Page 24 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

"It triggered. The resonance triggered. With an uncontacted species alien."

"I am aware of the situation, Renn."

"The situation. He calls it a situation." Renn's breath scraped through the static. "The resonance is not a choice, and we are not unpacking the Council's reaction over a failing field channel. First: is she safe? Second: does she know?"

"I am also aware of that."

"Does she know?"

"No."

"You haven't told her."

"The timing has not been⁠—"

"Oh, the TIMING. Yes, I can see how finding the right moment might be challenging while trekking through a jungle with a woman your body has decided is your eternal mate. Very tricky, the timing."

Renn was the only person in the Authority who spoke to me this way. We had trained together. He had earned the right. I still wanted to end the communication.

"There is another issue," I said, because I preferred to deliver all catastrophic news at once. "The debris field where we came down holds no command-tier wreckage. Draxis launched his pod before the breakup. Assume Draxis survived."

The words cost more to say than the analysis had cost to run. I pressed my forearm flat against my side, hard enough to feel the bone, and held it there until my voice was level again. The reflex again. Still useless.

The silence that followed was different. Harder.

"The Saurok captain."

"He is tracking escaped captives. I have reason to believe the human is a priority target. Uncontacted species individuals are extremely rare in the slave market."

"How do you know he's tracking?"

"Behavioral pattern analysis. The Saurok do not absorb losses. They recoup. And the human represents significant financial value."

"Kel." Renn's voice had shifted from exasperated to serious. "Get to that outpost. I'll arrange transport from Vel'kari. But you need to move fast. If Draxis has hunters on Zha'kari..."

"Understood."

"And Kel? Tell her. About the resonance. She deserves to know what she's walking next to."

The signal degraded. I caught fragments, something about Authority protocols, something about uncontacted species procedures, and then static. I tried to boost the signal but the connection was gone.

I stood on the ridge for a moment, processing.

The Andari girl was safe. Seyla Voss-Andari, sixteen standard years old, taken from her father's diplomatic residence while he was off-world. I had tracked her for eleven days. I had boarded a slave ship for her. And then the ship had cut off every route to her cell before I could reach her, and I had escaped without confirming her fate.

The relief was real — sharp and physical, loosening something in my chest that I had been carrying since the moment I'd turned away from Cell Block Three. She was alive. The secondary team had reached her. My failure to complete the extraction had not cost a child her life.

But the guilt did not dissolve with the relief. The ship had severed every path to Cell Block Three; I knew that. Still, the question kept returning: after the resonance triggered, had I stopped looking for another route sooner than I otherwise would have? If the secondary team had not been deployed, if the Korvathi attack had ended differently, Seyla would still be in a Saurok holding cell. The facts said the outcome was not mine to own. The guilt had not accepted the facts.

I filed that weight beside the other weights I was carrying and added it to the list of things I would answer for when this was over.

Draxis was alive and hunting. Taylor was his most valuable target. Every day we spent in the open was a day his trackers could close the distance.

From that night forward, I treated every camp as contested ground. We chose mineral overhangs that broke thermal line of sight, kept fires below rock lips, cooled and scattered ash before moving, doubled back through water where the route allowed it, and left false turns at hard ground. The pod's ion scar and our first camps could not be erased. Everything after this could be made expensive to follow.

I descended the ridge. Taylor looked up from her leaf project—she appeared to be weaving some sort of container—and must have read something in my posture because her expression shifted.

"What happened? You were up there a while."