Page 10 of Tracked and Taken

Not mine. Theirs. The chamomile is coming from a tea station that occupies an entire corner of what should be operational workspace, sixty-two varieties arranged alphabetically and a kettle with a hand-painted label reading EMOTIONAL SUPPORT APPLIANCE. The poor decisions are architectural: fairy lights across the ceiling, a figurine on a monitor, a stuffed bear on Petra Phan’s desk, and two reinforced chairs positioned at angles that suggest Flossie Knight expects her clients to be very large or very emotional and has planned for both.

I am here for a briefing about an inside job on my station, involving my security infrastructure, conducted in a room that has a betting pool pinned to the wall with actual pushpins.

The available seating includes a chair with a crocheted seat cover in burnt orange. I remain standing.

“Welcome to the war room, lovey.” Flossie’s behind her desk, notebook open, pen in hand, tea steaming at her elbow. She’s already writing. “Tea?”

“I don’t drink on duty.”

“It’s chamomile. It has no tactical implications.”

“Everything has tactical implications.”

“Oh, I know, pet. I was testing.” She doesn’t look up. “Sit when you’re ready. Or don’t. Xor doesn’t sit either, and he’s a seven-foot Xarthian, so there’s precedent.”

Xor stands behind Flossie’s chair. Seven feet of crimson, gold eyes flat with operational focus, tail around her waist in the casual proprietary wrap I understand is less about possession and more about contact. He’s touching her because his body requires it. She’s letting him because she chose to. It’s the thing I’d have dismissed as unprofessional the first time I walked in here and am now finding difficult to dismiss as anything other than two people who belong to each other.

Petra is sitting on her desk. Not in a chair. On. The desk. The stuffed bear in her lap, an expression that says she is paying attention to approximately forty percent of the proceedings and using the remaining sixty to clock everything in the room that isn’t nailed down.

And Tael is in the reinforced chair at the briefing table.

Three feet to my left. Legs extended. Tail in its spiral. The sprawl that suggests, in every language I speak and several I don’t, that the furniture should feel flattered. The warm-wood-and-spice isn’t as strong as it was in my office this morning; the SNAG ventilation carries chamomile and whatever Petra has been eating. But it’s there. Underneath. Threading through the chamomile like a current under still water.

I focus on Flossie. Flossie is safe.

“Right.” Flossie flips to a fresh page. Her pen taps once. “Bay 7. Give it to me.”

“Xarthian male scent. Four months faded. Stationary at the loading dock, not ambulatory; he was already down when they brought him in.” Tael doesn’t embellish. He reports. “There’s a synthetic overlay on his signature. Pharmaceutical. I can’t identify it at four months’ decay, but it shouldn’t be there.”

“Sedative?”

“Something from a lab. Not a supply closet.”

“Hm.” The pen moves. “Natalie.”

“Someone with maintenance-level credentials extended the camera diagnostic cycle from twenty minutes to twenty-six. The modification was logged as a routine calibration update, designed to pass my own review criteria.” My voice is flat. It stays flat. “I wrote the schedule. The update wasn’t on it.”

“They used your system against the people it was supposed to protect.”

“Yes.”

Flossie writes.

“Xor.” She doesn’t look up. “Pair-bond biology. Give me the ugly version.”

Xor’s tail shifts against her waist. A micro-adjustment. I register it because I am, apparently, cataloging tail movements now.

“A Xarthian does not leave a pair-bond voluntarily. The biology does not permit it.” Xor’s voice is flat, the way a blade is flat. “The bond is a continuous pheromone exchange between mates. If they are separated, the signal degrades. The body compensates. Until it can’t. Then it begins to fail.”

“Fail how?”

“The human mate dies first. Her nervous system loses its regulator and stops knowing what to do. The Xarthian male dies second, slower, because our biology is more stubborn about it.”

Petra, quietly: “That’s horrible.”

“Yes.”

“How long does she have?” I ask.