Page 113 of Dead Drop

"She eats."

The corner of his mouth shifts. The almost-smile. "Like you."

"I eat because your cum kept me alive for three weeks. She eats because she's a baby. There's a difference."

"Is there."

The dry humor. Post-rut Corvin has a sense of humor that surfaces at the worst possible moments. I've stopped being surprised by it. I've started liking it. The officer underneath the monster, cracking jokes in the field the way soldiers do—because the alternative is feeling everything at full volume, and nobody survives that.

Maren finishes. I settle her back in the sling. She's milk-drunk, her eyes heavy, her fist still closed on the jacket collar. A drop of milk on her chin. I wipe it with my thumb. She makesthe satisfied sound—the one that meansdone, full, the world is acceptable.

She reaches for my hair out of habit—the motion automatic, the way babies grab. Her fingers close on the short strands at my shoulder instead of the long braid that used to fall past my back. There's less of it now. It's lighter without the weight. The short version is practical; it doesn't get in the way. But I feel the moment of her confusion when she reaches for something and finds something different. Her grip tightens on what's there anyway. She doesn't care that I changed. She just wants the anchor.

The stream flashes silver between the rocks below us. A kingfisher—one of the new ones, the species that came back last spring—dives. Hits the water. Comes up with something silver in its beak. The canopy overhead is alive with morning, the new growth thick enough to screen us from aerial view. Good cover. Better sight lines than three months ago. The territory improves every week.

We move along the bank. Side by side, his massive strides shortened to match mine. The mud is soft from snowmelt. My bootprints beside his clawed tracks. The difference in scale still strikes me sometimes—the impression his foot leaves could contain both of mine.

Birdsong—louder every week, more species returning. A warbler I haven't heard since before the asteroid. The canopy is rebuilding itself, one nest at a time. One song at a time.

His breathing changes.

I know that sound. Three months postpartum and what lives between us hasn't faded. The rut is long gone, but the wanting isn't. The wanting was never the rut. It was the thing underneath, the thing that made him read my name on a list and thinkher.

I know because my body does the same thing. My nipples tighten inside the jacket. My thighs clench. The unmistakable ache starts behind my navel—the low pull that means I want him. Not the venom's pull. Not addiction. Want. The deliberate, chosen kind.

His tail winds around my waist. Not tight. Announcing.

"Corvin."

"Mm."

"We're on patrol."

"We're at the stream crossing. No tracks for six days. Territory is clear." His voice is lower. The register that means his cock is thickening, the prehensile length stirring beneath the loincloth. "You're the one who told me the southern boundary was secure."

"That was a perimeter report. Not an invitation."

"It sounded like one."

His hand finds the small of my back. The warmth of his palm through the jacket. His fingers spread—his hand spans my entire lower back. His thumb traces the curve of my hip where it's changed, the body that carried his daughter still holding the evidence of it. My hips are wider. My breasts are fuller. The softness at my belly where the muscle is rebuilding.

He pulls me against him. The full front of his body against my back. His cock hard now—I can feel it through the loincloth, the prehensile length pressing against my lower back, already seeking. Already certain.

"She's asleep," he says against the crown of my head. His lips in my hair. "She sleeps when I fly."

I know what he's offering.

He wants to take me up. He wants to knot me in the air, the way he did during the patrol in week two of the rut—me strapped to his chest, his cock locked inside me, his wings catching the thermals while the vibration ran and I came against the sky. Butthis isn't the rut. This is him, choosing, wanting. The postpartum body that nursed his daughter ten minutes ago.

This body. Changed. Softer in places, stronger in others. Stretch marks on my hips like silver lightning. Breasts heavy with milk. The belly that hasn't fully flattened, that may never fully flatten, that carried something alive for nine months and delivered it into his clawed hands.

I waited six weeks after the birth. Not because I wanted to wait. Because the healer at New Reach—a woman named Daris who looked at Corvin, looked at me, and said"Six weeks. Minimum. I don't care what that is between his legs"—told me to wait.

Corvin waited. He held me every night, his cock soft and idle against my back, his tail around my waist. He was hard every morning. He never pushed.

On the forty-third day I climbed into his lap and rode him until his wings hit full span and his roar sent birds scattering for a mile.

We've been making up for lost time.