“We’re getting a commander?” a loud voice asks, delighted as it carries through the trees.

The general is asleep. Not his general, of course. At least not officially. But Cody still pauses at the edge of the camp, caf in hand, and watches Mace breathe for a long, long moment before he steps closer and glances around them, checking whether anything has changed in the handful of minutes he was gone.

“Well,” Kit says lightly. “This does seem to be a predicament, doesn’t it?” Pressed right up against him, gauntlets digging bruises into his almost-bare hips, Dogma squeezes his eyes tightly shut. “I'm going to kill my whole squad,” he says, perfectly certain and resigned to it.

“Queen Miraj is going to betray you,” Feral says, and Cody practically jumps out of his own skin.

Bly's new wife is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and she's graceful and charming and funny and so far out of his league that he's about to die.

“This is incredibly sweet,” Obi-Wan observed with a fond smile. Cody was currently telling the cadets a story and they listened excitedly to his every word. “He just exudes ori’vod energy. The younger ones can’t help themselves,” Alpha replied. “It’s been like this his entire life.”

“Can't kriffing believe he sent a Naboo to kriffing Tatooine,” Owen says, too loud, but—they're in the middle of the wilderness. There's no one who’s going to hear him except the Force, and if it does hear him, he hopes it turns around and beats some light-bedamned sense into Obi-Wan Kenobi’s skull. In his lap, fully entranced by the corner of the blanket Owen has him bundled in, Luke coos, beams, and flips his tail. The fancy, flowing, colorful fins slap Owen’s thigh, and he sighs, tugs the bottom of the wrap down to hide as much as he can.

“I got you something. An early Life Day present of my own.”

Depa takes one step into the council chambers and stops dead, clapping a hand over her mouth.

It’s probably a bad sign that Cad Bane, of all people, is judging his life choices.