Free of the docking bay, I accelerated the ship to move us clear of traffic. When she did not respond I glanced over to see her eyes wide and her knuckles white where her hands curled over the ends of the arms of her seat. “Are you unwell?”

“I’m—I’ve never been on a spaceship before.” She glanced at the side monitor. “Is that a galaxy?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve never seen this many stars.” A tear gathered in her eye, swelled and then slid down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly.

“Why are you crying?”

“It’s too much. It’s just overwhelming and beautiful.”

I glanced at the monitors and tried to see things through her eyes. Years ago, when I’d first left the safety of Rogue 5’s star system, I’d been awestruck, as she was now. Countless stars in every direction, planets twinkling, the nearest galaxy a spiral of glowing pink and red. “I suppose it is.” I pointed at a particularly bright star. Close. “That one is home.” And to a pair of large, twinkling planets on the way. “Those two planets are Latiri 4 and Latiri 7. A lot of Coalition battles happen there. We will keep our distance, but they are going to be the only planets close enough to see until we get to Hyperion.”

She tried to lean forward to inspect the planets on the monitor, but the seat’s safety straps did their job. “I am not a fan. I can’t move.”

“That is their purpose.”

“Seems like a bit much.”

“Does it?” For the first time since I could remember something that felt like playfulness burst to life inside me. I grinned and accelerated.

“Ahhhhh!” Abby screamed, then laughed, the sound lighting a warm flame behind my ribs that I’d never felt before. I wanted more.

“That’s worse than riding a rollercoaster.”

“What is a rollercoaster?”

“It’s a—well, it’s a track. We strap ourselves into small seats and ride on the tracks. Sometimes there are huge drops and loops, and they go really fast.”

“They sound terrible. Why would you do that?”

“For fun.”

“Fun?”

“Yes. Fun, you old curmudgeon.” She looked at me, and the sparkle in her eyes, the excited flush on her cheeks, made my cock hard. Gods, she was fucking beautiful. What the fuck was she doing with me? And what, exactly, was a curmudgeon? My NPU struggled to make sense of the word. Surely it did not mean what my language processor had implied?

“What is this word, curmudgeon?”

She lifted a brow, and I saw another new expression on her face, one I recognized all too easily from my time spent interacting with and observing my brother’s human mate, Harper. Yes, I knew that look on a human woman’s face. My little mate was about to cause me trouble.

“You know, cranky. Boring. Disagreeable. Doesn’t like anything. Hates having fun.”