It sounded insane every time she tried it. But Aria would adapt. Angelo would grumble and then adapt. They were Montecristos—or close enough. Adaptation was what they did.
He had been called away once already. A Khelar incursion in São Paulo, three days of silence while the bond ached like a bruised rib in her chest. She had not known it would feel like that, the distance. Had not understood what the other mated pairs meant when they spoke of the pull.
But he had come back. Slipped through her window at 3 a.m., smelling of ozone and copper, and held her without speaking until the ache faded and the bond settled warm and whole between them again.
He would always come back. She believed that now.
"You are thinking loudly," Makrath said. His voice was low, a rumble she felt through her back more than heard, the alien clicks beneath the English familiar now.
"Sorry. Can you feel that through the bond?"
"I feel texture. Complexity. Many threads at once." His arm tightened around her. "You do not need to apologize. I like knowing you are thinking. It means you are here."
She smiled at that. Turned her head to press a kiss against the edge of his jaw, where the dermal plating gave way to bare skin.
Through the bond, she felt his contentment. It had taken her weeks to recognize that particular frequency—steady and warm, so different from the sharp edges of his other emotions. He had told her once that he had never felt it before her. That he hadn't known the word.
She had given him that. The thought still made her chest tight.
"What now?" she asked.
The question had been circling in her mind for days. The Hunt was over. The debts were paid. Her family was safe, her future open. She had already started working with Morgan's network, putting her detective skills to use tracking patterns the human authorities couldn't see. It felt right in a way the LAPD hadn't felt in years.
And she had Makrath. An alien warrior bonded to her soul, who had rearranged his entire existence to stay on a planet that wasn't his own. Who hid in the back room when her sister visited and studied the television like it was an enemy combatant and ate human food with an expression of polite endurance.
Who watched her like she was the center of his universe, because through the bond, she knew she was.
What did you do with a life like that? What came next, when survival was no longer the only goal?
Makrath was quiet for a long moment. Through the bond, she felt him considering the question, and beneath the consideration: anticipation.
"Whatever we want," he said.
The words were simple. But the meaning beneath them was vast, encompassing everything they had been through and everything that lay ahead. No more debt. No more desperation.No more running from one crisis to the next, hoping to stay ahead of the tide.
They had time now. They had choices. They had each other.
There were still questions she didn't have answers to. The Khelar on the island, the breach that shouldn't have been possible. Makrath had his suspicions about the Marak, about Zhoren, about whether their bond had been engineered rather than earned. He had shared them with her one night, his voice careful, giving her the choice of what to believe.
She didn't know yet. Maybe she never would. But she had decided it didn't matter. Whatever forces had put them on that island together, the choice had been hers. She had looked at him and said yes. She had pulled him down to her in the clearing and claimed him as fiercely as he had claimed her.
That was real. That washers.
Serafina looked out at the city, her city, strange and sprawling and full of people who had no idea that aliens walked among them. She thought about the work waiting for her, the network that needed her skills, the threats she was only beginning to understand. She thought about Aria finishing her degree, Angelo puttering around with his new energy now that the medications were sorted, the pink flowers that fell from the tree in the front yard every morning.
She thought about the warrior standing behind her, his tail around her waist, his presence a steady warmth in the back of her mind. Her secret. Her partner. Her home.
Whatever we want.
She smiled.
She believed it.
