Page 38 of Fought and Found

His hand follows.

Slowly. Across the console. His fingers close around mine and his palm is hot — 103 degrees, the thermal gradient a five-degree bloom against my skin — and the crescent marks press against my skin. I can feel each one. The map of every fight he’s been having with himself since he boarded my ship, written in his own flesh, pressed now into mine.

He holds my hand the way you hold something you’ve already dropped once and cannot afford to drop again.

The purr starts, and this is where I let myself know what I already know.

I have carried enough Xarthian medical cargo to have read the manifests. The olfactory classification — the signature their memory locks onto and doesn’t release. The compatible-mate signal, the pheromone output that spikes in proximity to a specific person and won’t stand down. The tail behaviour: involuntary orientation toward a bonded target, increasing contact-seeking, grip strength that exceeds what conscious control would sanction. I know what all of this meansin biological terms. I have read the documentation. I have carried the samples. I once transported a breeding-pair case study for a xenobiology institute on Kaelos and spent three days trying not to read the attached research notes.

I read every word.

I know what Xor’s body has been doing since the airlock. I know what the scent classification means and I know what the purr means in the context of proximity to a specific person and I know what it means that his tail has been reaching for me since the first hour aboard and cannot stop. I know what compatible-mate means in Xarthian biology and I know it is not casual and I know it does not reverse.

I did not plan for this. I did not plan for any of this. I have been a courier for twelve years and I have never been standing next to one of these when it fired, and the documentation did not adequately prepare me for what it feels like from the inside — the warmth of his hand at 103 degrees, the purr running through his palm into mine, the tail winding up my wrist with the trembling certainty of something that has made its decision and is not asking for approval.

I don’t name it. Not yet. But I know what I’m holding.

The purr fills the cockpit.

Not the broken stutter from minutes ago. Not the sleep-purr from the bunk. Something between them — unsteady, shaking, the sound of a frequency rebuilding itself. It travels through his hand into mine and up my arm and settles in my sternum where the anger and the formless thing live, and the vibration makes both of them hum.

I don’t squeeze. I don’t pull him closer. I don’t climb across the console and put my hands on his face and press my forehead against his and say the things that are building behind my teeth — you absolutenightmare of a male, you should have told me, you should have told me, I would have stayed, I’m staying, I’m right here.

I hold still. I let him hold on. The purr fills the cockpit.

“Four hours,” I say. Quiet. “We leave in four hours. Corridor, Reach, Junction One. Morrison will hate you. Sprout will be insufferable. I will be angry for a while.”

“I accept those terms.”

“They’re not terms. They’re facts.” I let the corner of my mouth move. Not a smile. Not yet. The architecture of one, the way he does it — the way we’ve been learning each other’s versions of almost. “You don’t negotiate facts, lovey. You just live with them.”

His tail winds further up my arm. Past the wrist. Around the forearm. Warm pressure through my sleeve, and his thumb moves against the back of my hand — one slow stroke, the fuzz on his knuckle dragging across my skin — and the sensation pools low in my belly, beneath the anger, beneath the fear, in the place where the bunk still lives.

I don’t acknowledge it out loud. My pulse does the acknowledging, and he can read my pulse through the skin of my wrist, and I am choosing to let him read it. Let him know that the wanting is mutual and has been mutual and I have been managing it at close quarters for the better part of two days, which is, frankly, an act of considerable self-restraint that he has not fully appreciated.

“Sprout,” I call, and my voice is steadier now. The warmth creeping back. Not the full version — the version that knows about the kill order and the six hours and the lying, the version that has seen the male behind the mask and behind the male behind the mask. The warmth that has teeth. “Amend the departure timeline. We leave at oh-four-hundred.”

“Amended.” The orb has dimmed from battle white to a soft amber. Considerate. Sprout is being considerate again. “I have also updated the Xarthian’s threat classification.”

“To what?”

“Ours.”

A pause. Xor’s hand tightens on mine. His tail winds another inch.

“That is not a standard threat classification,” he says.

“Standard classifications are inadequate for the current tactical situation.” The orb cycles warm. “The current tactical situation is that you made my human cry — don’t argue, I have the moisture data — and you are still holding her hand, and she is allowing it, and I have adjusted my parameters accordingly. You are ours now. I suggest you do not make me regret the reclassification.”

I didn’t cry. My eyes are dry. The moisture data is a lie, and Sprout knows it’s a lie, and the lie is a gift — Sprout giving Xor one more piece of information about the cost of what he did, wrapped in sass because that is how Sprout delivers everything that matters.

Xor does not argue with the moisture data.

His thumb strokes my hand again. The purr settles into something steadier, lower, the frequency that started in the bunk and has no intention of going dormant. Outside, the dust belt pings against the hull.

“For what it’s worth,” I say, not looking at him, eyes on the display, voice entirely conversational, “the view from my co-pilot’s station has improved considerably.”

A pause. His thumb stops mid-stroke.