Page 26 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"You are going the wrong direction," I said.

She stopped. Turned. Made the sharp exhaling sound that I had cataloged seventeen times since the crash. I had not yet determined its function. It was not a distress vocalization — the pressure that accompanied it through the bond never spiked the way pain did, only flattened into a heat I had provisionally labeled exasperation. Sometimes it occurred when she tripped. Sometimes when I said something factual. The trigger pattern was inconsistent. I was beginning to suspect it served a social function in her species that had no Valorian analog.

I pointed southwest.

She adjusted course. Still stomping. Still radiating heat through the resonance bond like a small, mud-covered furnace of righteous indignation.

"Control freak with a glow stick problem," she muttered, loud enough for me to hear.

I did not know what a glow stick was. I was certain it was an insult. I was equally certain she was right about the control freak assessment.

We walked faster. She kept pace, through what appeared to be sheer spite, and did not complain once for the rest of the day. This was more alarming than the complaining. A silent Taylor meant an angry Taylor, and an angry Taylor was, through the resonance, one of the most uncomfortable experiences I had ever endured.

That evening, as we made camp in terse silence, I attempted to repair the communications unit further. The signal was gone. Whatever window I'd had was closed.

Renn's last words before the static: Tell her.

I looked across the fire at Taylor, who was aggressively weaving a new leaf container and not looking at me with such pointed intensity that the not-looking was louder than any of her speeches.

Tell her.

I should. I knew I should. Every day I waited made the eventual conversation worse. Every day the resonance deepened, the bond strengthened, and the gap between what I knew and what she knew widened into a chasm that would eventually become uncrossable.

But how? How do you tell a being from an uncontacted world that your biology will recognize her as compatible for the rest of your life, before she has chosen anything deeper? How do you explain that you can feel her emotions, sense her proximity, that your skin literally glows in her presence? How do you say "my body recognized you" without it sounding like an imposition, a violation, a claim she never consented to?

How do you tell her that when she laughs, you feel it in your chest like a second heartbeat, and you would burn the galaxy down before you let anything hurt her?

You don't. Not tonight. Not like this.

I turned back to the comms unit and felt Renn's disappointment from seven star systems away.

12

TAYLOR

Something had changed and he wouldn't tell me what.

Since the ridge that morning, since whoever he'd talked to on his busted communicator, Kel had been different. Faster. More alert. He barely slept, and I knew this because I barely slept either, and every time I cracked an eye open in the dark he was sitting upright, scanning the tree line with those violet cat eyes.

He wouldn't tell me why. Beyond the bare minimum, "the slavers might be tracking us", he'd locked down like a vault. Military mode. Perimeter checks doubled. A longer march than any day before it. Shorter breaks.

Anger buzzed under my skin, but exhaustion sat in my bones, and every time his gaze snapped to the tree line my stomach tightened. Kel didn't get scared. He got efficient. And the more efficient he got, the more I understood we were in real trouble.

I pressed. He deflected. I pressed harder until he said something in Valorian that cut through my questions like a blade. His translator flattened the emotional register on its way to me, but the tone was clear: drop it.

"You've given me the alien equivalent of 'don't worry your pretty little head about it' and I'm done."

I did stop pressing him. But the hurt lingered — being treated as cargo instead of a person when my own life was at stake.

By day seven, my body was falling apart in ways I couldn't joke through anymore. Blistered feet. Disintegrating clothes. Sunburned on sunburn. The rash had spread from my forearms to my shoulders, and when I scratched it — which was constantly — the skin underneath came away raw and weeping. My hands shook when I tried to grip things, a fine persistent tremor that I hid by keeping my fists closed. I'd stopped being able to eat the full rations Kel portioned out because the alien protein sat in my stomach like wet cement, and twice that morning I'd had to stop walking to dry-heave behind a tree while pretending I was just catching my breath.

The caloric math was getting real. I was burning more than I could absorb. My body was metabolizing itself — I could feel it in the way my clothes hung looser, the way my legs trembled on inclines that hadn't challenged me three days ago. Breathing the jungle's pollen and spores had started as a mild burn behind my sternum and settled into permanent pressure, as if someone had placed a warm hand on my chest and was slowly pressing down. My vision grayed at the edges every time I stood up too fast.

I would have killed for coffee. I would have killed for anything my body actually knew how to process.

The storm hit without warning.

One moment: hot, humid, the usual Zha'kari jungle misery. The next: the canopy above us turned black and the air pressure dropped so fast my ears popped. Kel's head snapped up. He said one word in Valorian — his translator rendered it as "atmospheric discharge event" — and grabbed my arm.