Sometime over the next week or two, Tyr realized that he had lost any opportunity of a deeper relationship with Beka. He couldn't have said how he knew, but whenever he looked at Rhade and Beka standing near each, conversing over the most commonplace matters, it hit him. They weren't... together, not yet, but it was nothing more than a matter of time. The Captain had not feared to allow himself to love a human, averse to Nietzschean culture as it might be. Rhade had not, and Tyr had. He berated himself equally for his jealousy and his hesitation. One minute he would remind himself that he still planned to unite the Nietzschean prides... and the next recall that no Pride would take him in now, serving with humans and a Magog, proven genetically inferior by the annihilation of his Pride.

He could see her, bloody but standing triumphantly over her torturer and leaping into his arms, laughing exultantly. That had been his chance, that outpouring of joy and their solo flight back to the Andromeda. It was an opportunity that he had squandered, and it would never come again.

Regardless of what he might live through--might achieve or suffer--Tyr guessed that he would forever regret that. Perhaps he wouldn't miss a romantic relationship with Captain Valentine, when everything was said and done, but that he never tried...

Part of him would always relive that moment, and only then would he do things differently.