Page 50 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

I knew this. I had known this since the escape pod. The Valorian legal framework was clear: resonance bonds were sacred and protected — but only once formally declared before witnesses, with entry into the Council registry the step that perfected the claim. Without declaration, the bond existed biologically but not legally. And without legal standing, Taylor had no protection under Valorian citizenship law.

The implication was clear. If the Authority decided to place Taylor under uncontacted-species control, strip away her off-world memories, and return her to her planet, I would have no legal mechanism to prevent it. Unless I formally declared the bond.

She had already chosen the permanence — privately, on the plateau, for her own reasons. But a declaration was a different act entirely: public, witnessed, entered in the Council registry. Which meant asking her to take a choice she had made in private and hand it to the law while she was still processing the fact that aliens existed.

"Renn."

"I know. It's not fair to her. But fairness and bureaucracy have never been well acquainted. Get to the outpost. We'll figure it out."

The signal died.

I was still on the slope when she started climbing toward me, the half-woven vegetation still in one hand, Zhara stretched out on the rock behind her with her eyes shut. She met me a third of the way up, close enough to touch. I felt her read the bond — not my expression, the bond itself. She was inside what I was carrying before I could open my mouth.

"What happened?" she asked.

I sat down where I was. She sat too. I began constructing the careful version — the managed version, shaped to inform without letting my fear flood the bond. The instinct was automatic. Protect her. Control the information flow. Present the problem only after I had identified the solution.

Taylor's eyes narrowed before I spoke. "It's not just slavers anymore, is it?"

"Renn says transport will be arranged when we reach the outpost."

"Not that part." She set the half-woven vegetation down on the slope beside her. "The Authority. Your people. They know about me now."

I went still.

"Kel, I can feel you trying to turn this into something I can survive hearing." Her voice was steady. Controlled. The voice she used when she was terrified and refused to show it. "How bad is it?"

"Renn says there will be protocols when we reach the outpost. Questions. Officials. Decisions made by people who have never met you."

Her jaw tightened. The bond carried the impact: not surprise, but the sick drop of a feared possibility moving closer.

"How much time?"

"We reach the outpost tomorrow. Transport will be arranged from there."

She looked out through the trees, toward a station neither of us could see yet. "So the door might start closing."

"Yes."

"Were you going to tell me like that? Directly? Or were you about to build me a mission briefing with the terror edited out?"

The honest answer shamed me. "I was constructing the managed version."

"I know." She leaned back into my shoulder. Not pulling away. Not shutting down. "I could feel the fear go quiet and distant while you made it manageable. The bond is really inconvenient for your whole withholding thing."

"I am beginning to understand that."

"Good." She threaded her fingers through mine, and the contact steadied both of us in ways neither of us could pretend not to feel. "Then we keep moving, and when the next terrible alien bureaucracy thing happens, you tell me before you turn it into a mission briefing."

"Agreed."

Through the bond: fear, yes. But underneath it, something harder than fear. Determination. The same stubborn refusal to collapse that had carried her through a slave ship, a crash landing, and a jungle that was slowly poisoning her.

By the time we came down, Zhara had given up pretending to sleep. All four eyes opened without hurrying. She looked between us, and her expression rearranged into something that might have been approval.

Then she stood, checked the fading trail light, and announced that if we wanted walls around us before the next storm, emotional revelations would need to walk and breathe at the same time.

So we walked.