Page 25 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"Communications. Brief contact with my handler."

"And? Good news? Bad news?"

"The person I was sent to retrieve has been recovered by another team. She is safe."

Taylor's face opened with genuine relief. "Oh thank god. The diplomat's daughter? She's okay?"

"She is safe." I shouldered the pack. "We need to increase our pace."

"Increase?" She stood, brushing off her legs. "Kel, I'm already walking as fast as I⁠—"

"We need to cover more ground. The margin is too narrow."

"You said eighteen days. I've been counting — we're right on schedule for⁠—"

"Conditions have changed."

She stepped in front of me. Planted herself. This was a thing she did — put her small body directly in my path as if her physical presence could stop me from moving. I stopped. Her size had nothing to do with it; the resonance pressed heat against my sternum, and pushing past her would prove her right.

"What conditions?" She crossed her arms. "What did your handler say?"

"The situation is being managed."

"That's a lot of words for 'I don't know.'"

She was correct. And infuriatingly perceptive.

"We need to move faster, Taylor."

"And I need to know WHY." Her jaw was set. Her eyes — I had cataloged the specific pattern of green within the brown without ever deciding to, and I did not need this information — were sharp. "You've been keeping things from me since we met. The three-hour thing. The glow thing. And now you talk to your handler and suddenly we need to speed up and you won't tell me why. I'm not stupid, Kel."

"I have never suggested⁠—"

"Then stop treating me like I am."

The resonance flooded me with pressure: heat, and under the heat, something bruised. The bruise was the sharpest. I did not need the bond to put her words to it. She felt dismissed. Managed. Handled. As if she were a problem to be managed rather than a person to be communicated with.

I opened my mouth to tell her. About Draxis. About the hunters. About the bounty that almost certainly existed for her return.

"There are parties who may be searching for us," I said carefully. "The Saurok operate extensive networks. It is possible they are tracking escaped captives."

"Tracking us. The slavers are tracking us."

"It is a possibility I am taking seriously."

She was quiet for a moment. I watched the fear register: cold, metallic, and gone as she processed it and filed it under the growing category of horrifying things she was learning to live with.

"So we walk faster."

"Yes."

"You could have just said that."

"I—"

"Instead of the cryptic military robot routine where you bark orders and I'm supposed to just follow blindly." She started walking. Ahead of me. Fast. "I'm not one of your soldier buddies, Kel. I don't take orders. I take INFORMATION and then I make DECISIONS like an ADULT."

She was practically stomping through the undergrowth. Plants bent out of her way as if even the jungle recognized that she was not to be crossed right now.