Page 24 of Accidentally Fearless

"Mate bonds," I said. "That's the Velkorin equivalent of forever."

He turned then. In the dim light, his markings were muted—warm amber, a color I'd come to associate with the moments when he let his guard down. "It is more than 'forever.' It is a biological and emotional bond that, once formed, becomes part of our physiology. It changes us. At a cellular level."

"And you think that's what's happening."

"I know it is."

The words sat between us.

"I'm here for fourteen more days," I said.

"Thirteen, after tonight."

"And then a transport beam takes me back to Pennsylvania, and I go back to managing birthday parties, and you—"

"Do not." His hand found mine. His fingers engulfed mine completely, his claws retracted. "Do not describe the future where you leave. Not tonight."

"When, then?"

"Tomorrow. After the battle. After we win."

"And if we don't win?"

He raised my hand to his mouth and pressed his lips against my knuckles. The gesture was human. I knew he'd learned it from watching me, from the way I'd kissed his jaw and his throat, and the ridge of scales along his collarbone. He was learning my language of touch the way I was learning his. The effort behind it, the intentionality, made my eyes burn.

"We will win," he said. "Because you will not allow us to lose."

I stepped into him. He gathered me up, one arm around my back, the other cradling my head against his chest. I could hear his heartbeats—two of them, the Velkorin dual-cardiac system, beating in a rhythm that I'd come to know better than my own.

"Whatever happens tomorrow," I said.

"We win," he said. "And then we have fourteen more days."

"Thirteen."

Neither of us moved for a moment. The room was quiet except for the ambient hum of the building and the faint, distant sounds of an army preparing for the fight of their lives. Tomorrow, everything we'd built would be tested. The tactics, the training, the trust. If we lost the Grand Melee, Krenix took the valley. All of it. The eastern ridge. The central pass. Everything Vrex had spent twenty years fighting for.

My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against his chest to hide it, but he felt it. Of course he did, because his body was tuned to mine now in ways I couldn't explain. His hands covered mine, anchoring me.

"I'm scared," I said. I'd spent two weeks being the person who wasn't scared, the one who stood on command platforms and directed battles and told three hundred warriors to trust the process. But here, in the quiet, with no one watching—I was terrified. Not of the battle.

Thirteen days. Thirteen days after tomorrow, and then what?

"I know," he said. Not don't be. Not it will be fine. Just the acknowledgement.

His mouth found mine. Soft and tender at first. Then my hand slid under his shirt and found the sensitive junction where his dorsal markings met the smooth scales of his sides, and the kiss deepened. The tenderness was still there but it was joined by something hotter and more urgent, the knowledge that tomorrow was a battle and tonight was ours.

He carried me to the bed. He laid me down with a care that contradicted the size of his hands and the power coiled in every line of his body. He undressed me slowly, as though each layer he removed was something sacred. The cool air brushed against my skin, and then his palms followed, warm and rough with calluses earned over decades of war. He was always slow at first, reverent—each reveal was new even though he'd already mapped every inch of me.

"You're staring," I said.

"I am memorizing."

"We've been over this. No counting days."

"I am not counting days. I am counting freckles." His claw retracted and traced a line between marks on my shoulder. "You have forty-seven on this shoulder alone."

"You counted my freckles."