Her breath catches. “How intense?”
“Intense enough that I’ve been fighting every instinct I have since you walked into my station.”
“What kind of instincts?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
My other hand finds her waist, and I pull her closer—not rough, but deliberate. Claiming space. Claiming proximity. Nearly claiming her.
“To keep you. To make sure nothing touches you. To—”
I stop myself, but my markings betray me. They blaze in patterns I haven’t displayed in years. Possessive. Territorial. Mine.
“To what?” she prompts.
The honest answer would terrify her. The honest answer is that I want to mark her, claim her, bind her to me with every biological and cultural mechanism my species possesses. I want to wake up with her in my bed every morning. I want Tavia to have the mother figure she’s been missing. I want permanence.
But she’s offering me four days, and that has to be enough.
“To make you mine,” I say finally. Raw. Honest. “Even though I have no right. Even though you’re leaving.”
She should pull away. Should laugh it off. Should protect herself from getting entangled with someone who clearly wants more than she’s offering.
Instead, she rises on her toes, bringing her face closer to mine.
“What if I want to be yours? For four days?”
Heat blazes across my shoulders, down my arms. My grip on her waist tightens, and I can feel my claws threatening to extend.
“Dove—”
“Four days. No promises after. But while I’m here—” She pauses, her eyes searching mine. “While I’m here, maybe we stop fighting what we both want.”
I should say no. Should maintain boundaries. Should protect both of us from the inevitable pain when she leaves.
Instead, I lower my head, bringing us so close I can feel her breath against my lips.
“If I start this,” I warn, “I don’t know if I can—”
“ALERT: Atmospheric disturbance in sector nine requires immediate—”
7
Claiming Surge
Cetus
Webreakapartlikewe’ve been burned. Pickles’s voice cuts through the charged atmosphere with all the grace of a meteor impact.
“What.” My voice comes out as a growl. “Is. The. Alert.”
There’s a pause that feels suspiciously calculated.
“It has been resolved,” Pickles says finally. “My timing was... unfortunate. I shall be occupied with other monitoring tasks. Extensively occupied. For an extended duration.”
Dove makes a sound that’s half-laugh, half-frustration. “You have terrible timing, Pickles.”
“I neither confirm nor deny the quality of my temporal awareness,” he responds. “However, I note that I shall now be conducting comprehensive diagnostics that will require my full attention for approximately the next three hours.”
“You’re giving us privacy,” Dove says.
