My body moves on pure instinct—crossing the ten-foot barrier in a blur of motion that shouldn’t be possible for someone who’s been awake for forty-seven consecutive minutes of biochemical hell. But the moment she starts to fall, everything else ceases to exist except the imperative to reach her.
She collapses into my arms with boneless grace, unconscious from pushing the separation distance too far too fast, and the sensation of her body against mine after thirty seconds of wrongness is so overwhelming that my knees nearly buckle from the intensity.
The bond roars to life between us.
Not the subtle hum I’ve been experiencing since the accident on the platform, but a full-throated declaration of relief and rightness that slams through my nervous system like a kinetic pulse. It’s not gentle. It’s not gradual. It’s the biological equivalent of someone hitting the emergency override on every combat alert system I possess and flooding my brain with reassurance that the threat has passed, the danger is neutralized, the mate is safe.
She’s here. In my arms. Close enough that her scent wraps around me like a physical thing—vanilla and determination with new notes of stress and exhaustion that make my protective instincts flare hot and immediate.
The constant background noise of threat-assessment that’s been running in my head since we bonded finally, blessedly, goes silent.
For eighty four minutes, my combat reflexes have been convinced we’re under attack. That the separation between us represents a vulnerability, a tactical weakness, a threat to our survival. My body has been flooding with combat secretions, my senses hyperalert for danger, my muscles tense with the need to eliminate whatever is causing the wrongness.
Now, with her collapsed against my chest and her heartbeat syncing with mine through the bond, everything settles.
She isn’t just my mate. She’s essential structure. The framework my entire existence now orients around. Like discovering that my skeleton was incomplete and she’s the missing bones that let me stand upright.
The metaphor is terrible, but my brain isn’t producing coherent thoughts. Just overwhelming relief and fierce protectiveness and the bone-deep certainty that this is where she belongs.
I sink to the floor with her still in my arms because standing requires more coordination than I can manage while processing the full force of what the bond actually means from my perspective. The medical bay deck is cool against my back, but Zola is warm against my chest, her breathing steady and deep despite the unconsciousness.
“Zola?” I press my hand against her cheek, checking for fever. Her skin is cool—too cool, actually. The separation test has left her in mild shock, her body struggling to regulate temperature properly.
She needs skin contact. Direct contact. The bond is new enough that proximity alone isn’t sufficient for proper recovery—we need physical touch to complete the feedback loop and stabilize both our systems.
My hands shake as I carefully adjust her position so she’s lying more comfortably against me, her head tucked against my shoulder and her body aligned with mine from chest to hip. The intimacy of the position would be inappropriate under normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. This is medical necessity wrapped in biochemical imperative.
And it feels so perfectly right that my chest aches with it.
Her scent intensifies with the increased contact—vanilla-honey warmth with underlying notes that are uniquely hers. Myenhanced senses catalog every detail: the flutter of her pulse against my throat where her head rests on my shoulder, the soft sound of her breathing, the way her body heat slowly normalizes as the bond works to stabilize her system.
My combat secretions are still elevated from the separation stress, making my senses hyperacute. I can feel her heartbeat synchronizing with mine, can sense the subtle shifts in her biochemistry as the bond floods her system with my pheromones to counteract the separation shock.
She makes a soft sound against my throat—not quite conscious, but responsive. Her hand flexes against my chest, fingers curling into the torn fabric of my coveralls, and the sensation sends heat racing through my system that has nothing to do with recovery protocols and everything to do with the way she’s pressed against me like she belongs there.
“I have you,” I murmur against her hair, even though she can’t hear me. “You are safe. I will not let you fall.”
Her breathing deepens, and I feel the moment her body fully accepts the bond’s stabilization efforts. Her temperature rises to proper levels. Her heart rate slows to resting pace. The tension in her muscles gradually releases as unconsciousness gives way to something more like natural sleep.
But she doesn’t let go of my coveralls.
And I don’t move, because moving would require releasing her, and releasing her feels fundamentally wrong in ways I don’t have words to describe.
So I stay on the medical bay floor with my mate sleeping against my chest, cataloging the sensation of her in my arms while my biology purrs with satisfaction that the wrongness has been corrected, the mate is close, everything is as it should be.
This is probably not how Velogian courtship is supposed to proceed. There should be formal presentations, careful negotiation of compatibility, proper medical supervision of thebonding process. Not accidental bonds formed during combat, followed by unconscious collapses onto medical bay floors.
My ancestors are definitely judging my courtship methods.
But despite the circumstances, despite the complete lack of proper protocol, despite the fact that we barely know each other beyond crisis situations and separation testing—this feels right.
She feels right.
The bond hums between us, warm and constant and increasingly insistent that I need to keep her close, keep her safe, keep her mine.
“Don’t move,” she whispers against my throat, and I realize she’s awake.
“I will not move,” I promise immediately, because the thought of releasing her while she’s asking me to stay feels physically impossible.
