Page 67 of Fought and Found

“I chose you when you shot a mercenary over my shoulder at two and a half inches and didn’t hesitate. When you offered me tea while I was robbing you. When you called me beautiful and the word didn’t have a file and I couldn’t —“ His voice fractures. “I am still building a place large enough to hold that word and your face when you said it.”

One tear. I wipe it with my thumb and he watches the tear the way he watches everything — total attention, the face that is the only navigational reference he needs.

"So yes. The male, not the biology. Yes to the Petal and the fairy lights and the terrible pay and Sprout and the woman who looked at a weapon and saw a person." His thumb traces the bite mark on my shoulder through the cardigan. "Yes. Her. That life."

"Good." Same word. Same weight. "Good."

I kiss him. Soft. His hand cups the back of my head — his palm larger than my skull — and he holds me against his mouth and the purr vibrates through both of us and the co-pilot's chair creaks under our combined weight.

"However," he says against my lips. The arrogance sliding back. "My tea is objectively superior to —"

"Don't."

"Your water temperature varies by three degrees between preparations. This is not artistry. This is chaos."

"Chaos is a style."

"Chaos is a failure of methodology."

"Your methodology produced tea that Sprout classified as a biohazard."

"I would like it noted," Sprout says, "that both of you are wrong and the mattress still needs replacing."

We are bickering about tea in a co-pilot's chair that fits neither of us while I'm straddling a bonded Xarthian and his hand is on my hip and his tail is on my ankle and Junction One is closing fast and Morrison is going to kill me and I am happier than I have been in ten years.

I pull the notebook from the cardigan. Open it on his chest — using him as a desk because he is large enough and convenient.

"Twelve years of entries. Lost shipments. Missing persons flagged as errors. Person-shaped gaps in systems designed not to notice." I tap the Drask page — the transaction code, scared of the courier. Why? "Someone should be doing something about these. Not the systems. The systems are the problem. Someone outside. Someone small enough to slip through the gaps."

His eyes are on the notebook. His hand is on my thigh. The attention he gives tactical briefings, combined with the warmth he only shows me.

"What are you proposing?" His voice has shifted — not clinical, not soft. Interested. The sound of a male hearing an idea that fits a shape he didn't know he had.

"Something with more teeth." The old phrase. The protector instinct Morrison calls crusading. "A ship and a crew and cases nobody else takes. We've got a Tier 1 operative with SRS clearance knowledge, a courier with twelve years of sector experience, an AI with the best tactical processing in the Reach, and a notebook full of evidence." I close it. "Salvage work. Retrieval. The things other people write off."

"Salvage and retrieval solutions," he says. Dry. Then his markings flush as he hears the initials.

I stare at him. "You did not just accidentally name our company after your ex-employer."

"The coincidence is —"

"SNAG," Sprout announces. "Salvage, Navigational Assistance, and General — I'm still workshopping the G. I have registered the name. You're welcome."

"Sprout, that doesn't —"

"It does. It's mine. Moving on."

I look at him. He looks at me. And the smile arrives — the fourth. Small, lopsided, unpracticed, and his eyes change shape when he smiles. The gold warms. The hard lines ease. For one unguarded second he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

"Beautiful," I say. Because someone should keep saying it until the word has a home.

He presses his face into my neck. Hides there. The purr rattling through my collarbone. His fuzz against my jaw. The male who does not know how to be called beautiful learning, one repetition at a time. His arms wrap my waist — both arms, both hands flat on my back, pulling me tight against his chest. The embrace of a body that takes up most of a cockpit, folding itself around a woman who takes up almost none of it.

I hold him back. My arms around his neck. My fingers in the fuzz at his nape. The size of him and the smallness of me and the way we fit anyway — not because the geometry makes sense but because we have decided it will.

"Drink your tea, lovey." Against his horn. "Junction One soon. Morrison to survive. A villain to beat. A company to build."

He lifts his head. Kisses me. The slow, thorough kiss of a male who has learned what his mouth can do and is quietly pleased about it.