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“Close the files,” he said.
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Close them.”
“Why?”
“Because I told you to.”
A laugh almost escaped me, but there was nothing funny about the way he was looking at me.
“You hired the wrong human if that’s the explanation you’re going with.”
His jaw clenched. “I did not hire you.”
“No. You petitioned to keep me from being thrown back into mating review.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It felt pretty similar from where I was standing.”
Silence settled between us.
I regretted the sharpness almost immediately.
Not because it wasn’t true.
Because Sera’n had been good to me.
When the warrior I’d been matched with died before either of us had decided whether we even wanted what the registration system claimed we might have, the administration hadn’t known what to do with me.
I had met him twice after the pairing was announced.
The first time, officials stood between us explaining percentages and reproductive expectations while he looked almost as uncomfortable as I felt. He had been enormous even by Zunatorian standards, dark gray, with muted green light beneath his skin. He barely spoke to me. I got the feeling that someone had put him up to something he didn’t truly want.
The second time was days later, before his unit left on assignment.
We had stood several feet apart and exchanged a few awkward words neither of us knew what to do with.
Then he left.
He never came back.
There had been no courtship. No mating. No bond.
Just a number, a possibility, and a future other people had started planning before either of us had chosen it.
With a strong compatibility result, no accepted bond, and no living prospective mate, I had become paperwork.
A file waiting for reassignment.
Then Sera’n found my Earth occupation buried in my intake record.
Medical laboratory technician.
Clinical specimen processing.
