Page 39 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"Echoes. Emotions. General direction rather than specific detail."

She went slightly pink in a way I had learned was associated with human embarrassment. "That is... deeply unfair."

"The bond is not selective. I can dampen what I send. I cannot choose what I receive."

"No, I mean—" She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. "I mean you've been walking beside me for eight days feeling everything I—" She stopped. Dropped her hands. "Oh my god."

"Taylor—"

"The POOL, Kel. You felt the pool."

I did not answer. My markings answered for me, flaring bright enough to cast shadows on the rock.

She stared at me. Then she laughed. A real laugh, sudden and startled and completely involuntary, and the resonance translated it as joy and my entire body answered, warmth running out through every marking from my jaw to my feet.

"This is insane," she said, still laughing. "This is completely, absolutely insane."

"I am aware."

"You can feel my emotions. You glow when I'm near you. Your body permanently recognizes me as compatible and you've been quietly losing your mind about it for a week."

"That is an accurate summary."

She laughed again. I did not understand why the accurate summary had prompted more laughter — it was a precise restatement of the facts she had just described. But the laughter produced that golden frequency in the bond, warm and bright and addictive, so I did not ask for clarification. I was learning that with Taylor, my factual observations frequently triggered this response, and I had no theory as to why. Zhara, leaning against the disabled shuttle, caught my eye and made a gesture in Talori body language that roughly translated to: she likes you, stop making it worse.

I had no intention of making it worse. I also had limited confidence in my ability to prevent it.

Taylor stopped laughing. Looked at me with those eyes — green in the daylight, my brain cataloged uselessly — and her expression settled into something serious and open and brave.

"We're going to figure this out," she said. Not a question.

"Yes."

"But if you keep anything from me again — anything, I don't care how complicated or impossible or scary it is — I'm going to find out anyway and I'll be twice as mad."

"Understood."

"Good." She turned to Zhara. "Which way?"

Zhara pointed southwest. Taylor started walking.

Her response through the bond thinned with distance — and something in it dragged, the way a hand does when it lets go a beat late. That was the part distance did not explain. She didn't want to walk away from me. The distance cost her something. Small, but real.

I followed her. My markings glowed steady and bright against the thin plateau air, and for the first time since the resonance had triggered on the slave ship, I did not try to hide them.

17

TAYLOR

We walked, and he told me everything.

Not all at once. In pieces, over the hours, as the plateau gave way to thinner jungle and the terrain sloped gradually downward toward what Zhara said was a coastal lowland. But he told me. Every question I asked, he answered. No deflection. No "complicated." Just the truth.

The things I already suspected, he confirmed: his first-tier recognition was permanent for him, the emotional connection was real, the way he could feel my fear and my pain through the connection was biological fact. But underneath my own feelings for him, there was a difference I'd never considered.

For him, it had always been this absolute. This settled.

"Okay," I said, after absorbing that for a solid forty seconds. "I need the full specs. What does the bond actually do, and what doesn't it do? Because every few days it seems to do something new and I'd like to stop being surprised."