Page 71 of Fought and Found

"I think the briefing was incomplete," I say. "And Saar noticed."

She squeezes the tail-tip. We watch the empty corridor. Then she pulls me toward the cockpit. "Come on, lovey. We're on final approach and you need to not look like you've just committed treason."

"I have committed treason."

"Yes, but there's a way to do it with style. I'll teach you. Step one: cardigan."

"I am not wearing a cardigan."

"Step one is under negotiation."

Junction One is trying to kill me with kindness.

The docking level alone contains forty-seven distinct heartbeats within my sensory range. Eleven species. A Corsairian with a metabolic signature that registers as a small fire. A pair of Velaxians whose pheromone output is flooding the ventilation system with something that smells like burnt sugar and regret. Somewhere above, someone is cooking meat in a way that would be classified as a chemical weapon under three separate treaties.

My dermal receptors are running hot. Every thermal signature in the crowd registers—a cascade of heat maps overlapping, shifting, bodies pressing too close in corridors designed for species half my size. The Dens trained me to process sensory overload in combat conditions. Combat conditions are quiet compared to a civilian space station at midday. Combat conditions do not involve someone's child running past my legs and screaming about a lost toy and the pitch of the scream hitting a frequency that makes my ear canals ache.

I run the crowd anyway. Old training, new purpose: somewhere on this station is an acquisition team that docked before we did, and every face I clear is one less place for it to stand.

I am seven feet of crimson predator in a market district. I am not subtle. People see me and give way—the instinctive retreat of prey species recognising something that could eat them, the wide berth that has followed me through every civilian space I have ever entered. I have never minded it before.

I mind it now. I mind it because she does not give way. She walks beside me—small, warm, her shoulder level with my hip—and when the crowd parts around me she fills the space they leave, pressing close, her arm brushing mine. She is not afraid of the thing that makes the crowd flinch. She has never been afraid of it. And the people who know her see her walking with the thing the crowd flinches from and they recalibrate.

Her scent cuts through the overload. Peppermint. Floral. Underneath, something biological—mine now, my pheromones layered into her skin chemistry. The bonding has rewritten her scent signature. She smells like herself and like me and the combination is a navigational beacon in the chaos. My body orients toward her through the crowd the way it orients toward oxygen. The layering is hours-oldand unmistakable and every chemoreceptive species on this level can read it. There was time to shower before we docked. She chose not to. I am attempting not to translate what that choice does to my hindbrain while surrounded by civilians, and the attempt is failing at a rate Sprout could graph.

A vendor shouts her name—"Flossie! You're late, where's my routing update?"—and she waves without slowing. A tea seller holds out a sample. She takes it one-handed, sips, nods, keeps walking. A dock worker asks after Morrison and she gives him Morrison's regards plus a piece of information about schedule changes that makes his face light up. She moves through Junction One like she is part of its circulatory system, and I move behind her like an asteroid caught in a planet's gravity.

A male courier. Human. Tall, dark-haired, easy smile. Touches her arm.

My tail wraps her waist.

The motion is complete before my brain processes the command, which is because my brain did not issue the command. Three and a half feet of prehensile muscle closing around her midsection and pulling her against my hip in a public corridor because a male with baseline vitals and an inoffensive handshake touched her forearm. My tail has an independent foreign policy, and it is currently conducting a territorial campaign without authorization.

"Davin, this is Xor. Xor, Davin." She has not removed my tail. She is conducting introductions as though there is not a visible, prehensile claim wrapped around her body. "He's a friend."

Davin—the friend—looks at the tail. Looks at me. Seven feet. Horns. Gold eyes that are communicating something my diplomatic training does not have a classification for. Davin looks at Flossie.

"New development?"

"Recent. Ongoing." She pats my tail the way she pats Gerald the ceramic figurine. Affectionate. Unimpressed. "I'll explain over tea sometime."

Davin retreats—wisely—with a smile that suggests he understands the situation better than I do.

"Jealous?" She is grinning. The grin of a woman who is enjoying this.

"Xarthians do not experience jealousy. Jealousy implies insecurity regarding one's position. I am not insecure."

"Your tail is literally pulling me away from Davin."

"My tail is concerned about proximity safety in a crowded environment. This is a standard precautionary measure."

"Mm-hm." She does not remove it. She shifts closer. Leans into the grip. Her hip against mine, her warmth bleeding through the cardigan, the tail tightening because she let it tighten and the letting is worse than the touching because the letting means she wants it and the wanting is mutual and we are in a public corridor and my cock is responding to the proximity with the subtlety of a male who has not been in public with a bonded mate before and has discovered that public proximity is a different category of torture.

The market roars and she rises on her toes to be heard over it, one hand flat on my chest, her mouth at the underside of my jaw. "Stop growling, lovey. You'll frighten the locals." Her lips graze the fuzz. My claws cycle once. She steps back with the smile of a woman conducting an experiment whose results she already owns.

Sprout's orb descends from above. Not to Flossie's shoulder.

To mine.