Page 57 of Alien’s Retrieved Mate

Taylor was not alone. But she was in a public room with too many entrances, too many bodies, and a slaver's pride moving toward her up the service ravine.

I ran.

I had told her the truth this time. I had broken the pattern. I had sat beside her and laid out every terrible piece of it because she'd asked me to and because she deserved it and because I was finally learning that protecting someone from information was just another word for control.

And now the most important person in my existence was in danger because Draxis had found the outpost before I could get her somewhere defensible.

I ran faster.

23

TAYLOR

The cantina at Vel'kari Station smelled like engine grease and regret, which made it the perfect location for my current mood.

I knew walking out wasn't smart. I was an unregistered alien on a frontier outpost with slavers hunting me specifically, the only person who could protect me was the person I'd just walked away from, and I didn't even know which direction the bathroom was. Smart had stopped being my primary operating mode approximately ten days ago, somewhere between "crashed on alien planet" and "developed feelings for the alien who crashed with me." But I needed a room where I wasn't watching his face while I thought. Distance couldn't shut the bond off, but it could turn down the feedback enough for me to hear myself, and that meant risk, and I'd chosen risk.

Zhara steered me toward a table in the corner only long enough to get my back away from the front doors. She shoved a warm, bitter cup into my hands, checked the small scanner strapped to her wrist for the third time in under a minute, then shifted her chair so she could watch both the front doors and the service hall.

One pair of eyes stayed on me. The other pair kept sweeping the room.

"Why are you doing that?" I asked.

"The Saurok transport was denied clearance, but it dropped five hunters in a breaching pod below the west ridge," she said, low and fast. "They're coming up the service ravine. The front exit is exposed and the back route is locked for a fuel transfer. We stay behind hard cover until the service lock cycles, then move the instant my scanner turns green. Drink this, do not look at the front doors, and talk."

"I need a minute."

"Then talk fast."

That was the thing about Zhara. She did not push like Kel pushed. She pushed sideways. She watched exits, angled her body between me and the doors, and made tactical relocation sound like emotional support.

"He didn't hide this time," I said finally.

Zhara's secondary eyes blinked while the primary pair flicked to the service door. "The Authority orders?"

"He told me about the memory wipe himself, days ago, on the walk down from the plateau — volunteered it before I even had to ask. And this morning, when the confirmation came through? The timeline, the denied exemption, all the concrete details? He sat down and told me. Everything. No editing, no tactical framing. Just the ugly truth laid out." I wrapped both hands around the cup. "And that's somehow making this harder."

"Why harder?"

"Because when he hid things, I could be angry at him. I could redirect the panic into 'you should have told me' and that gave me something to do with it. Now he's not hiding, and I can't be angry at him, so I'm just... sitting with the actual problem. Which is that the government of an alien civilization wants to erase my brain."

Zhara did not drink. She lifted her cup, pretended to sip, and used the motion to check the cantina entrance behind the rim. "That is a more difficult problem than a boyfriend who withholds."

"Dramatically more difficult. I'd like to go back to the withholding problem. That one I knew how to handle."

"He's growing, Taylor."

"I know. That's the other thing that's making this harder." I pressed my forehead against the warm cup. "He's growing and the situation is still impossible and I can't separate the real thing from the impossible situation."

"Explain."

"The only legal way to keep my memories is to declare the bond publicly and claim Valorian citizenship through it. The permanent part is already done — I chose the third tier in private, freely, eyes open. All that's actually left is the public declaration. But now their threat has welded that declaration to survival — and it's also the thing he wants most. I can't tell if declaring now is choosing the life we want or choosing not losing my mind. And he can't tell either. Through the bond, I can feel that he can't tell, and that's eating him alive."

Zhara's scanner gave a soft vibration against her wrist. She killed the sound with one finger and slid her chair an inch closer to me. "But he's bonded to you for life. That doesn't go away, Taylor. Not for him. If they wipe your memory and send you home, he will spend every remaining day of his existence feeling the echo of a bond you don't remember. The resonance doesn't fade for the Valorian. Only for the mate who forgets."

My chest tightened. I hadn't thought about it from that angle. If they wiped me, I'd wake up in Colombia with a lost few weeks and a vague sense of something missing. But Kel would carry the full bond — the open channel, the resonance, the markings that would glow for someone who didn't know he existed.

"That's horrible."