"About the bonding ceremony," she started, her thumb tracing over Delilah's knuckles.
The LMP officials had been very enthusiastic about scheduling it now that the 'unfortunate misunderstanding' was resolved. They wanted a date. They wanted a spectacle, and to prove there were ‘no hard feelings’. She wanted to tell them to stuff their ceremony where the sun didn’t shine. But… she wanted to be married to Kirr. Or mated. Legally.
His fingers tightened slightly on her shoulders. "And?"
She didn't look up, her gaze fixed on her cousin's face. "I want to wait."
Everything in the room went still.
"It's not that I don't want to. I do. I really do. But I'm not picking flowers and cake flavors while she's—" She gestured at the bed, at the monitors, at all of it. "She's supposed to be there."
She braced herself. Prepared for the argument. For him to tell her that politics mattered, or that tradition dictated speed, or that his clan expected it.
"Then we wait. The Duke will push. But we wait."
She twisted in the chair, searching his face. His expression was open, his golden gaze soft. There was no hesitation. No irritation.
"Really?" she asked. "Just like that? You're a War-Commander. Doesn't it look bad if we wait? People might think the bond isn't real."
He lifted a hand from her shoulder and held up his wrist. The dark markings of the mate bond were stark against his skin, peeking out from under the leather cuff. "This is the bond." His voice was low, certain. "The rest can wait."
Lowering his hand, he brushed his knuckles against her cheek.
"The ceremony is a party, Harper. It is food and speeches, and tedious political maneuvering. It is not the bond. The bond is already here." He pressed his hand over his heart. "We can wait ten years if that is what you require. I am going nowhere."
The knot in her stomach unraveled.
Leaning her cheek into his palm, she closed her eyes for a second. "Thank you. I just... she'd kill me if I got married to an alien prince?—"
"War-Commander," he corrected, his lips quirking at the corners. “Don’t insult me, I work for a living."
"—to a high-ranking alien warlord without her there to critique the dress," Harper finished, a small smile curving her mouth. "She loves a good party. It wouldn't be right without her."
"It would not."
The door slid open with a soft hiss.
Kellat walked in, scanning a dataflex in his hand. The Lead Healer looked tired, with faint purple smudges under his eyes, but there was a sharpness to his movements that hadn't been there yesterday. He stopped when he saw them, offering a polite nod to Kirr before his gaze settled on Harper.
"I was hoping to catch you." He tucked the dataflex against his side. "I have news."
She sat up straighter, her grip on Delilah's hand tightening. "Is something wrong? Her vitals looked okay on the monitor."
"Not wrong. Different." Kellat walked to the foot of the bed, tapping a command into the console there. A holographic display shimmered into existence above Delilah, showing her brain activity. It was a mess of colors, shifting and pulsing. "I spent the last six hours reviewing the scans with Miisan."
Harper's gaze flicked to the ceiling speakers on instinct. She’d heard that the station had one but had never spoken to her. "The station AI?"
The healer inclined his head. “She’s a little more complicated than that, but anyway… Miisan caught what we didn't." He gestured to a cluster of bright activity on the scan. "We identified a pattern in the neural feedback loop that we missed before. The pattern isn't degrading. It's reorganizing."
Harper stared at the lights. "What does that mean?"
"It means her brain isn't failing. It is rewriting itself to accommodate... something, but at this stage I’m not sure what.” Kellat’s gaze swept over the unconscious woman on the bed. “With Miisan's help, I have developed a new stimulation protocol. It should help her bridge the gap between where her mind is and where her body needs it to be."
He looked at Harper, and for the first time, she saw a crack in his professional healer's mask. There was hope there. Fierce and personal.
"I believe I can wake her," Kellat said. "Soon."
The air left her lungs in a rush.
