"When?"
"Four months before the portal opened. She died and left me with 180,000 credits in medical debt." I laughed—bitter sound. "I worked transport logistics—moving shipping containers, climbing the stacks to verify cargo. Made maybe twenty thousand a year." I looked at him. "I'd have worked my entire life and never cleared it."
He understood. Not pity—just recognition of impossible choices.
"The Consortium offered to clear it all," I continued. "Plus thirty thousand in cash if I survived. All I had to do was make it thirty days." I pressed my hand against his chest, feeling his heartbeat. "She was already gone. Nothing waiting for me back there except debt and underground housing. At least here I'd be free."
"You had a choice." His thumb rubbed circles on my hand. "You chose to escape. That's what makes you strong."
"I chose to climb something that mattered," I said. "Instead of dying slowly in the sectors like she did. That's enough."
"Is it?"
The question surprised me. "What?"
"Do you regret coming here?" He turned to face me fully. "The bond means you can't leave now even if you wanted to. If you regret that?—"
"I don't." I said it fast, certain. "I didn't at first. Those first few days I was angry and scared and fighting everything. But now?" I pressed my hand harder against his chest. "This is better than anything I had on Earth."
His relief washed over me like warmth. His satisfaction. His fierce possessive pride.
"I'm pregnant with alien eggs," I continued. "I have a mate who breeds me three times a day. I climb impossible cliffs and fight territorial rivals and get hunted by sixty-foot wyrms. This is insane." I smiled. "And I wouldn't trade it for anything."
His mouth found mine. Not demanding—just claiming, confirming what the bond already told him was true.
When he pulled back, both his cocks were hard.
"We have time," he said, voice dropping lower. "Storm won't clear until tomorrow. Nothing to do but wait."
"So we should?—"
"Breed." He shifted, positioning me in his lap. "Slow. Taking our time. No urgency. Just us."
His hands found the suit seals, got them open, exposed me. The cool air made me shiver but his body heat washed over me immediately.
"I'm going to breed you," he said, sliding one hand between my legs, finding me already wet. "Going to take hours. Going to make you come until you forget the storm exists. Until the only thing you know is me inside you."
The breeding talk made me clench around his fingers.
He prepared me slowly—two fingers, then three, working me open while his mouth found my breasts. The pleasure cock flicked against my clit, moving in rhythm with his fingers in this dual stimulation that wrecked me. I came twice before he even positioned his breeding cock at my entrance.
When he finally pushed inside, we both made sounds.
"Slow," he said, more to himself than me. "We have time. Can take our time."
He thrust slowly, each movement deliberate and controlled. Not the desperate breeding of the last week—this was different. Intimate. The bond amplified everything—I felt his pleasure, his satisfaction, his need to make this last.
Between thrusts he told me things. About Varyn, about the cliff systems that went miles deep. About winged culture, about the way copper veins conducted electromagnetic energy. About how he'd prepared for seasons, hoping a compatible female would come and trying not to think about what it meant when they didn't.
I told him about climbing. About the container stacks that reached two hundred feet high. About the first time I'd free-soloed a hundred-foot stack and felt like I could fly, even though I knew falling meant death and nobody would even find my body for days.
We bred for hours.
He made me come four times—slow, rolling orgasms that built gradually instead of hitting like lightning. Each one stronger than the last. Each one feeding back through the bond so he felt them too, this feedback loop of pleasure that never quite ended.
When he finally let himself knot, we were both shaking.
"Mine," he said against my throat. "My mate. My female. My future."
