Page 54 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"That's... a lot."

"You do not have to decide now."

"I know." I rolled over, pressed my face into his chest. "But Kel. I can't go back to Earth and pretend this didn't happen. Even if they offered to send me back. Even without the memory wipe thing. I can't unknow this. I can't unknow that there's a whole galaxy out there, and ruins to study, and alien coffee to drink, and—" I looked up at him. "And you."

His markings pulsed. Hope came through the bond, fierce and fragile.

"Ask me the question," I whispered. "The one you've been carrying since the plateau."

His breath caught. "How did you⁠—"

"Bond, remember? I can feel you holding something. Something big. Something that scares you."

He was quiet for a long time. His hand on my back, his markings glowing, his heartbeat steady under my ear.

"Not tonight," he said softly. "Tonight I just want this."

I let him have it. Tonight. Tomorrow we'd face whatever was coming — the Authority, the protocols, the political storm of a Valorian bonding with a human. Tomorrow he'd ask the question and I'd answer it and the universe would rearrange itself around the choice.

But tonight, in a room above a grimy frontier outpost, clean and warm and held, I let myself just be happy.

It had been a while. It felt good.

22

KEL

The communication came through the outpost's relay at dawn while Taylor was still sleeping.

Official Authority channel. Encrypted. Priority designation. I accessed it from the relay station in the outpost's central building, the operator, a bored Chelani trader who moonlighted as a communications tech, giving me privacy with a wave of her tentacle.

The Authority representative was not Renn. It was Commander Veska, Third Division, and her voice carried the precise, emotionless diction of someone delivering orders they expected to be obeyed.

"Retrieval Specialist Kel'vran Sorath. Your status report has been reviewed. The Andari extraction is logged as complete. Transport is being arranged from Vel'kari Station. ETA: two standard days."

"Acknowledged."

"Regarding the uncontacted species individual. UC designation 7742, species: human. The individual is to be brought to Authority Station Nine for standard processing under the Uncontacted Species Protection Act."

"Define processing."

"Medical evaluation. Cognitive assessment. Linguistic analysis. Cultural impact review. And pending Council review, standard protocol cognitive restoration and planetary return."

There it was. Clinical. Clean. The polite language for erasing Taylor's memory and dropping her back in a Colombian jungle as if none of this had happened.

"I request an exemption from cognitive restoration protocols."

"On what grounds?"

"The individual has formed significant bonds with contacted species members during her time off-world. Cognitive restoration would cause irreparable psychological harm."

"That assessment will be made by the processing team. Not by the retrieval specialist who extracted her."

"Commander—"

"Additionally." Her voice sharpened. "We have received reports of anomalous resonance activity associated with your biological signature. Can you confirm or deny these reports?"

Renn. Renn had reported it. Or rather, the Authority had detected it through my bio-monitoring systems, which were still broadcasting basic health data through the salvaged plating. The beacon whispered a few bits an hour and the relay net listened hard for exactly that whisper; a voice channel needed bandwidth the wreck plating could never push. My comms could fail while my heartbeat carried. Resonance was a measurable biological event. Of course they'd seen it.