Page 66 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

The old instinct said to keep it that way—to preserve her wonder until I had built the fear into something manageable. I recognized the instinct for what it was and rejected it. She could have these few minutes with the stars. Then she would hear all of it from me, before either of us slept.

"Thrane is already positioning himself as the problem," Renn said. "Old guard. Same legal theory we discussed, but now he has support from two traditionalists on the Council."

"How aggressive?"

"He'll argue it's not true resonance. A biological anomaly. A malfunction." Renn paused. "And if he convinces enough of the Council, they could order a separation assessment. Isolated evaluation. Her in one facility, you in another, for as long as they deem necessary to determine whether the bond persists without proximity."

The resonance responded to the thought before I could control it. Every marking on my body flared white-hot. The bond flooded with something raw and animal — not anger, not fear, but the biological imperative underneath both: she stays with me.

Renn watched my markings and said nothing for a moment. Then: "That reaction is why they won't win, Kel. You can't fake that. No sympathetic response, no biological anomaly, does that."

I looked at Taylor. She was pressed against the viewport, staring at stars she'd never seen before, one hand flat against the glass like she was trying to touch them. She had walked through a jungle, survived a slave ship, stabbed a Saurok, and married me in a cantina.

She should be exploring ruins and drinking kel'shor and learning every language in the galactic registry. Not performing her love for an audience of skeptics.

"I'll talk to her," I said. "She should know what to expect."

"Kel." Renn's voice was unusually serious. "She'll be fine. I watched her shake my hand and call herself 'recently married and currently terrified' and then immediately bond with me over making fun of you. She's going to walk into that Council chamber and be exactly herself. And that's going to be enough."

I hoped he was right.

Later in the crossing, once she could pull herself away from the glass, Taylor opened the shuttle's general archive and searched with the concentration she usually reserved for ruins. Renn set the translation layer to her language. She began with Kethari paired channels, rejected six results whose diagrams were wrong, followed a citation from a damaged survey report into an older materials study, and went completely still.

"Kel. Look at this."

The study described Kethari pathways that carried resonance through stone and glass — systems tuned to compatible frequencies rather than bloodlines. The diagrams used paired spirals close enough to touch without crossing. Taylor enlarged them, compared them to the rough sketch she'd made from memory, and copied the study and its source trail to a handheld slate. Then she read the entire chain more slowly, testing the discovery instead of merely wanting it.

At the rendezvous point, we docked with a larger Valorian cruiser for the final leg to Authority Station Nine. The transfer took twenty minutes and Taylor spent all of them trying not to look impressed, which failed completely.

That evening, Taylor and I had the cruiser's small private quarters. A proper bed, a proper shower, and walls between us and the galaxy. She came out in simple Valorian travel clothes Renn had found for her — soft gray trousers, a sleeveless wrap top, everything a little too elegant for someone who still looked ready to inventory ruins with a battered multitool. When she slid under the covers beside me, the fabric shifted just enough to bare the marking on my arm.

Her hand moved. My markings answered it. The bond made the distinction irrelevant.

"Tell me about the Council meeting," she said, settling against my chest. Her fingers found the marking over my sternum — the resonance bond marking, the one her hand always found first. She traced it. Slowly. My markings responded with a warmth that made my eyes close.

I told her everything. The Council factions. The likely questions. The biological assessment. Then the worst case: Thrane could request a separation assessment, locked doors between us for as long as the Council considered useful. The bond broadcast my terror as I said it. I let her feel it. Managed truth had nearly destroyed us once; I would not rebuild it under a kinder name.

She went still, then took my hand and waited until the violent flare of my markings eased. "If he asks," she said, "we fight the order before anyone closes a door. Together."

"Together," I agreed.

"So I have to prove the bond is real," she said.

"You do not have to prove anything. The bond is real. The proof exists in our biology."

"But they won't just take your word for it. They'll want to see it."

"They may ask for a resonance assessment. Proximity response, emotional verification."

"So basically they're going to watch you glow at me and decide if it counts."

"Essentially."

She propped herself up on my chest. Looked down at me. In the dim light of the quarters, her brown-and-green eyes were warm, and the bond between us was a steady pulse of connection that I felt more clearly now than I had at the beginning. It had settled. Deepened. Become as natural as breathing.

"Kel. What did the Council elder ask the last bonded mate who was challenged?"

"Never in person. The only formal challenge in living memory is the frontier case Renn warned us about — and that Council voided the declaration on paperwork alone, without ever questioning the mate. No bonded mate has stood before the Council to answer a challenge in over two hundred years."