Page 122 of Thexan

“I gathered that.”

His gaze flicked to Thexan. “You’re going to want to see this.”

Thexan’s expression did not change, but the bond shifted in a way I had learned to recognize. His attention sharpened, not with alarm, but with the sudden alignment of old knowledge and present uncertainty.

We crossed the yard together, Tanner on one side, Thexan on the other, while the settlement slowed around us in that familiar way I had not seen for a long time. People still watched when something unusual happened. That had not changed.

At the outer gate, an old transport sat half-crooked in the road, its engine ticking unevenly as if it had only made it this far out of spite. A human woman stood beside it, one hand braced on the door, her face pale with exhaustion beneath a layer of dust. She looked younger than I expected, though hardship could disguise age in either direction. Her other hand was locked around the wrist of the Mesaarkan male standing at her side.

He was injured.

Not as badly as Thexan had been when he came to me, but enough that my medic’s mind began cataloging damage before I had fully taken in the rest of him. His posture was rigid, his scaled body angled toward the woman with unmistakable protectiveness, though there was strain in every line of him. One side of his chest bore a scorched wound that had been wrapped badly and recently. His gaze moved over the settlement, over Tanner, over me, and then stopped on Thexan.

Neither Mesaarkan spoke at first.

The woman saw me looking at their joined hands and tightened her grip as if she expected someone to separate them.

“No,” she said, voice hoarse but fierce. “If you’re going to help him, I stay with him.”

Something in my chest shifted.

Not because I knew her but I remembered.

I remembered blood outside my infirmary door, a hand closing around my wrist, a body that should have failed and didn’t because something stronger than sense had kept him moving toward me. I remembered standing in a doorway while people stared and trying to explain a bond I barely understood. I remembered choosing first because there was no other way to keep him alive, and then choosing again because survival had turned into love.

Thexan looked down at me.

He knew it too.

I stepped forward slowly, making sure the woman saw my hands, my face, the absence of threat.

“I’m Brynn,” I said. “This is our settlement, and that is my infirmary.”

Her eyes flicked toward the building, then back to me. “He needs a medic.”

“I know.”

“He won’t let anyone touch him unless I’m there.”

“I know that too.”

Her expression wavered, suspicion cracking just enough for fear to show through. “You don’t know anything about us.”

I glanced at Thexan, then back at her.

“I know more than you think.”

The Mesaarkan male shifted, the movement small but protective. Thexan stepped forward then, not between us, but beside me. He lowered his head slightly, not in submission, not quite greeting, but acknowledgment.

“You are bonded,” Thexan said.

The woman’s breath caught.

The male’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

Tanner muttered something under his breath that sounded a great deal like, “Here we go again.”

I ignored him.