Page 33 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

Of course they had. The Khorreth had been surveying Earth for rotations. They'd know how to contact human ships.

I started composing a signal. Distress beacon, standard format. My identification codes, my last known location, a request for assistance. My fingers moved automatically, following protocols I'd drilled hundreds of times.

Relay 11-Bravo operator Mara Vance, abducted from station, current location unknown, requesting immediate assistance –

"It won't reach."

I spun around.

Keth stood in the doorway, filling it completely, his horns brushing the frame. His tail was still – that absolute stillness I'd learned to read as careful control.

"The signal," he said. "Earth doesn't have the range to receive it. Your vessels don't travel this far. Your communications systems aren't built for these distances."

I looked at the terminal. At the signal I'd been composing. At my hands, still hovering over the controls.

"You're not stopping me," I said.

"No."

"You could. You could shut down the system, lock me out–"

"I could." He stepped into the room, moving slowly, giving me space. "But I won't. If you want to send a signal, send it. I won't take that from you."

"Even though it won't work."

"Even though it won't work."

I stared at the display. The coordinates I couldn't read, the frequencies Earth would never receive. All those familiar protocols, suddenly meaningless.

"Any Earth vessel approaching Khorreth territory would be destroyed before it reached the planet," he said quietly. "Not by me. By the perimeter defences. We are protective of our space. Your people don't have the technology to come here safely, even if they received your signal."

"So I'm not findable."

"No."

I'd known that. I'd known it for weeks – since the first day on his ship, since he told me we were past the point where return was possible. I'd known I would never go back to Earth, never return to my relay station, never see another human face.

But I hadn't felt it. Not really. Not until now, crouched in front of a communications terminal that might as well have been decoration, my distress signal fading into the void.

I couldn't be found. I couldn't be rescued. Even if I wanted to go back – even if I wanted my old life, my cold quarters and recycled air and the endless solitary shifts – there was no path home.

There never had been.

I pressed my palms flat against my thighs and tried to breathe.

I cried.

Not the graceful tears of someone overcome by emotion. The ugly kind – gasping, choking sobs that came from somewhere deep in my chest and refused to stop. I sat on the floor of the storage room with my back against the wall and my knees pulled up to my chest and I cried until my ribs ached.

The worst part was understanding why.

I wasn't crying because I was more trapped than I'd thought. I'd always known how trapped I was. The maths hadn't changed – I was still the same distance from Earth, still the same distance from rescue, still the same distance from anything that looked like my old life.

I was crying because I'd been composing that signal and part of me – a small, quiet, treacherous part – had hoped it wouldn't work.

Because if it worked, I would have to decide. I would have to choose between this life and that one, between Keth and everything I'd left behind. And I wasn't sure anymore which choice I would make.

That was the part that frightened me. That was the part that made the sobs come harder.