Page 56 of Tracked and Taken

“You said we’d talk.”

“At the cache.”

“We’re at the cache. I’m washing up. Then we talk.”

She takes the cubicle. The door closes. The spigot runs. I sit on the bunk and I breathe.

I strip out of the pants and pull on the soft gray sleep pair from the crate. I do not put on a shirt; the crate has one, folded, unworn, three years old, and I leave it folded. The bandages need air. My skin runs hot.

The cubicle door clicks open behind me, and I do not turn around. I am at the crate putting the ruined pants into the waste bag. The rosettes across my shoulder blades and down the spine. The bandage at the left shoulder. The line of muscle along the lat to the waistband.

The room goes quiet. She is not moving. I can feel the weight of her attention on my skin the way I feel temperature.

I tie the bag. I straighten. I turn.

Cotton tank, institutional gray. Soft pants. Hair down, the strand at her temple finally behind her ear. Barefoot. Her bandaged forearm catching the amber. She is not looking at the bandages.

The half-grin lands on my mouth before I authorize it.

“Bunk’s yours.”

“It’s both of ours.”

“Yes.”

“Inside or outside.”

“You take inside. The wall is colder than I am.”

She lies down and turns her face to the wall leaving me the outside edge. I take it.

My back to her back. A hand’s breadth of air. The bunk fits two only just, and within two minutes it has warmed through, and her shoulders, hunched against the rock, drop a quarter-inch, and the shiver she has been running since the corridor and refusing to acknowledge stops.

The purr starts again. I do not suppress it. There is no point in pretending.

Ninety seconds. Then, without turning over:

“Vosk.”

“Torres.”

“Mate.”

I had prepared for Kesh. For Severin. For the cup. Natalie Torres opens with operational; she has opened with the word I said at a Jixian’s counter.

“What do you want to know.”

“What it means. To your species. Plain language.”

Her breath is on the bandage on my left shoulder. Her warmth runs along my spine. My body is the warmest it has been in years, and the proximity is doing exactly what my biology wants it to do.

“A female my biology has identified as compatible for pair-bonding. It happens at first contact. Mine confirmed in your office. I did not authorize it. The biology runs ahead of the brain and does not, after, ask permission.”

“What does pair-bonding involve.”

“Pheromone exchange. Skin contact. A specific sequence over a specific period. The two cardiovascular systems become aware of each other. The two scent registers carry each other. Once formed it does not unform. The two lives become the lives of two people who are, in a way you would have to be Draelith to fully feel, not without each other.”

A silence.