Page 58 of Tracked and Taken

“Natalie.”

“I’m going to sleep now. I need to know what this would cost me. I am not going to decide tonight. I am not going to decide for a long time.”

“Whatever you decide.”

Her breathing changes. The lengthening. The surrender of a soldier who has been refusing sleep and has, somewhere in the last sixty seconds, lost the refusal. She falls asleep with her hand on the small of my back, and I do not breathe for one full count, and then I breathe, and I do not move.

I lie still in the dark and I do not sleep.

The cache hums at low power. Thane snores through the hatch. Her hand on the small of my back is the warmest contact I have had in years, and somewhere in the second hour I close my eyes against the bulkhead and count breaths instead of seconds.

The realization arrives late.

I have not been trusted like this since SRS. Not by the contracts I ran after. Not by Flossie, who hired me and watches me the way she watches everyone, with affection and the specific awareness of a woman who has seen what I can do.

Natalie has seen what I can do. Natalie has put her hand on the small of my back in her sleep anyway.

The trust is not negotiated. It is given. I lie in the dark and let the realization do what it is going to do, and I have done nothing yet to deserve it.

I will. I will work the rest of my operational life to deserve it.

For now, her breathing against my shoulder blade. Her hand on my back. Her name for me in the dark.

I keep watch.

10

Mate: Priority

Natalie

Warmth.

The first thing I know, before the room or the bunk or the hour, is that I am warm in a way I am not accustomed. My left side is against rock I can feel through the blanket as cold; the cache runs at low power, and on any other morning I would be shivering.

I am not. The warmth is weight, an arm across my waist. The purr registers next, because my nervous system has an order of operations that overrides my training. Low. Steady. Running through his chest at my back and into the mattress and up my spine to where my heart is beating, and disagreeing with it. His hand is at my hipbone, flat, the heat of his palm through the cotton tank a thing I stopped being able to pretend not to notice somewhere in the night. His breath at the back of my neck is slow and even. Asleep.

I lie very still. My body has already decided it likes the weight.

Mate, my brain says, as if I signed paperwork. I have not signed the paperwork.

His thumb, in sleep, makes one slight adjustment against the jut of my hipbone, his purr deepens half a register, and my ribcage takes the next breath visibly, and his palm rides it. His arm tightens a quarter-inch. He is coming back in the slow Draelith way, no startle, no transition, awareness settling into a body that was absent a half-second ago.

He does not move his arm.

“Torres.”

“Vosk.”

“How long have you been awake.”

“Six minutes.”

“You did not wake me.”

“You were asleep.”

The silence after is longer than it needs to be. The purr drops a quarter-register. Gratitude he will not put into a sentence.