Page 110 of Tracked and Taken

“I need you to—“

“No, Nat.”

“Mark me.”

My biology is already there. The canines. The rosettes. The pair-bond response broadcasting at saturation. My tail uncoils and comes up around her waist on its own. My mouth, which has been holding the discipline since her office, is no longer holding it. One inch down is the spot. One inch. My body has stopped asking. My body is only waiting for the inch.

The discipline is the front of my brain only.

The front of my brain is the thing standing between her and a mark.

The front of my brain is the smallest part of me.

And here is the part I will not say out loud while the compound is in her: I want to.

My body wants to. The male wants to. She is asking me for the exact thing I have wanted since I walked into that briefing room and she put her hand out and did not flinch at the claws. The wanting never stopped. It will not stop while I am alive, and the number of months I will be alive is the reason I am allowed to want and not allowed to take.

I am saying no to her and to myself with the same word.

“No, Natalie.”

“Tael — please—“

“No.”

“I am asking you.”

“You are not. The compound is. And I am — Nat, I am not going to mark you under another male’s chemistry. When you, the actual you, when the compound is out and you are looking at me — when you ask me then, I will say yes. I will say yes the second you say it. But not now. Not here. Not like this.”

The fury rises in her eyes at the rate the compound routes emotion through whatever channel is available.

“You are telling me no.”

“Yes.”

“Why.”

My voice breaks.

“Because I love you. Because you are not the one asking. Because I am not going to let what he did to you turn into what we did to each other. Because if I put my mouth on you now I will not stop, and I will hate myself, and you will hate me for taking your choice. I am holding the line for both of us until you are out of the compound and you can ask me again, and you will, and I will say yes, and we will do it together and clean.” If this works.

Her face.

The fury holds for a half-second.

Then it breaks.

Not in anger. The cry of a woman who has, in the last hour, been chemically hijacked, watched another male die with her blade in his throat, learned that her male has been dying of a condition he did not tell her about, and who is being refused the only thing her body is telling her would fix any of it, by the male refusing because he loves her enough to hold the line when she cannot.

She cries.

I sit down with her. I get my back against the bulkhead and I pull her into my lap and I hold her with both arms against my chest. My tail moves on its own — not at her waist. At her ankle. The small wrap a Draelith male’s tail makes around the smallest joint of his mate when he is, by no choice of his own, in a configuration of I have you, I have all of you, I am not letting any part of you go.

My canines are still dropped. I keep my mouth in her hair. Not on her throat. The difference is a millimeter. The millimeter is all I have left.

I rock her.

I have never rocked anyone. I am not a male whose body does rock. My body is doing it whether or not I have a precedent for it.