, of never allowing himself to get too close to a lover, were obsolete. He and Brit had a chance. Their relationship could actually go somewhere.

If it ever got off the ground.

It wasn’t looking good. Something was holding her back. It wasn’t shyness. The woman was not shy—not in the physical sense. Was it because of her worry over violating protocol? Damn, puritanical Coalition. It was clear that she respected him as a subordinate but desired him as a man. Nothing wrong with that. Yet it produced conflict in her and had almost prevented them from acting on the sexual attraction which had raged between them all week. All week? Over a decade of pursuing each other was more like it.

Then another reason surfaced. He wasn’t of her class. Aye, that was more likely. He was raised an urchin, and she, if making an educated guess, hailed from highborn origins. To become the equivalent of an admiral in the Drakken Empire—a battlelord—you’d needed a wealthy, powerful family to back you, like Brit probably had.

She was the kind of woman he’d thought out of his reach in his old life and for good reason. She was powerful, smart, and rich, and he was a former starving pickpocket. She likely saw him as an object of lust—a partner for sex, nothing more.

He cracked a smile as water sluiced over his body. An object of lust—him? But he’d be no whore, no indeed. He thought better of himself. Aye, were he in the position to mate a woman above his station—or below it—he’d be a worthy one. That he knew.

She wants to keep you at arm’s length.

Let her try. He’d chase down Brit Bandar’s true affections the way she’d chased him through the Borderlands. Only she’d not escape him like he’d escaped her. If she made the task of winning her over difficult, all the better. Finn Rorkken had never been able to resist a challenge.

Brit emerged from the bathroom. She found the box on the shelf above her desk. Her sacred box. She hadn’t opened it in so very long. Good girl, Hadley, putting it in the same relative place as in her old quarters on the Vengeance.

Her hands almost shook as she lifted the lid. It hurt too much to look at the precious things inside, and so she rarely did. Her throat closed at the sight of the soft pink blanket. Tears were already tracking down her cheeks by the time she dug out the Agran Sakkara underneath. She pressed both keepsakes to her cheek. They were all she had left of her children. She’d had them both such a very short time. All too briefly they’d blessed her life.

“My babies. My precious babies.” She wept because it hurt so much, the missing of them, the pain never dimming after all these years.

Sometime later, drained, she placed the blanket and bible on her lap and found Seff’s gift at the bottom of the box. She smiled wanly, reading the inscription . . . .

Reverently, she slipped the bracelet on her wrist, his words touching her skin. “I’ll never forget the day you gave me this. We’d just found out I was pregnant for the second time. You wanted me to know that no matter how big our family grew, you’d always be my true love.”

Her chest convulsed with a sob. “Oh, Seff. I miss us, I miss you.”

It was as if Seff were in the room with her, forever young, watching her with his perpetually-smiling eyes. “He held me,” she whispered. “He held me the way you used to hold me. I felt things with him that . . . ” That I used to feel only with you, she almost added, afraid that vocalizing the thought would somehow make it true. She was nowhere near able to accept such a thing as truth. She doubted that she ever would be.

She fingered the bracelet, remembering how it had been covered in Seff’s blood. She’d never seen so much blood, then or since. She had been bathed in it, clutching his broken body to hers. The trauma of that day had never left her. All it took was one trigger for her to react with cold sweats, shakes, and queasiness. She was usually able to hide or dismiss them, as she had tonight—albeit not very well, after seeing the raptor tattoo.

“He’s one of them. He’s Drakken. And yet he’s not. He’s not a murderer. I made sure. I thought by having sex with him, it would get rid of wanting him. It hasn’t.” He’s awakened something inside me I thought was dead.

“I’m confused, Seff,” she pleaded. “Help me. I want to be with him again, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Her dead husband offered neither absolution nor advice. Sick at heart, she took the blanket to bed. Wrapping it around her shoulders for comfort, she plunged, exhausted, into the darkest, bleakest sleep.

The next morning, the telltale signs of her episode had vanished, thanks to a deep, dreamless sleep and an application of derma-cream. Glad to dive back into work, Brit was leading a virtual journalist on a tour of the ship. She knew by the news streams, courtesy of the palace, that the Unity and its mission were of tremendous interest across the galaxy. Unfortunately, that meant dealing with the press would now be an ongoing part of her job. In the past, not only had she avoided the media spotlight, but her superiors had also made sure she’d stayed out of it. As a hunter-warrior with no designs on ass-kissing her way to a politically-sensitive posting at the Ring, she’d been seen as a public relations risk; there had been too much potential to upset the public with her apparently coldhearted focus on exterminating Drakken. She’d never understood that. War wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t fun, and yet the military’s public affairs machine insisted on reducing it to a form benign enough for mass public consumption.

Hands clasped behind her back, she led the journalist onto the bridge. “Here is where I command the ship. On our Triad Alliance bridge, you will find service members from the shrine world of Earth, from the former Coalition, as well as from the former Drakken Empire.”

For a moment, she panicked, fearing Rorkken would be there, smiling his wicked smile, and pumped up with the memory of her succumbing to his charms. She knew that she’d have to see him today, only she hoped it wouldn’t be unexpectedly. She needed a little extra time to fortify the wall she’d rebuilt around herself.

At Brit’s direction, Hadley described the various stations of the bridge as the journalist nodded—a flickering image of the real woman, pretty, reddish-haired, and light-years away, recording the data as it streamed in. When Hadley reached the pilot’s chair, though the Terran wasn’t in it, her frown deepened and her eyes flashed with dismay. Brit sighed inwardly. Detectable emotion was a weakness that could be exploited. Before Hadley could hope to assume a position of higher responsibility, she’d need to dispense with such softness. As her mentor, Brit made a mental note to redouble her efforts to harden the girl and choose more tasks that would challenge her. Peacetime or no, leading a virtual journalist around the ship didn’t come close.

The journalist’s ghostly image followed Brit to Franklin Johnson at the command chair. “Admiral.” He rose, offering a snappy, fist-to-his-chest salute, acting his part for the show.

“This is Commander Franklin Johnson, my third-in-command. He’s been overseeing command of the ship while I rested.” Rested? She kept her reaction from altering her expression. “We work a tri-shift day. Captain Rorkken is the next highest-ranking officer here after me. Now that I am on duty for my shift, I will relieve Commander Johnson of his command. But first we will exchange information from the previous period in our briefing.”

As Johnson rattled off the mundane details of their course and various readings, Brit paged through the reports and positions logged on the star charts. How dull, she couldn’t help thinking, not having any Drakken ships to pursue this morn. She’d been hoping that some of the rogue vessels would have surfaced by now. Zaafran’s intelligence people would be calling in shortly, as they did at the beginning of her every shift. Maybe they would have better news. Peace bored her.

“Did you see that report from last night?” he asked. His gaze tracked to the journalist, and he waggled his eyebrows.

Brit nodded in understanding. “Lieutenant Keyren, escort our guest to the engineer’s station and discuss some of the duties performed there.”

“Happy to do so, Admiral.”

“There was a bar brawl last night,” Johnson said as the pair walked away. “It resulted in numerous minor injuries but no major ones. Yarew submitted a report.”

Brit opened her data-vis. A priority message from her security chief waited. As it hadn’t been labeled urgent, she’d ignored it this morning, prioritizing her tasks so as to arrive on the bridge early enough to prepare for the journalist. She read the summary. The Drakken had been drunk on sweef and gotten out of hand. Only one ensign—of Coalition origin—had been ill enough to be admitted to sickbay overnight. Rorkken and his former second, Zurykk, had been there afterward to survey the damage. There was a long list of items that needed repair. Cleaning bots had been deployed.

She noted the time of the report and frowned. This had happened before Rorkken’s arrival at her quarters, and yet this was the first she’d heard of it. No wonder he’d been late. He’d been busy. His people had gotten drunk, beaten up their shipmates, and wrecked items in the club. Beasts, they were. Uncivilized. It infuriated her that he’d made no mention of the incident. All he’d cared about was stripping her of her defenses—and her clothes—and to hells with everything else.

Anger simmering, she closed the data-vis, smoothed a hand over nonexistent wrinkles on her uniform, and returned to the journalist, making sure she wore a good face for the camera. As far as outsiders were concerned, on the Unity, they were one big happy family.

Finn took a quicker than usual shower at the end of his sleep period. And a colder than usual one. Brit Bandar had invaded his thoughts and his body. His dreams of her had been erotic, hotter than the deepest hells, causing him to hobble around in an almost constant state of semi-hardness while preparing for his day.

Get a hold of yourself, man. You’ve got a job to do, and that’s what you need to be thinking about. He was second-in-command of this ship. The responsibility and all that entailed needed to be forefront in his mind.

“Water—off,” he told the water-bot and grabbed a towel, scrubbing it over his chilled flesh. The water temperature had been brisk, to say the least.

His PCD beeped. He recognized the distinctive chime—two short pips and a longer tone. It was an urgent message.

His heart lurched. Something had happened to Brit. She was in the sick bay in grave condition because instead of staying last night to make sure she was well, he’d taken himself and his disappointed cock back to his bedroom to sulk. He never should have left her. He should have seen her first with his own eyes and made sure everything was okay. “Rorkken,” he said.

“Captain, this is Ensign Berloo. Admiral Bandar requests that you report to the bridge immediately, sir.”

So she was recovered and back to work. He shrugged on his uniform and boots, wasting no time trekking to the bridge.

There, he found her peering at a navigational holo-vis. Her hands were clasped lightly behind her back. Her posture was impeccable. He tried not to gape at her curves or the swell of her sweet ass. It mattered not if her breasts were covered with war medals, skintight athletic gear, or red silk; he found ignoring her body equally difficult. Gods be. He thanked the heavens that his uniform jacket extended below the belt line.

“Attempt contact on all channels,” she ordered the comm officer.

“Yes, Admiral.”

Brit turned to yet another bridge officer. “Ensign Berloo, call up the past year’s history on anomalies in the W-285 sector and transfer it to my data-vis.”

Lieutenant Keyren stood close by. She wore a perfect uniform and had shadowed eyes. She hadn’t been drinking heavily last night like some of her cohorts, but it appeared that she hadn’t gotten much sleep, either.

Join the club.

Finn halted, hands on his hips. “Good morn’, Admiral.”

At the sound of his voice, Brit glanced over, barely acknowledging him, barely civil. Cold anger frosted her gaze. He’d expected some awkwardness, aye, perhaps a quick, private smile, but not this. The admiral was freepin’ furo, as the spacehands liked to say. Aye, furious. Not explosive fury; hers was frigid and still, like a polar morning after a storm front had passed.

She’d taken cover behind her Stone-Heart facade.

She’d taken cover from him.

Finn didn’t react. No spurned-lover sullenness. He knew better. His body language would appear as unaffected as hers to the casual observer. “I received an urgent summons to the bridge. What have we got? What’s happening?”

In her usual clipped, elegant tone, she briefed him. “It appears contact has been lost with the Cupezikan outpost. Triad Headquarters asked us to step in. We’re to aid and assist as necessary in getting their deep space comm back online.”

He followed her eyes to a blinking light which depicted the settlement on the holo-vis. He rubbed his chin, trying to remember what he knew of the region. He got his bearings quickly. W-285 sector straddled the border between Coalition and Drakken territory, a line that had been considered arbitrary during the war.

Johnson joined them. “Here’s the intel report. Population—seventeen adult males. They’ve had comm outages before. Historical data shows sporadic instances of signal disruption when the system passes through its asteroid belt. There’s been some mining in the sector. Zelfen ore. Assets owned by the Nezerihm Corporation. But Cupezikan is a science outpost.” He read some more then glanced up. “It’s a long way to come to study sea life.”

“In reality, they’re not studying fish, unless it’s to catch it and eat it,” Brit said. “It’s a land grab under the guise of research. They’ve staked their claim, and soon others will join them and create a real settlement.”

Finn was familiar with the practice of land grabbing. To maintain presence and continuously push the boundaries of the border, the Coalition had offered land and often employment to those civilians too naïve—or maybe too desperate—to realize all the dangers of living so close to Drakken territory. Or perhaps to the settlers the risks had been worth the rewards of land and freedom. Most of the land grabbers had been force-evacuated or destroyed during the warlord’s last offensive, but peace had brought the settlers back, apparently—including these seventeen men under the pretext of scientific study.

“However, it matters not why they’re there or how they got there, gentlemen. If the cessation of regular communications is enough to generate a go-see order, then we shall go see.” Brit sounded vaguely annoyed at the lowly directive. She tugged on the hem of her uniform jacket as if it wasn’t already immaculate. “Set course for Cupezikan.”

Everyone on the bridge went immediately to work on matters relating to their first official mission. No one complained about how mundane of a mission it was, helping an outpost with a tech issue. They were soldiers glad to prepare for something.

“Captain Rorkken.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

“We’ll need a standard expeditionary crew to go down to the outpost tomorrow. Gather one.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral.” Brit fairly crackled with anger, most of it cloaked behind her chilly professionalism. She was all business. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected after last night, but he’d expected something a hair warmer.

How could sex that good make someone so angry? Or ill, for that matter? Before the day was over, he’d have his answers. For now, he’d follow orders. The last thing he wanted would be to shore up her opinion that fraternization caused chaos. She was his commanding officer. Personal relationship or no, he’d vowed to serve her. He’d give his life to fulfill that pledge.

He sat down at a comm-panel to assemble his team. The smart chair sank almost to the floor before rising up to his programmed height. Blast the damned thing! “Do that again and out the airlock you go,” he muttered. Was it his imagination or had the chair given an extra jolt?

Only a few amused glances veered in his direction. He altered the settings—again. No matter what he adjusted, the so-called smart chairs did something else.

Not so different from Brit Bandar, eh?

Warily, he took his hands off the controls. The chair seemed to be holding steady now—that was, behaving like a normal chair, and he got down to business.

A peacetime minimum expedition team consisted of a shuttle craft, a pilot, a mechanic, an observer-liaison, and a leader. That was a little too minimum for him. He’d throw on a couple of guards for protection. He drummed his fingers on the console as he pondered who would make up his team. Automatically, he thought of Rakkelle to fly the shuttle. He changed his mind before ringing her quarters. He’d use Barrientes instead and her the next. Both pilots were trained in shuttle operations and were familiar with the model used on the Unity, but he was striving for balance. He’d prefer to have Zurykk along, for old time’s sake, but with him as team leader and Bolivarr as one of the guards, the same logic applied—he needed to ensure a balanced team.

Within minutes, he’d spoken to Tango and Ensign Odin, a Coalition mechanic and small, quiet woman who was rumored to be a genius with machinery. Next, he roused Bolivarr and another Terran, Triad Ops-Sergeant “Dice” Rothberg, formerly a soldier known as a SEAL. Both would provide the protection he didn’t want to go planet-side without.

A faint, familiar, irresistible scent drew his attention from the data-vis. Tropical fruit.

“Warleader,” Brit said, calling him by his Drakken rank, the way she tended to do so when others weren’t around. It might be the closest to a pet name he would ever get with this woman. Her slightly husky voice did something to him. He wanted to snatch her hands and tug her arms around his shoulders. He wanted to drag her onto his lap and kiss her until she sighed and begged him to peel off her clothes. Begged him to fuck her, just as she had last night. But he’d done, oh so much more than that to her, hadn’t he?

Growing warm, he ran a finger around his collar. The chair bobbed suspiciously, as he shifted his weight to hide any visible reaction to his thoughts. Brit scanned the data-vis for the names of his team so far.

“I would like Lieutenant Keyren to serve as observer-liaison,” she said.

“You,” Finn said, crooking a finger at the fair-haired lieutenant. “Meet me and the others in briefing room three on deck four.”

“Yes, sir.” Crisply, and with a definite bounce of excitement, she pivoted away and hurried off the bridge.

So that made Tango, Dice, Odin, and Bolivarr—and now Keyren. It was the kind of motley crew he was used to but on a much smaller scale.

“What do you think of Lieutenant Keyren?” Brit queried.

“I like her, but she acts inexperienced.”

“She is. I’m largely to blame. I never wanted to try her out on a combat mission and that’s all there was on the Vengeance. Her background is as a bridge officer.” Her tone warmed as she began talking about Keyren. “She’s a whiz at deciphering the transponder codes of vessels trying to evade detection. It’s uncanny the way she can unmask a signal. If not for my choosing her to be my executive officer, she would have been assigned to a cubicle on the Ring, doing exactly that. Perhaps that’s where she belonged, but I saw something in her . . . either way, Warleader, it’s time I found ways to expand her horizons.”

“I’ll make sure of it. I’ll keep an eye on her too. What was your first assignment, Admiral?”

“I was a weapons systems ensign. What were you when you first got on the pirate ship?”

“A spacehand,” he admitted. “I moved up.”

“And so will Hadley. She’s a Royal Galactic Military Academy graduate—with honors—with a concentration in political leadership. She has the ability to command a ship of her own someday, but she has a very long way to go before she gets there and won’t get any closer following me around all day. As for you, Warleader, I need to see you in my office. There are other things that need to be addressed.” Like a wintry blast of cold air, Brit chilled. He could almost hear the crackle of ice as she walked off the bridge.

Other things, eh? he thought. Here it came. The brush-off.

He followed Brit as she walked, her hands clasped behind her back in her classic admiral’s stride. She sat at her desk, but he stood, avoiding the smart chair. It didn’t matter that he’d updated the program only a few moments ago with his preferences; the blasted things somehow continued to defy him.

“Door, close,” she commanded the room-bot. Then she leaned back in her chair, her eyes glinting with fire and ice. He had the feeling that his ass was about to get chewed. They were behind soundproof walls at least, although still in plain sight of the bridge. “Why didn’t you tell me about the bar fight?”

Blast it. He’d meant to. After. Then she had gotten sick, and there’d been no after. Finn scrubbed a hand over his face. “I forgot.”

“Conveniently. It might have spoiled the mood, hmm?”

“Damn right it might have. I happen to have liked that mood we were in. I didn’t want to see it spoiled. Did you?”

That damned dark brow lifted. She said nothing.

She feels betrayed. Of course! He was a fool not to have seen it before. It wounded her that he’d come to her quarters with secrets that might have affected the evening. If he had to hazard a guess, she felt used. He’d withheld information in order to get something he’d wanted—her. “I take full blame for not informing you immediately. There was no ulterior motive on my part, no intentional deceit. Yarew said he’d write it up. I knew you’d see the report when you came on duty. It was no secret.”

“They were your people, Rorkken. You said you’d take responsibility for them.”

“And I do—and I did. I took care of the situation.” He couldn’t believe that they were back to arguing after being with each other so intimately. It was like last night had never happened. Not so. His aching cock and the charged atmosphere between them attested that something had indeed happened. But he’d not risk his job or his crew’s future to get back in her bed. He wanted her, gods he did—in and out of bed—but if he were forced to choose one or the other, it would have to be his people. They were his responsibility and the reason he was here. “It won’t happen again.”

“I want sweef off my ship.”

“Now wait a minute, Admiral. That’s going too far.”

“Is it? It’s known galaxy-wide as a poison. It takes very little to make a person drunk. Overdosing causes irreversible brain damage.”

“And so does drinking too much of your pretty Kin-Kan wine. Anything abused is dangerous. Especially sweef. My crew knows the dangers. It’s your people who don’t.” He spread his hands. “What are we saying? They’re our people. Drakken, Coalition, Terran.”

“Yours, mine, ours, yes,” she said dismissively. “The ship’s club is a public-use crew recreational facility, not a Borderlands drinking hole. Some on this ship don’t seem to know the difference. Like the Drakken spacehands who drank too much last night and injured several Coalition officers without provocation.”

Finn stopped, flabbergasted, his hands hanging at his sides. “Is that what it says in the report?”

She slid the data-vis across her desk. By the time he’d scanned to the end, he was damn well boiling mad. “The information here is inaccurate.”

“Major Yarew is an experienced security officer with a background in intelligence. We can trust his ability to construct and record an accurate summary of events.”

“Not in this case. The blame for what happened last night was shared. There was some tension between the Drakken and Coalition groups in the bar. No surprise, right? Drinking sweef degenerated into a contest to see who could tolerate the most. Insults were thrown.” He decided to spare her the accusations of murdering civilians for fear she might agree. “The men reacted. And people were hurt.”

Brit tapped her fingertip on the desk, a slight frown tugging on that luscious mouth. It was clear the discrepancies between his version of events and Yarew’s troubled her. Was it because she wanted to believe him over Yarew?

“Admiral, I’ve talked to the Drakken involved. I’m confident they’ll know what to do next time to deescalate the conflict. I’ll work with Doctor Kell too. We’ll make sure everyone understands the precautions to take when drinking sweef. But you can’t ban it outright. It will make things worse.”

“How so?”

He liked that she’d asked for his opinion—more evidence of her comfort commanding. She listened to input before making a decision. She could even be talked down after making one. A Drakken battlelord, on the other hand, would have likely rather lopped Finn’s head off—or his balls, whichever had been closer and more convenient. Although, he suspected that he wasn’t out of danger yet.

Being in jeopardy wouldn’t stop him from looking out for his crew, even if they were no longer technically his. He’d given her the sleeping skins, aye, but he’d not give her the sweef. “It’s all they have left. We already took the skins. Zurykk’s told me that many have reported trouble adjusting to bunks. I already took the liberty of banning grabble, because it caused some injuries after hours.”

“Grabble?”

“Grabble is a Drakken dice game. Losers pay up by being on the receiving end of punches.” He rubbed his jaw, remembering more than one game of grabble gone bad in his younger days—he’d usually played in dark, dank, smoky bars with too much alcohol in the belly. “If you take away their sweef too, it will be too much, too soon. It will demoralize them. They’re still Drakken in Triad clothing. Give me a little more time to help them adjust. They’re trying hard. Truly they are.”

She sat back in her chair, tenting her elegant fingers above the desk as she pondered him. Something wasn’t quite so hard about her anymore. “All right,” she said. “The sweef can stay.”

There wasn’t a single note of surrender in her voice. Only respect. Somehow, that meant the world to him.

“However, if there is any further trouble, it goes.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral. You have my word on that.”

Her anger seemed to have faded some, but the aloofness remained. “That will be all, Warleader.” She went back to reviewing the data-vis.

Disbelief grabbed at his gut. She was dismissing him like an annoying spacehand. He respected her desire to keep their personal matters private, but they were speaking behind closed doors. It amazed him that she hadn’t acknowledged the previous night, not even in a small way. He knew damn well that he hadn’t been the only one who’d enjoyed it—talk about feeling used.

He strode to her desk. He and the admiral needed to have a little talk.