The beacon transmits at oh-two-thirteen station time, a targeted burst on the frequency Bebo calculated during three days of patient calibration. The signal is clean, tight, aimed at the gap in ApexCorp's monitoring coverage that Horgox identified from a lifetime of studying his captors' patterns.
"Transmission successful," Bebo confirms. "Signal strength optimal. Estimated receipt at Junction One: forty-seven minutes. Response time for OOPS extraction shuttle: six to twelve hours depending on available assets."
Six to twelve hours.
I look at Horgox across the beacon setup, the fire between us casting warm shadows across his emerald skin. The signalis sent. Rescue is coming. Everything we've survived for is in motion.
"It's done," I say.
"It's done." He crosses to me. His hand finds my waist. "No more drones to dodge. No more beacons to repair."
"No more waiting," I say, and the words taste like a door opening.
He cups my face with both hands. Studies me in the firelight as though he's memorising this exact moment: my face, my eyes, the certainty he's looking for and finding.
"Little flare," he says, and the word has weight now, history, days of being earned and withheld and finally, finally given freely. "Are you sure?"
"Ask me one more time and I'm going to show you exactly how sure."
The smile that crosses his face is something I've never seen from him before. Not the almost-smile, not the suppressed amusement, not the controlled warmth. This is open and unguarded andnew, the expression of a male who has just accepted that he's allowed to have this.
"Then come here," he says, and pulls me in.
10
The Claiming Color
Krilly
Hismouthfindsminebefore the wordherestops echoing off the cave walls, and nine days of restraint end in a single point of contact.
Not careful. Not previewed. The kiss of two people who have exhausted every reason to wait and found none of them sufficient. His hands frame my face with the precise, deliberate grip that I've learned means he's done calculating and started committing, and the certainty in the way he holds me sends heat cascading down my spine.
The beacon pulses behind us, broadcasting our position into the void. Rescue is coming. The clock is running. And for the first time since I crashed on this planet, the clock doesn't matter.
"Not here," he murmurs against my mouth. "Somewhere with sky."
He leads me through the passage to the clearing we scouted this afternoon. Bioluminescent vines casting blue-green light across the moss. Three moons low on the horizon. The kind of alien beauty that would take my breath if his proximity hadn't already stolen it.
He turns to face me, and the color in his markings has shifted into something I've never seen in daylight: the jade brightened, that prismatic shimmer at the edges glowing stronger than firelight can account for. The unnamed color, waiting to become.
My hands find the catches of his shirt. Not fumbling. Purposeful, the way I approach any system I intend to take apart. He watches me work the fastenings with an expression that's equal parts want and something more fragile, more exposed. The expression of a male watching someone choose him and still not quite believing it.
"I'm sure," I tell him, because he needs to hear it, and because speaking it aloud makes it real in a way that silent wanting doesn't. "In case the nine days of escalating desperation left any ambiguity."
"I didn't want to assume—"
"Horgox. I licked your palm. I told you I was going to bond the hell out of you. I described my dream about the cave wall before you physically stopped me from finishing the sentence." His shirt parts under my hands, and the first touch of bare emerald skin against my palms makes us both go still. "There is no ambiguity."
The stillness lasts two heartbeats. Then his control, the discipline that has held through arenas and captivity and three months of solitary survival, bends. Not shatters. Bends, like a structure reaching its design tolerance and yielding to the force it was built to withstand but never meant to bear forever.
His hands move to my jumpsuit. Unfastening catches with the same precision he uses for everything, except his fingers aren't steady. The fabric parts, slides off my shoulders. Cool night air hits my skin, and his inhale is audible. Sharp. Reverent.
"I've imagined this," he says, voice dropped into the bass register that I feel in my sternum. "Every night since the harness. What you'd look like. What your skin would feel like under my hands."
"And?" The jumpsuit pools at my feet. I'm standing in my undershirt and shorts under alien starlight, and his gaze moves over me with an intensity that feels like a physical weight.
"I wasn't prepared." Quiet. Honest. The male beneath the gladiator, looking at something he didn't believe he was allowed to want. "Imagining didn't prepare me for the real thing."
