Page 55 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"I can confirm resonance activation."

"With the uncontacted species individual."

"Yes."

Silence. When Veska spoke again, her voice was very controlled. "This is without precedent."

"I am aware."

"The Council will need to review. Until formal determination is made, the resonance claim has no legal standing. The individual will be processed under standard protocol. Bring her in. Do not bond further. This is a priority extraction. Veska out."

The signal cut.

I stood in the relay station staring at the dead screen. My hands were fisted at my sides. My markings were blazing — not the warm glow of proximity to Taylor, but the sharp, high-frequency pulse that Valorians call kel'vor: the state of a bonded warrior whose mate has been threatened by an authority he is oath-bound to obey. It is a specific physiological mode. The body prepares for a conflict it cannot resolve through combat. The markings burn because the energy has nowhere else to go.

Do not bond further. As if the resonance were a subsystem that could be powered down on administrative authority. As if the most sacred mechanism in Valorian biology answered to a bureaucratic directive.

And cognitive restoration. They would take everything from her. Not just the memories of the abduction, the jungle, the crash. They would take the ruins. The bioluminescence. The moment she'd found the stepping stones and turned to me with the smuggest expression a human face could produce. The Kethari carvings and the way her hands had shaken with wonder. The purple fire. The pool. The first time she'd said my name.

They would take me. Every version of me she carried — the rescuer, the Glow Stick, the man who'd kissed her by firelight. Gone.

And she would wake up in a jungle on Earth with no memory of the stars, and I would spend the rest of my existence feeling her absence through a bond she didn't remember.

No.

I returned to the room. Taylor was awake, sitting cross-legged on the bed in one of Zhara's borrowed shirts, hair still damp from the shower. She was examining the small multitool from the belt she had recovered during the escape, turning it over in her hands like the piece of Earth she had held onto hardest.

She looked up when I entered. And I watched her expression change as she read me through the bond. The warmth in her eyes dimmed. Replaced by concern, then wariness.

"What happened?"

She already knew the worst of it — I had laid out the memory-wipe protocol myself on the walk down from the plateau, and neither of us had pretended otherwise since. But knowing it was on the table and knowing it was confirmed were different weights. I should give her the full picture now. The specific orders. The timeline. The denial.

And this time, I did not hesitate.

I sat on the edge of the bed. Not across the room. Not at tactical distance. Beside her. I told her about Veska. The transport arriving in two days. The processing protocols — medical evaluation, cognitive assessment, cultural impact review. I told her that I had formally requested an exemption from cognitive restoration, and that Veska had refused to hear it — the decision belonged to a processing team who had never met her.

"So it's not theoretical anymore," she said. The multitool stopped turning in her hands. "When you told me on the walk, I was hoping it was just a possibility. A worst case."

"I also hoped that. Veska made it explicit. Standard protocol, no exceptions without Council override."

Through the bond: not the shock of new information, but the heavier thing that comes after — the slow settling of a fear confirmed. She had been carrying this since the plateau, I realized. Holding it at arm's length, waiting to see if reality would soften it. Reality had not softened it.

"I want you to know something," I said. "On the plateau, when you read me through the bond — when you named it before I could manage it — that was the first time in this entire journey that I did not have to choose between protecting you and respecting you. You took the choice out of my hands." I paused. "I am grateful for that. And I am trying to learn from it. So here is everything else. All of it. No managed version."

She looked at me. The air between us changed — not warmth exactly, but a loosening. A door she had been bracing against, opening slightly.

"Okay," she said. "Tell me the rest."

I told her. The timeline, the transport logistics, the fact that without legal standing, I had no mechanism to block the processing order. All of it, unfiltered, because she had taught me on a plateau that the filtered version cost more than the truth.

"So the options are what, exactly? They process me, wipe my brain, and send me back to Colombia? Or...?"

"Or the option we already discussed becomes the only legal shield left: a formal bond declaration, citizenship by bond right, and no cognitive restoration without your consent."

She absorbed that the way she absorbed everything — deep and fast. I had explained the legal framework during our walk and she had filed every detail.

"Okay. So let me make sure I understand." Her voice was very controlled. "The threat is not theoretical anymore. They denied the exemption, transport is coming in two days, and the Council is the only thing standing between me and cognitive restoration."