Star Wars Republic Commando: Knight of Honor ✓

Chapter 25

Author's Note: Thanks to everyone for all the support! You've been great with inspiring me, and I am highly appreciative of your input. If you have any tips writing tips, please feel free to comment.

As always, I continue to hope that I am doing justice to the spirit of Star Wars as well the respective authors and characters from which I borrow. Again, I gratefully accept constructive criticism as a means to help me develop my skills further as a writer. I believe this is a chapter that many of you have been waiting for, and I hope it meets your expectations. Enjoy!

This chapter's opening quote is taken from Karen Traviss' novel, The Clone Wars: No Prisoners.  

Mandalorian (Mando'a) words

Ika (EE-kah): diminutive suffix written as 'ika - also added to a name as a very familiar or childhood form, e.g, Ord'ika - Little Ordo

Ner vod (nair-vohd): my brother/sister"; colloquially also "my friend" 

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Chapter 25

I'm a soldier. It's all I am. I don't know a lot about the outside world, but I'm pretty sure that other soldiers have families and lives outside fighting. We don't.

Clone Captain CC-7567 "Rex"

Tochin Moon III, 785 Days ABG  

Jas flashed instantly back to the moment when they were alone yesterday, and the hunger of it filled him again. He looked to her troubled blue eyes and saw the maelstrom of confusion in them. He felt her gentle trembling and realized that part of it was his own. He took in her face, the soft curvature of her profile, and he looked to her wild curls, tracing them with his eyes as they fell freely about her shoulders. 

His eyes then moved to her lips, and the hunger that had been locked in his mental box had finally broken free. Jas had the overwhelming urge to touch her and move closer, and he didn't stop his free hand as it moved of its own accord to her cheek. His palm cupped her face gently while his thumb softly brushed some of those wild curls back from her face.

The touch of Jas' hand on Arlesse jolted through her, and her eyes instantly came to him, finding his dark irises.

Jas thought he had done something improper with the speed of her reaction to his touch. He feared that he was about to further lose her trust, and he was angry with himself for breaching the protocol of her position as a princess. He pulled his hand back from her face but found his fingers were unwilling to detangle from hers. His voice came out as a bare whisper, his embarrassment for what he had done clearly evident. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have..."

"You feel it, don't you?" Arlesse asked, refusing now to turn away from him, and she hoped that he was experiencing the same maddening excitement that she did whenever they were so close.

Jas looked to her eyes and didn't understand what it was that he was supposed to feel and what exactly she was feeling. He could only describe what he experienced as a pang of hunger, a need for her closeness and her touch. He wanted nothing more than to protect her, yet at the same time, he wanted to discover the entire galaxy with her. Her touch made him feel like he was crazy at times, how it confused him and filled him with excitement.

Jas knew his uncertainty reflected in his eyes, but as he looked to her blue irises he saw that hers shone with...hope, expectation. He saw the fear in her eyes, the hesitancy that she was still anticipating him at some point to turn from her and reject everything about her. And, for some reason he will never know, the idea of someone rejecting her made him both angry and pained that anyone could be so cruel to this caring and compassionate young woman.