Page 68 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

Let them study it. Let them measure it. Let them try to understand what they had never encountered before.

The bond was real. And Taylor was mine.

And on the eve of a day that would decide whether she could keep the life she had chosen in this new world, I would hold her while she slept and be grateful for every second of it.

27

TAYLOR

The Valorian Authority station was the most impressive thing I'd ever seen, and I had seen an alien jungle planet and the inside of a slave ship.

It hung in space like a city turned on its side: massive and elegant, dark metal and sweeping architecture with lights that moved in patterns I suspected were meaningful. Through the cruiser viewport, I watched it grow from a distant point to an overwhelming presence that filled the entire view.

"That's where your people live?" I asked.

"This is a military-administrative station," Kel said. "Not a residential world. Our homeworld is considerably more impressive."

"More impressive than THAT?"

"Considerably."

I was beginning to understand that Valorians did not do things small.

We docked. The first breath of station air hit me and I almost cried. It was breathable. Not the warm, spore-heavy jungle air that had been inflaming my lungs for ten days. The station's environmental system had been calibrated for me — Renn's doing, Kel told me quietly. Earth-standard oxygen mix, adjusted humidity, filtered particulates. The persistent pressure behind my sternum that I'd been living with since day three lifted the rest of the way, and I stood in the airlock taking deep, greedy breaths while Kel watched me with an expression I could only describe as pained relief. He'd felt every labored breath through the bond. He just hadn't been able to fix it.

The rash was already fading — the cruiser's medical officer had matched a systemic antifungal against the baselines Kel's scanner had built over ten days, walked me through every risk, and waited while I decided. The shot he gave me during the transit cleared the alien spores from my system, finishing the job Zhara's soothing salve had started. My hands had stopped trembling. I was still underweight and my muscles still ached, but for the first time since Earth, my body wasn't actively fighting the air I was breathing.

We walked through corridors of dark, polished metal that reflected the light from Kel's markings as we passed. Valorians in the corridors stopped to stare. Not at me — or not only at me. At him. At his markings, which were blazing their steady, warm glow in my proximity. In Valorian culture, markings like that broadcast one thing: bonded. Newly bonded. And every Valorian in that corridor could read the message.

They looked at me next. The alien. The human. The first mate of her kind.

I straightened my spine. Squared my shoulders. I was wearing borrowed Valorian clothes that had been hastily adjusted for my size and still didn't quite fit, and my hair was in its eternal messy bun. Zhara's giant boots were finally gone; the cruiser quartermaster had found me travel shoes only a half size too big. I was about to walk into the most important meeting of anyone's life in slightly loose alien footwear.

I'd walked into worse.

The Council chamber was circular and tiered for ceremony. Seven Council members sat in elevated positions around the perimeter, and above them, alone, the Speaker. The center of the room was open — a spotlight, essentially. Where Kel and I would stand.

Renn had prepped me: names, positions, arguments. Speaker Aveth called the questions and kept the count and did not vote. Council Member Thrane, the traditionalist who would challenge the bond, sat directly ahead, elevated above the other six. Silver-haired, markings dimmed with age, and even from the floor I could feel him looking at me. Renn had warned me about the last part of the custom too: whoever challenges a bond reads the finding aloud, win or lose. They make him say it. It's the oldest thing in the chamber.

I stood in the center of that room with my bonded mate. Terror shoved my pulse into my throat. I pressed my tongue to the back of my teeth until the tremor passed, and no one in the room got to see it. I was Taylor Jennings from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who had survived a jaguar and a slave ship and an alien jungle and a bar fight, and I was not going to be intimidated by a room full of glowing aliens in fancy chairs.

Kel spoke first. The formal account. The slave ship, the resonance trigger, the escape, the crash, the bond. He spoke in Valorian, precise and measured, the warrior delivering a report. But his markings betrayed him, pulsing brighter at certain points. When he described the resonance triggering. When he described the first time I'd touched his markings. When he said my name.

Thrane listened with an expression carved from stone. When Kel finished, Speaker Aveth inclined her head.

"The Council acknowledges the declaration. The Council now evaluates the claim." Her eyes moved to me. "The human will approach."

Thrane's hand went up before I could take a step. "Before this Council evaluates anything. The declaration was made in defiance of a standing extraction order issued by a Commander of the Third Division. Retrieval Specialist Sorath was instructed to bring this individual in and to form no further bond. He has brought her in wearing a bond he was ordered not to form. An instrument created in disobedience is void on its face."

Kel had told me this was coming. Hearing it said out loud, in a room full of people who could act on it, was a different animal entirely.

Renn stepped forward from the doors. "The order was live, Councilor. I will not pretend otherwise. But it bound Specialist Sorath, not the bond. Commander Veska referred the resonance claim to this Council herself — her words, on the priority channel: the Council will need to review. The question of the bond was already yours. Whether an officer disobeyed a lawful instruction is a disciplinary matter for the Third Division, and they are welcome to it. It is not a defect in an instrument witnessed by twenty civilians."

"Convenient," Thrane said. "A specialist decides, alone and under no supervision, which of his orders may be set aside for a woman. If this Council blesses that, it teaches every officer in the fleet that a strong enough feeling is a lawful excuse."

"Then discipline him for it," Renn said. "Do not void her."

Thrane held there a moment longer than was comfortable. "Then the record will show I raised it."