"I am yours."
The words settled into her chest like stones dropping into still water. She felt the truth of them through the bond—the way he had given himself to her as completely as she had given herself to him. This wasn't ownership. This was belonging. Mutual and absolute and permanent.
The knot pulsed inside her, and she gasped, aftershocks of pleasure rippling through her body. He made a low sound in response, his hips shifting slightly, and she realized they weren't done. The bond demanded more. His biology demanded more. Some part of her she hadn't known existed demanded more.
"Again," she breathed.
He didn't make her ask twice.
Later—shedidn't know how much later, time had lost meaning—she lay in his arms and stared up at the canopy.
He hadn't let her go. When the knot finally released, when he slipped out of her and the physical connection ended, he had simply gathered her against his chest and held on. His tail wrapped around her leg, anchoring her to him. One arm curved around her waist. His other hand rested on the back of her neck, fingers tangled in her sweat-dampened hair.
She should get up. Check her wounds, find water, do any number of practical things.
She didn't move.
Through the bond, she could feel him. A constant presence in the back of her mind, warm and solid and utterly certain. He wasn't sleeping—she didn't think Kha'Ruun slept the wayhumans did—but he was resting. Content in a way that felt unfamiliar to him, like a muscle he hadn't used in years finally unclenching.
She had given him that.
A week ago, she had been a homicide detective drowning in debt, answering a mysterious ad because she had no other options. She had come to this island expecting a transaction. A contract. An ordeal to be endured for money.
This wasn't that.
She had chosen this—not the money, not the contract, but him. The scarred warrior who had torn apart an assassin to protect her. The alien who had trembled when she asked to see his face. The predator who held her now like she was precious, like he would destroy worlds to keep her.
"I chose this," she said quietly. "I chose you."
His arm tightened around her waist. Through the bond, she felt the surge of emotion her words provoked—so much feeling he couldn't put it into language.
"Yes," he said. Agreement, understanding, and a promise.
She closed her eyes and let herself rest.
CHAPTER 27
She woke to the sound of water.
A stream ran somewhere nearby, its gentle burble mixing with the calls of distant birds and the rustle of leaves in the canopy above. Sunlight filtered through the trees in golden shafts, dappled and warm where it fell across her skin.
Makrath's body curved around hers, his armor retracted to reveal the skin beneath: warm and textured, not quite scaled but not smooth either. His chest pressed against her back, one arm draped over her waist, his tail coiled around her legs in a loose spiral. She could feel his breath against her hair, slow and steady, the rhythm of near-sleep. His body ran hotter than a human's, like lying against a furnace that somehow felt safe.
She did not move.
The jungle sounds washed over her. Insects humming. Water flowing over stones. The distant cry of a creature she could not identify, alien and familiar all at once. Through the bond, she felt Makrath's presence like a banked fire in the back of her mind; warm, constant, utterly certain.
She had never felt more at peace.
The realization should have startled her. A week ago, she had been drowning. Debt and grief and fourteen years of fightinga system that ground people into dust. She had answered a mysterious ad because she had no other options, had come to this island expecting an ordeal to be endured.
Instead, she was lying in a jungle on an island off the coast of Costa Rica, wrapped in the arms of an alien warrior, and she felt safe.
A shaft of sunlight broke through the canopy, and butterflies drifted through it. Small and blue, their wings catching the light as they floated past. She watched them dance through the golden air, and her chest cracked open.
Strange, that it had taken an alien to make her see Earth like this. To make her see nature as more than backdrop, more than the spaces between crime scenes and courtrooms and fluorescent-lit offices. She had lived her entire life on this planet and never stopped to watch butterflies drift through morning light.
Her eyes burned. Her throat tightened.
