“I find it endearing,” Pickles offers. “In a deeply inefficient way.”
My fingers fly across the console—reclassifying, building templates, creating a paper trail that makes this station look like a model of regulatory adherence. Every courier learns to speak fluent paperwork. Customs officials don’t care about your charm. They care about Form 27-B in triplicate.
I’m deep in atmospheric processor certifications when his voice hits me from the doorway.
“Good morning, Dove.”
Low. Rough with sleep. Layered with those harmonic undertones that make my vertebrae dissolve one at a time.
I don’t turn around. If I turn around, I’ll see him in whatever he sleeps in, with his markings dim and warm from bed, and I’ll lose approximately three hours of productive work time to staring.
“Morning. Coffee’s in the thermal unit—I made a pot an hour ago.”
“You’ve been working since 0400?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” I keep typing. “Your documentation is a disaster, by the way. Did you know you filed Tavia’s school records under ‘Biological Sample Development Tracking’?”
“She is a biological sample in active development.”
“She’s your daughter.”
“The categories aren’t mutually exclusive.”
A soft sound—bare feet on metal flooring—and then he’s beside me. Close enough that his body heat radiates against my arm. I make the mistake of glancing sideways.
He’s in sleep clothes. Low-slung pants and nothing else. Teal skin stretched over broad shoulders, the yellow markings along his neck and chest glowing soft amber in the dim light. His hair is sleep-mussed, which shouldn’t be attractive on a six-foot-eight alien scientist but absolutely, devastatingly is.
The markings pulse brighter when he catches me looking.
I snap my eyes back to the screen. “Your atmospheric processor maintenance logs need complete reformatting. I’ve built templates. And your safety signage needs to be bilingual—I’ll handle the Standard translations if you verify the Lividian.”
“You’re organizing my station.”
“I’m saving your station. There’s a difference.” I pull up the next file. “When was the last time you ran emergency evacuation drills?”
“I conduct regular—”
“With documentation? Signed forms? Timed results logged in the PDC-approved format?”
Silence.
“That’s what I thought.” I finally turn to face him fully, which is a mistake because he’s closer than I expected, leaning over my shoulder to read the screen, and his face is right there. “We need to run a full drill today. With Tavia. Timed. Documented. Filmed if possible.”
His yellow eyes study me with an intensity that has nothing to do with emergency protocols. “You’re extraordinary.”
“I’m a courier. Paperwork is half the job.”
“You’re reorganizing my entire operational structure at four in the morning because you want to protect us.” His voice drops into those deeper harmonics. The claiming ones. “That’s not paperwork. That’s—”
“Survival strategy.” I stand, putting the chair between us, because proximity to a shirtless Cetus at dawn is a threat level I’m not equipped to handle. “I need access to the maintenance crawlspaces. Several of your environmental sensors are showing calibration drift on Pickles’s diagnostic, and the PDC will check those first.”
“The maintenance crawlspaces are narrow.”
“I know. I’ve been in them before.” The memory of being pressed against his chest in a space designed for one person hits me with the subtlety of a cargo bay door. His warmth through both our clothes. The way his claws extended when I shifted against him.
From the slight brightening of his markings, he’s remembering too.
“I’ll need your help,” I say, keeping my voice professional through sheer force of will. “The sensor housings require two-person access.”
