Esayr and I stayed in our quarters for ages and I took the opportunity to study his features, to allow myself that luxury in a way I never had before.

I'd noticed him, certainly. But, those moments had been tainted with a sharpness akin to a sting. I gave myself the option of committing him to memory the way his dark eyelashes fanned out along his cheeks. When he got tired they'd rest there until I said something him and startled him to wakefulness.

He had a faint white line of a scar along his jawbone that had a story to it that I'd never heard but was certain I wanted to. And, now while I was searching for them, I found more intricacies sprinkled along the map of his features: another scar along the outer edge of his hand that was barely visible until the muscles tightened and turned it a stark white, a few light freckles along his left shoulder that looked like a diamond, and a dimple on his right cheek that probably had a twin I'd never noticed either.

I wanted to trace them, to feel the scars, and know if they were smoother than the rest of him. To place the tips of my fingers on each of those freckles until I could feel the pattern in the strain of the muscles in my hand. To feel those dimples beneath the palms of my hands while I cradled his face with the same comfort and adoration that Esayr had always had at the ready whenever I'd needed it.

My hands itched to touch him and where there had once been uncertainty and anxiety there was only a burning curiosity along my palms. His eyes were closed again and he was leaning heavily on the arm of the sofa, so near to sleeping that I knew I'd ask him to spend the night. This was our home after all. My hand was halfway across the distance to touching him when a noise chimed throughout our quarters, one I was unfamiliar with.

It was more of a dulcet quiet noise than the bells that heralded a match. Despite the relative unobtrusive nature of the sound, Esayr roused quickly, those long dark lashes fluttering awake.

Much to my surprise, Esayr immediately addressed the open air.

"Yes?"

I bit back the thought that he was confused, since it was more than likely I was. After all that realization had become a sort of staple since I'd come up on the ship.

Even more surprising, Vailen's voice answered the question as a quiet hum that filled the empty space, "Esayr, I was afraid we'd wake you."

"No not at all." Esayr scrubbed hard at his face, mussing his hair in a way that I found entirely too endearing.

I let my hand drop to my side. Another time.

"You and Addison's presence is needed in the communications bay. It's urgent."

With just a glance toward me, Esayr gathered my response. He didn't need a nod, nor any commentary to know that my answer was yes and it made me curious what about my expression he was reading into, but we had all the time in the world to discuss that later.

"We'll be there."

"We're grateful for your time." I was slowly becoming more familiar Vailen's lilting, oddly professional way of speaking the English language.

Esayr dropped heavily onto the back of the couch.

"It'll only be for a little bit, then we can sleep."

"Only a little bit." He rubbed at his face again.

"You should come back here to sleep."

I wasn't prepared for that sleepy look of his, so close to something hotter when he shot a heavy lidded gaze my way. Sometimes, every once in a while, he'd make my breath catch in my throat and I'd swear that I'd never known the true scope of the word "breathtaking" before I'd met him.

Then he yawned and the moment turned into something more lighthearted even though I was certain he'd never intended for me to receive that look the way I had.

"I'd love to."

"On one condition."

"Your terms?"

"You take the bed."

Esayr was quiet while he watched me, pondering through some thoughts I wasn't privy to, "Fight me for it. Loser gets the bed."

I shoved my foot into his side wiggling my toes until he laughed so hard he escaped off the couch and toward the front door.

The entire walk toward the comm bay, Esayr and I traded options for what we could compete at to win the option of not sleeping on the couch. Some of the options included: Aule which Esayr optioned, or in my opinion the much more reasonable option of Rock Paper Scissors.

"Absolutely not." Esayr shot Rock Paper Scissors down as soon as I explained the mechanics of the game.

"And why is that?"

He shot me probably the first exasperated look I'd ever seen grace his features and it sent me into a fit of laughter, "I'm not leaving you sleeping in our bed up to a game of chance."

"And Aule is any better? We're bad enough at it that it might as well be a game of chance!"

Esayr looked for just a split second like he might take offense, but then only inclined his head in agreement, "No Aule and no Rock Paper Scissors. Something else then."

The doors to the comm bay opened without and sound, and the room was similarly quiet. Our banter about our competition on the way to the communications team had me forgetting that the reason we'd been summoned in the first place was over something urgent.

But even if I hadn't known that, the crowd of males standing around one of the view screens would have alerted anyone. Usually the room —while not noisy— had a quiet hum of conversation to it, as males stuck close to their respective stations and screens, conversing in different languages with different correspondences across the galaxy. There was none of that now. They barely even noticed when Esayr and I had entered their space.

It was only the sound of Esayr clearing his throat as we approached that had some of the males casting glances our way. Vailen at least was kind enough to break away from the group and approach us.

"We think the message was intended for us," Vailen glanced to the screen where a large body of text was transcribed in a small font. It was nearly impossible to see from this distance, but something about it struck me as oddly familiar. Something about the color scheme or maybe the layout.

I took a few steps forward, oblivious of the conversation that had continued between Vailen and Esayr. Instead dodging between the bodies of the males.

It's a webpage.

It was. Oddly familiar, with its clean greyscale lines and navigation bar. The only hint of coloration on it was a peachy orange color. The color jogged the memory but the navigation bar itself was what recalled it so clearly. It was Cecelia's page that she used to broadcast her information. It was fairly standard as far as webpages went. Nothing flashy. No dark web passcodes that would have maybe offered her a little more protection while sacrificing the varied audience she could get her stuff out to.

Everything about it seemed fairly normal, alien discourse withstanding, except for the navigation bar which was so beyond anything anywhere on the internet. It was a constantly spinning circle at the top of the page, similar maybe to a compass or a clock, even. It was always moving. It was the orientation of the circle that determined what parts of the site you had access to at any one time. Past discoveries or posts, Cecelia's newest findings, leaked images of the Val'Dornn ship, and even some odd or unexplained happenings were all pages you could access on her website.

There was a theory that there were even more pages only accessible at certain fractions of a second during a day, but were so impossible to get a hold of because of the nature of that navigation bar.

That navigation bar which had completely stopped.

Stopped on a page of inane information about day to day happenings that ended with a simple note reading:

"A recent foreign source has tried to breach the security of my domain looking for information. If you wanted to speak to me you could have simply asked. I'll return in kind. -Cecelia Marie Bird"

I could barely wrap my mind around the note. It sounded almost like a threat, but nothing we'd done in trying to get into contact with her would have been considered aggressive. At most we'd merely read the information on her IP addresses and the the repeated contacts made as administrator of her webpage. But if you've been on the run from nearly every Earthen government you might consider everything aggressive. Especially if it came from the alien race you might have publicly defamed.

"And we're certain this is directed at us?"

"We cannot be certain...no. But, it seems too on the nose to be about any other entity other than us." Vailen as usual was the one to answer me. If it were under any other circumstance I might consider this crowd of males a bunch of side characters in some story or game just meant to fill up space on this massive ship while I went about mucking everything up.

"It could be one of our governments."

"Has anything like this ever been posted before? You'd mentioned she'd made herself an enemy of your Terran governments." Esayr and Vailen stepped up beside me as the other males fanned out, giving us some room. I could hear Yarro's muted discussion behind my left shoulder.

"Honest answer? I don't know. The webpage itself is odd to navigate so most of the site is blocked behind the navigation toolbar she chose and no one has really been able to figure it out. The leading theory is that it's a clock and only certain pages are available at certain times, but even that's a little iffy. After a while the public started taking captures of pages that were up just in case they were never able to be accessed again, but I've never seen anything like this."

"So it's up in the air as to whether this is a first occurrence or if it's happened before but no one has noticed?" Vailen rumbled beside me.

"Pretty much."

There was a beat of silence before Yarro finally asked what I'm sure every one in the room was thinking. "What do you think it means?" When I glanced his way he seemed to clarify his question, "Do you think it's a threat?"

It sounded like one. But something about it struck me as odd. The words spilled out as I puzzled through my own thoughts, "Cecelia, or her organization, has always been --for the most part-- unbiased. She's only ever aimed to uncover the truth. She's never taken an aggressive stance that we know of prior. Her meddling might have left a bitter taste in your mouth and caused problems...but she's also done the same for our governments as well."

I'll return in kind. I read the line over and over. I couldn't dispute the fact that across many different platforms that very line had been used to herald retaliation. But our probings hadn't had ill intent behind them and I wanted to believe that Cecelia knew that.

I sucked in a breath through my teeth, the hissing noise was loud in the silence of the room. I wished someone else would make this call. But, I was the only human. I was the only one that could give that edge of insight into the innerworkings of Cecelia.

"I don't know," my voice was barely more than a whisper. "My gut says that it's all bark and no bite, but I'd say protect your servers and your ship anyway. She might be on high alert because you outgun us from a technologic standpoints, but I'd like to believe she knows that if you had an issue with her you would have handled it ages ago."

Vailen nodded absently. I had no doubt the Val'Dornn could have invaded like all the alien moves of the decade past had predicted they would, but they'd foregone that idea for peace even when conflict would have gotten them to their endgoal much quicker. I couldn't say the same for humans, and all of human history was testament to that.

"I'd say be on alert." I heaved out a sigh and felt my shoulders loosen with the action. I hadn't even realized they'd been tight until Esayrs warm hand gripped me, turning me back away from the screen.

I was consumed with thoughts of what our next step would be if we made an enemy of Cecelia -- the only source that human women even seemed inclined to trust now. I barely even heard Esayr ask Vailen about my phone.

It was such an insignificant thing in the moment. But, if my sweet male thought it would bring me happiness he wouldn't stop until he got it.

Vailen mentioned that he'd reach out to Cian when the male awoke.

The walk back to our quarters was as silent as the walk back to the bedroom. Esayr directed me towards the bed without question only lightly nudging me forward when I started to protest.

He caught my face in his hands and before he could secondguess himself pressed a quick chaste kiss to my forehead, "We'll battle for the couch tomorrow, Addy, after we've both slept and have the energy for it."

He dodged around my hands that even still tried to grapple him into the bed instead of me. I was reminded of the mention that the Val'Dornn worked as mercenaries in their downtime, hiring their time out amongst the stars when they were needed.

I grumbled louder than necessary as Esayr drifted out of the bedroom pleased that He'd left me bundled in the blankets. "The bed is mine today, but yours tomorrow." His laughter was all I got in response and the sound of him flopping onto the sofa in the other room.

*****A/N*****

We meet again. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one that enjoys the author's notes? I tend to be a little verbose in my commentary/writing so maybe they're just something people skip by, but it brings me joy to comment on my writing sometimes.

The only commentary I quite have at the moment is there always seems to be a crowd of guys everywhere on this ship. I need to go to a name generator and just start naming random people so I'm not constantly like "the comm team, the crowd of males, the room" God bless the fact that Vailen and Yarro are both named characters in this bit for me to reference.

Interestingly enough Yarro wasn't ever supposed to be a character or at least was not one I ever considered. I stole his name from another alien story of mine that I had wanted to write, that might one day end up becoming a side story in this world since it weirdly kinda fits in the Val'Dornn lore. It was a "crashlanded on an alien planet" kind of story though so a little bit of a different flavor than the main story line.

Anywho, sorry this part took me so long to get up! I'm settling into my new job and the stress of being somewhere unfamiliar and not knowing what I'm doing is starting to wear off. I'm hopeful to start getting back into the habit of writing on a regular basis and hopefully that will translate it to more regular updates in these stories/worlds!

As always thank you for sticking with me. I know I have a less than stellar track record for continued writing but I'm getting better!

I'm forever grateful,

Layla