Born of Defiance

“Better?” she asked with a wicked grin.

“Not really.” He pulled the pillow back to show her.

She tsked at him. “Poor baby. Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

“Don’t tease me like that when you know the answer.”

Biting her lip, she glanced out the door. “It’s really public.”

“I know. Damn it.”

She nibbled his lips as she snuggled against him.

Closing his eyes, he savored the warmth of her body and scent of her curls that teased him even more. It was so difficult to not tell her what he felt. How glad he was that she appeared to care for him.

Even if she might be faking it, he’d take it. The only ones who’d ever been really kind to him were his mother, Aunt Jayne, her husband, and Erix. It was nice to have someone else watch his back.

Felicia gave him a light squeeze before she sat on the bed and continued feeding him ice. She glanced over to his monitors. “Your heart rate and BP are up. Are you in pain?”

“Yes, but I’m rather sure you’re the reason for the elevation.” He glanced to the pillow in his lap. “As well as other ones.”

The blush returned to her cheeks. “I think you like embarrassing me.”

He brushed his hand through her thick curls that he wanted to literally bathe in. “You are adorably beautiful when you blush. Have I really been out for four days?”

“Not counting the day you spent in surgery. Yes.”

“Damn, they’re right. I am a thoughtless bastard to be such boorish company for you.”

Snorting, she rolled her eyes. “Do you remember the crash at all?”

Talyn shook his head. “I vaguely remember anything about that day. The last clear memory I have is you feeding me at the gym.” Then he gave a short laugh as he remembered one innocuous detail. “Oh, wait… there was a Tavali named Blister in the battle. How stupid is that?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Blister?”

“Yeah, we all get embarrassing call signs in the beginning, but they normally fade after a fight or two. Seldom do they make it onto our ships.”

“So yours wasn’t always Pit Viper?”

“No. It was Mongrel Ass until I got fed up with the giant, arrogant bastard who gave it to me. He was mocking me as usual and then made the mistake of speaking ill about my mother. I froze midstep and, without warning, took him down with one punch. Hence the name. When I go stock still, you need to run. Means I’m taking aim and about to strike… with fatal consequences.”

She fed him more ice. “So Blister is the only thing you recall from the whole fight, huh? I think I need to do a psych eval on you about that.”

Grinning at her playful teasing, he glanced away. Until he did recall something. “Now that you mention that, I think I was talking to Syndrome when my ship went up.”

Felicia went cold at the name. “Syndrome?”

“A female in my squad… why are you so mad?”

She tried to suppress her anger, but it was impossible. A part of her wanted to beat him.

Most of all, she wanted to find this female and make sure she understood in no uncertain terms that Talyn had someone in his life.

With a jerk of her chin, she indicated the bouquets of flowers and balloons that lined the shelf in front of his window. “Syndrome sent those to you… a new one every day you’ve been here. She must really like you.”

Talyn rubbed his head as he struggled to remember. “Not really. She usually growls out an insult if I so much as glance in her general direction.” There was a ghost of something about Syndrome in the outer fringes of his mind, but he couldn’t quite pull it. “I must have taken a blast for her. Or something slammed into me. Maybe.”

“You were shot,” his mother said as she rejoined them. “You really didn’t hear the alarms to warn you you’d been sighted?”

He shook his head. “I would have taken evasive action had they done so.”

“What does that mean?” Felicia asked his mother.

Talyn explained for her. “Whenever an enemy’s targeting system locks on us, our alarms go off to warn us we’re about to be fired on, so that we can get out of the way.”

“Did they malfunction?”

“Possibly.”

His mother crossed her arms over her chest. “I spoke to the ground crew who combed the wreckage of your ship yesterday. They were pretty sure and clear that you were hit by friendly fire.”

Still, he couldn’t believe it. “How? Our systems can’t lock on each other, or fire. They’re blocked from it.”

His mother wasn’t willing to let it go. “It’s been known to happen, from time to time.”

“Could the Tavali be using our armada system?” Felicia asked. “Maybe it really was them.”

He shook his head again. “There’s a special fight program we use. Even if they had one of our systems, it wouldn’t provide the right code to silence the alarms on my fighter. Every battle has a new and unique code that isn’t generated until we launch for that specific fight.”