Page 55 of Alien Healer’s Mate

“I knew about the match. I knew you were my mate.” His voice was raw. “And I said nothing. I was afraid that if you knew, you’d think I only wanted you because the program told me to.”

Her hands slid off his chest. She dropped back onto her heels, putting air between them, her chest so tight it hurt. There were too many words, all of them at once, so she started with the simple ones.

“You let me think I was just a medical case.”

“Yes.”

Her nails bit into her palms.

“You let me think I was just a fling… a bit of fun at the conference.”

His eyes closed as his hands dropped from her face. “Yes.”

“You called me petty. And you said human women are more trouble than we’re worth.” Her voice dropped quieter. “I heard you say it. Z’Saai said it to me in that cell and he said no… n-no one was coming. I believed him.” She was shaking again. She couldn’t make it stop.

Kellat dropped to his knees on the deck in front of her, his hands at his sides like he didn’t trust himself to touch her.

“There is no excuse,” he said, his expression wrecked. “I am an idiot, and that is the ugliest thing I have ever said.” His voice cracked. “I would give anything to take them back. There is nothing about you that is trouble, my love. The trouble was me. It always was.”

She looked at him. At the blood, and the bruises, kneeling on bloody deck plating.

“You’re an idiot,” she said at last.

His eyes came up to hers, the expression in them haunted. “I know, kelarris. But if you let me, I will spend the rest of my life making up for it. Proving that I want you, for you. Not as a patient⁠—“

Cutting him off, she reached down and fisted her hands in his leathers.

“Kiss me,” she ordered, and hauled until he came up off his knees, until his mouth was a breath from hers. “Then tell me you love me again. Then kiss me some more. And then maybe, if you’re very lucky, I’ll forgive you.”

He kissed her.

It was different this time. Slower and deeper, the desperation still in it but gentled.

“I love you,” he murmured against her lips.

“Again.”

“I love you.” A kiss to the corner of her lips. “I love you, Delilah.”

She was crying again, but she didn’t care. She caught his wrists and lifted them so she could see the marks, dark raised lines in a pattern too deliberate to be scarring, glowing faintly with his pulse.

“When did these appear?”

“When the station told me you were gone.” His voice went rough again. “I stood in a corridor learning I’d lost you, and they burned into my skin like fire. Mating marks.”

Bending her head, she kissed them. One wrist, then the other, her lips against the lines, and his breath caught hard.

“Lord Healer… a moment of your time?” a male voice said behind them. They turned to find the Voors’tial warriors behind them. “We are not sure⁠—“

Delilah followed their gaze.

Her drakeen was still there. It stood in the middle of the ruined bay, its optics on her. In the confession and the tears she’d almost forgotten it, and the moment she remembered, the link warmed at the back of her mind like a hand slipping into hers.

She smiled at it.

It lifted one enormous forelimb and waved.

The laugh burst out of her, bright and surprised. She waved back, and something came down the link that felt like happiness.