Page 45 of Fought and Found

His name. Not the blade. The tether—the register I found in the bunk with my body against his and the purr in my ribs. I say it across the corridor at a normal volume, with the blood running warm and fast between my fingers pressed to my temple, and I say it like: I’m here. Stay here.

He stops.

The claws don’t retract—not yet, the combat chemistry too hot—but the downward force holds. His head turns a fraction, andthe gold eyes find me against the mineral wall with my hand pressed to the cut, blood mapping the side of my face, and something happens to him that I’ve never seen. The weapon and the male, both present, and something underneath both of them—the architecture cracking under the weight of what he almost did and the sight of my blood and the fact that I am still standing.

My body responds to this with a heat that has no business being present in a corridor where someone is bleeding. It’s present anyway. Because I am watching the restraint engage in real time, and the restraint is choosing me.

“Don’t kill him.” My voice. Steadier than it has any right to be.

He looks at me. The markings drain another degree—just enough. “He’s the only one who knows how this contract was built,” I say. “How it was routed. Who signed off. Kill him and whoever sent him sends ten more, and the next one won’t know us.” A breath. “We need what he knows.”

He swallows. The below-language sound dies. The markings drain from black toward dark, degree by degree. The claws pull back from the agent’s throat—not all the way, but enough. When he looks at me again the gold is still blown wide and the pupils are vast and dark but the register has shifted.

He is holding back now. I can see the restraint in every line of him—the claws that could still close, the tail that could crush, the combat chemistry still running hot and the male overriding it one deliberate breath at a time. The restraint is doing something to me that the fighting alone did not. The restraint is choosing me. I can see exactly what it costs.

“I know him.” His voice scrapes out raw. Not clinical. Not operational. “Operative Saar. Tier 1, recruited two years after me. We trained together at SRS’s advanced program.”

He knows him. He is holding a former colleague to my deck plating with the combat claws that were just ready to end him, and the restraint isn’t only mercy. It’s grief.

“Sprout, can you disable the pursuit craft from the engineering panel?”

“Already in progress. The automated systems are SRS standard—predictable and, I must say, insulting. Thirty seconds.”

“Xor. Can Saar be contained?”

“The cargo bunk. The door seals from outside.” His voice is rough. The combat chemicals still running. “Saar, you will stand down. You will enter the containment area. You will not be harmed.”

The agent on the floor—Saar—turns his head. Silver eyes finding Xor’s face, bright and assessing even from the deck plating. Up close, the blue skin is flawless—no scars, no visible wear, as though the male fights for a living and has never once been caught doing it. The bone structure is worse at this distance. Sharper. The kind of handsome that is clearly a professional asset and has been weaponized accordingly.

“Xax.” His voice is smooth—even winded, even with Xor’s claws at his throat, the voice is cultured and unhurried, the accent of someone educated across multiple systems. “They said you’d gone non-compliant.” The silver eyes shift—not to Xor’s face but past him. To me. The assessment is instant, thorough, and not remotely subtle. “They said the courier compromised you. I’m beginning to see why.”

My grip on Betsy doesn’t shift. I file the comment where it belongs.

“Thecourier has a name,” Xor says. And the way he says it—the weight, the certainty, the complete absence of hesitation—lands in my sternum like a fist.

Saar is in the cargo bunk. Door sealed. Sprout monitoring vitals—the injured knee needs medical attention that I will provide when the adrenaline drops, because that is what I do, I fix things, even the things that were just trying to kill me.

The medical kit is under the berth. Thermal thread, antiseptic, a splint that adjusts to non-human bone density—Morrison trained me to patch up anyone, any species, because in the Outer Rim you don’t get to be choosy about your patients. I unseal the bunk door, kit in one hand, Betsy in the other, because I am not an idiot.

Saar is sitting on the bunk. The silver eyes track me from the doorway—calm, curious, the expression of a male who has been in containment before and considers it a temporary inconvenience. The injured knee is at an angle that makes me wince. Up close, in decent light, I can see what the emergency strips hid. The blue skin has a faint luminescence to it—not glowing, exactly, but catching light in a way that makes it look lit from within. High cheekbones. A mouth that has probably talked its way out of more situations than Xor’s claws have fought through. He is, objectively, a strikingly handsome male.

He is also the male who came here to kill us, and the handsomeness lands with all the warmth of a well-polished weapon.

“I’m going to splint that knee,” I say. No pet name. No “lovey.” I reserve those for people who haven’t recently attempted to murder themale was one inch from kissing when you walked through that airlock. “Don’t move. Don’t be clever.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” The smooth voice again. He watches me kneel, watches my hands work the splint with the efficiency Morrison drilled into me, and the silver eyes are doing something I recognize because I’ve seen Xor do it—cataloging. Every detail. My hands, my face, the cardigan, the blaster within my reach. “You know, when they briefed me on this assignment, the courier was described as a low-priority civilian target. OOPS delivery personnel. Non-threatening.” A pause. “Nobody mentioned the aim. Or the cardigan. Is that a fox?”

“It’s a fox. Hold still.”

“Also—“ he says, and his voice shifts just slightly, the professional charm giving way to something more considered, “—the contract routing had irregularities I should have escalated. Tier 1 deployments don’t usually arrive via third-party relay servers. I flagged it. Command said proceed.” The silver eyes move to the sealed cargo door and back. Assessing. “I am finding that decision progressively harder to defend.”

I tighten the splint. He doesn’t flinch, which tells me everything about his pain tolerance. I don’t comment on the routing. I file it—flag, relay server, third party—under things Xor needs to hear the moment the door is sealed.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Sprout announces from the corridor, orb pulsing a warning amber. “I can confirm this based on twelve years of vocal pattern analysis. The current tone is reserved for customs officials and people who have recently tried to kill her.”

“Your AI is charming.”

“My AI is correct.” I stand. “Knee’s stabilized. Don’t put weight on it for six hours. Sprout will monitor.”