The timing of my courier routes through this sector has been entirely coincidental, according to my OOPS logs. Pure chance that my winter cargo runs require fuel stops and weather shelterprecisely when Earth’s northern hemisphere celebrates something called “Christmas.”
The Orion Outposts Postal Service—unfortunately nicknamed OOPS by those who think galactic logistics are a joke—takes a dim view of couriers who develop personal interests in their routes. Mother Morrison, our senior dispatcher at The Junction, has built her reputation on running the most efficient courier network in three galaxy clusters. She doesn’t tolerate romance, attachment, or anything that interferes with on-time delivery schedules.
Which makes my three-year pattern of winter route deviations to Earth both professionally suicidal and personally essential.
The holiday fascinates me—humans gathering in their warmest buildings, exchanging resources, creating light in the darkest season. Some form of winter survival ritual, perhaps. Or maybe something more, judging by the way Fiona decorates her sanctuary with tiny lights and evergreen branches despite spending the celebration alone.
I’ve been studying human holiday customs for three years now, trying to understand why she participates in the rituals while isolating herself from the community aspects. The contradiction intrigues me. She hangs lights like signals to lost travelers, plays music like a beacon of warmth, yet maintains careful distance from the gatherings she could easily join.
Perhaps she is like me—observing traditions from the outside, participating without truly belonging.
Through the frost-covered window, I can see her working beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, auburn strands catching the light as she leans over an ancient human combustion engine. Those clever hands work with economic precision that speaks of years of experience and natural talent.
Beautiful. Competent. Mine.
The thought comes with such force that I have to clench my fangs to keep from growling aloud. The claiming instinct that has been building for three years suddenly sharpens into something approaching desperation. She is so close. Close enough that if I enhanced my hearing just slightly, I could follow her heartbeat. Close enough that her scent carries on every gust of wind that finds its way through the storm.
I have watched that dispatch operator approach her with clumsy persistence, offering help she doesn’t need, solutions to problems she has already solved. But I see what he cannot—a warrior who has built something magnificent from the ashes of childhood loss, who chooses solitude not because she cannot handle companionship but because she refuses to settle for anything that demands she make herself smaller.
Someone who understands that competence is the most attractive trait a being can possess.
I see my perfect match, if she will have a monster.
The wound in my shoulder sends fresh fire down my arm, and I realize the decision is being made for me. My enhanced healing can compensate for much—Xarian's are remarkably resilient—but not indefinitely. Not when crude human ammunition tears through tissue designed for higher-tech weaponry.
I could call for extraction. One signal to the OOPS emergency frequency, and Mother herself would have a retrieval team here within hours, along with a disciplinary review that would end my career. My cargo holds medical supplies destined for a research colony in the Outer Rim—critical medications that will save hundreds of livesif delivered on time. My duty as a courier is clear, my professional reputation built on never missing a delivery.
But there’s a problem. These haven’t been sanctioned route deviations. For three years, I’ve been filing falsified weather reports and emergency stop requests, bending OOPS regulations to justify my presence in this sector during Earth’s winter season. Mother Morrison has built OOPS into the most reliable courier service in known space by eliminating exactly this kind of behavior—personal attachment, emotional compromise, anything that puts feelings before freight.
She’s already suspicious. Last month’s communication included pointed questions about my fuel consumption patterns and an ominous notation about “courier efficiency reviews.” If I call for extraction now, the investigation will reveal my unauthorized obsession with a single human settlement.
With her.
OOPS doesn’t just discourage personal attachments—they’re professional death sentences. Mother has grounded better couriers than me for less. She’d transfer me to a desk position processing livestock shipping manifests in some godforsaken inner system office, far from her. Far from the stars. Far from everything that makes this life worth living.
Ginzar has been covering my irregular route schedules for months, filing perfectly legitimate holiday cargo runs to justify the gaps in my reports. “You’re walking straight into Mother Morrison’s crosshairs,” he warned during our last communication. “She’s already asking questions about courier retention rates and emotional stability. Half the senior courier corps has gone soft—Suki with her warlord, even stuck up Wi'kar got himself mated to somehuman princess. Mother’s starting to think love is some kind of cosmic plague affecting her best couriers.”
He claimed to understand the poetry of winter deliveries, of bringing warmth to the coldest places, but I could hear the genuine concern beneath his teasing. “You’re going to have to approach her eventually,” he told me. “Three years of watching is starting to look less like patience and more like cowardice dressed up as strategy. And if Mother catches wind of this before you make your move, you’ll lose everything.”
He wasn’t wrong.
But as I watch Fiona push escaped hair behind her ear with the back of her wrist, duty becomes an abstract concept compared to the biological imperative singing in my blood.
For three winters, I have been content to watch from shadows, to protect her from a distance. But bleeding into the snow outside her sanctuary, I understand that contentment was merely cowardice dressed in noble intentions.
I want her to know me. To choose me. To look at me with those intelligent hazel eyes and decide that a monster might be worth the risk.
The wind shifts, bringing her scent stronger now, and beneath the familiar base notes of motor oil and coffee, I catch something new. Loneliness. The particular biochemical signature of a human who has spent too many nights wondering if isolation and independence are the same thing.
The recognition hits me with physical force. She is as alone as I am, as ready for something more than the careful boundaries she has built around her heart.
I have been watching her for three winters, learning her patterns, understanding her needs. I know she takes her coffee black because efficiency matters more than comfort. I know she works late on Christmas Eve not because she loves the solitude but because it’s easier than acknowledging what she’s missing. I know she reads romance novels in secret because somewhere beneath that practical exterior lives a woman who still believes in extraordinary love.
And extraordinary love is exactly what I have to offer.
Tonight, while the storm provides cover and the hunters huddle in their warm houses, I will give her the choice I should have offered three winters ago. Mother Morrison can file all the efficiency reports she wants—some things are worth risking everything for.
I push away from the wall, calling on reserves of strength I cannot afford to spare. The snow parts around me as I move toward her door, each step deliberate despite the weakness spreading from my wound. Xarian biology is built for extreme environments, but it has limits.
