Page 239 of Destined For Her Alien Daddy

“Because you thought it was destiny.”

“Because I thought it was conscription.”

Her breath catches.

I turn my hand beneath hers and lace our fingers together. “I spent too many years watching men use sacred language to make obedience beautiful. When the bond recognized you, I feared becoming one of them in a more intimate way. I feared wanting you because something ancient had commanded my blood.”

Her voice is very small. “Did you?”

“Want you?”

She nods against my shoulder.

“Yes.” I pause, because honesty deserves precision. “But wanting you did not frighten me as much as the possibility that my wanting was not mine.”

Anita closes her eyes. Pain moves across her face, not because I have wounded her, but because she understands too well. “I was afraid of that too.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean really afraid.” She lifts her head and looks at me directly. “I acted like I was above it because that’s what I do when something scares me. I use a lot of syllables and pretend panic is analysis. But the truth is, the bond terrified me because it felt like being overwritten. Like my choices were being quietly replaced by something older, bigger, and way more confident than I am.”

“You are very confident.”

“I am very loud. Different thing.”

My mouth curves. “Sometimes.”

She gives me a look, but it fades quickly. “I spent my whole life fighting people who wanted to define me before I got to define myself. Professors, institutions, family expectations, religious frauds from back home, every smug person who looked at me and saw a useful brain attached to an inconvenient mouth. Then the bond happened, and suddenly my own body felt like it had joined the committee.”

“That is a terrible committee.”

“The worst. Very poor transparency standards.”

I touch her cheek, following the line below the healing strip with the backs of my fingers. “It did not erase you.”

“No.” Her eyes shine. “It didn’t. But I had to learn that after panicking for several hundred consecutive pages of my life.”

“I also panicked.”

“Very stoically.”

“Vakutan panic has posture.”

A laugh breaks out of her, warm and surprised, and I feel it under my palm like sunlight through skin. She turns her face slightly into my touch. The trust in that motion is quieter than any vow and deeper than instinct.

“I love you,” she says. “I love you, and I know that belongs to me because I have had every chance to run from it.”

“You did run.”

“Emotionally. Not physically.”

“You also tried physically several times.”

“Those were tactical repositionings.”

“Of course.”

She shifts closer, careful of my wounds, and places her hand against the center of my chest where the worst of the burn has begun to heal beneath sealed dressings. Her palm rests above both hearts.