“Happy crying,” Dove says. “The good kind.”
“Oh.” Tavia considers this with the gravity of a child who has learned that feelings are complicated. “Can we have happy crying AND pasta?”
“Yeah, small person. We can have both.”
Tavia wriggles between us, one arm around my waist, one arm around Dove’s, her small body a bridge connecting the two people she’s decided belong to her. Above her head, my eyes meet Dove’s.
“Tonight,” I murmur against her hair. Low enough that only she hears. Low enough that the harmonic register turns the word into something that vibrates against her skin like a vow. “After she’s asleep. We finish this.”
Dove’s fingers tighten around mine. Her pulse jumps—I feel it through the contact, nineteen percent elevation, the number Pickles quoted days ago and I have never forgotten.
“Promise?” she whispers.
I press my lips to her temple. My markings settle into the deep, steady pattern—what Pickles classified as permanent mate calibration. Home. Forever.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
And the ridge-line pulses once, in agreement, and does not retract.
13
Special Delivery
Dove
Thepastaisobscene.
Not because I did anything special—same rehydrated noodles, same protein base, same cheese sauce I’ve been improvising from station rations for days. But Tavia declared this a “proper celebration” and proper celebrations apparently require cloth napkins folded into shapes (Pickles provided origami instructions), candles (emergency lanterns set to amber), and assigned seating that puts me directly across from Cetus so I have nowhere to look except at the man who promised to finish what we started.
He’s watching me.
Not the careful, controlled observation I’ve gotten used to over the past week. This is different. Slower. His yellow eyes track my hands as I serve, linger on my mouth when I taste-test the sauce, drop to my throat when I swallow. His markings pulse in that deep, steady rhythm—the one Pickles classified as permanent mate calibration—and every pulse sends heat crawling up my spine.
“Pass the cheese?” he says, and his voice drops into harmonics that have absolutely nothing to do with cheese.
I hand him the container. Our fingers brush. His skin burns against mine—fifteen degrees warmer than human baseline, I know that now, I know it in my bones—and the contact holds a beat too long. Two beats. Three.
“You’re both breathing funny again,” Tavia observes through a mouthful of pasta.
Cetus withdraws his hand. I shove cheese into my mouth and pretend I’m not on fire.
Dinner stretches. Tavia recounts the day’s victory with embellishments that would make a war correspondent jealous—the debt collectors grow larger with each retelling, the inspection team more impressed, Cetus’s protective stance more heroic. He listens with that soft expression that makes his markings glowsteady-warm, the one that only appears when his daughter is happy and safe and spinning stories at the dinner table.
Family, I think, and the word doesn’t make me flinch anymore. It settles into my chest like cargo finding its bay.
Tavia yawns. Conspicuously. With sound effects.
“Oh no,” she announces, stretching both arms over her head in a performance that would embarrass a community theatre. “I am SO tired. From all the excitement. Of today.”
Cetus’s eyes narrow. “You had a three-hour nap during lockdown.”
“Emotional exhaustion, Papa. Pickles says cortisol depletion requires extended rest periods.”
“I did provide that data,” Pickles confirms from the overhead speakers. “The small human’s biosignatures are consistent with fatigue. I recommend immediate bedtime protocols.”
Tavia is already sliding out of her chair. “Papa, bedtime story? The long one about the stellar cartographer?”
“That story takes forty-five minutes.”
