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“I will leave.”

She looked at him. “Do you want to?”

His jaw flexed. “No.”

“Neither do I.”

“The device is prompting you.”

“The device is prompting a process. It is not answering for me.” Kesta waited until she could separate anger, fear, desire and stubbornness into things she recognized. The desire remained. So did the decision she had made before the band lit. “I chose this on the wall. I am choosing it again now. I want the claim protected, and I want you. If either truth bothers you, say so.”

“The law bothers me.” His thumb moved across her knuckles when she took his hand. “You do not.”

“Then come back.”

Dreven kissed her with the hesitation burned away but not the care. The band continued glowing at the edge of Kesta’s vision, an unwanted witness rather than an author. He used his hands and mouth until her body tightened beneath him, then paused with the heat of him pressed between her thighs.

“Kesta.”

She understood the question. “Yes.”

He entered her slowly. The first stretch stole her breath; Dreven stopped until she pulled him closer and moved beneath him. Then the careful rhythm built. Kesta hooked one leg around his hip and told him, “More,” and he obeyed with a rough sound, each thrust deeper and harder while still leaving her room to change the angle or say enough.

Pleasure narrowed the room to his mouth against hers, the flex of his back beneath her hands and the fierce concentration in his face each time he checked that she was still with him. Kesta came with his name against his throat. Dreven followed only when she pulled him closer and told him not to hold back.

The band flashed copper-bright. VOLUNTARY MATING RECORDED. PROTECTION CONTRACT SEALED. EXTERNAL CLAIM CHALLENGE RESTRICTED.

Dreven swore in Kharovian.

Kesta was still trying to breathe. “Was that about the legal message or the sex?”

His forehead dropped to her shoulder, a reluctant laugh moving through him. “Both.”

For a little while neither moved. When Dreven started to withdraw from her space, Kesta caught his wrist. “You can stay.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

He lay beside her without assuming anything beyond the word. Kesta rested one hand on his chest and watched the band dim to ordinary black. “It watched.”

“Yes.”

“It recorded.”

“Yes.”

She traced one pale scar beneath her fingertips. “It still did not choose.”

Dreven covered her hand with his. “No.”

Nothing about the first mating was clean of survival, law or fear; very little on Kharon-Veil was. But when the machine had spoken, they had stopped. When they continued, the yes had belonged to them.

The condenser coughed somewhere beneath the eastern district. Once, then again, harder. Dreven lifted his head just before the water bells began to ring.

They dressed in seconds. Whatever tenderness might have followed would have to survive being postponed.

Then the eastern water bells began to ring.