Page 56 of Signed, Sealed, Seduced
“Thank you. For seeing me. For wanting me. For making me want to stay.”
His arms tighten around me. “Thank you for crashing on my landing pad,” he replies, making me laugh. “Best malfunction in the history of interstellar travel.”
“Definitely,” I agree, pressing a kiss to his chest. “Though I have a feeling our story is just getting started.”
“Indeed,” he murmurs, and there’s something in his voice that makes me look up at him. “Speaking of stories... there has been some concerning chatter in the intelligence networks. A courier named Kaylee has gone missing near the Averian Fringe, carrying biological samples for ApexCorp.”
My blood runs cold. “ApexCorp? They’re bad news, Henrok. Corporate scum who don’t care who gets hurt as long as they get their profit.”
“The situation may require... intervention,” he says carefully. “Someone with courier experience and diplomatic immunity might be valuable in such an operation.”
I sit up, studying his face. “Are you asking me to come out of retirement for a rescue mission?”
“I am asking,” he says, his hands sliding up my sides, “if you would be interested in a new career path. Diplomatic troubleshooter. Problem solver. Rescuer of couriers in distress.”
The idea sends a thrill through me. Purpose. Adventure. The chance to help people like me who get caught in corporate schemes they never signed up for.
“With you?” I ask.
“With me,” he confirms. “Always with me.”
I lean down to kiss him, already feeling the familiar excitement of a new challenge. “I accept your offer, First Blade. When do we leave?”
“Tomorrow,” he says, rolling me beneath him again. “But tonight, we celebrate your new career. Thoroughly.”
As his mouth descends on mine, I can’t help but smile. I may have handed in my wings, but I have a feeling I’m about to discover that the best adventures happen when you have someone worth coming home to.
The courier who crashed on his landing pad is gone. In her place is a woman who chose love, chose home, chose a future filled with possibilities.
And if that future includes rescuing other couriers from corporate schemes while working alongside the alien warlord who stole my heart?
Well, that’s just a bonus.
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15
Epilogue: The First Blade's Variable
Henrok
3Yearslater
The fortress hums beneath my feet, a steady vibration that has accompanied my existence for centuries. I stand before the obsidian war table, its surface now covered not with battle plans but with shipping manifests, trade agreements, and a scattered collection of colorful markers that have no place in a military command center. Yet here they remain, because she placed them here.
I trace my finger along a document bearing the insignia of the Stellar Togetherness Initiative—a peace accord that would have been unthinkable three years ago. Suki’s handwriting fills the margins with observations both astute and irreverent:
Clause 7 needs revision—they’re trying to slip in tariffs. Also, their negotiator keeps eyeing Rusty like he might steal him. As if.
The corner of my mouth twitches involuntarily. Even in official documentation, she refuses formality. It is one of countless traits that should infuriate me, yet somehow does not.
My gaze falls on an object that has no tactical purpose whatsoever: a small glass sphere containing what Suki calls a “snow globe” of Old Earth. When shaken, miniature flakes swirl around a crude representation of a city I will never see. It is garish, impractical, and entirely out of place among the austere furnishings of my chambers.
I have moved it seventeen times. She has returned it to this exact spot eighteen.
I lift it, studying the way the artificial light catches in the liquid. A ridiculous trinket from a trading vessel that docked last month. “To remind you that not everything has to be useful to have value,” she had said, pressing it into my hands with that smile that still disarms me.
The doors to my chambers slide open without the customary request for entry. Only one person in Zater Reach would dare.
