Page 115 of Tracked and Taken

I am shaking.

I clock the shaking of my hand at her hip. Not her. Me. My body’s deferred response. Not killing the male I served with because she did it first. Carrying my chemically violated mate two corridors. Refusing the mark, she begged me for. Washing another male’s chemistry off her skin while my biology is screaming pair-bond response at the cabin.

The shaking is real.

She feels it.

Her hand at my jaw. She makes me look at her.

“Tael.”

“Nat.”

“I’ve got you too.”

I close my eyes.

I hold her against my chest for one minute under the hot water. Her arms around my ribs. Her face at my collarbone. The water. My biology being held by hers at a register I am not capable of running alone.

“Thank you, Nat.”

I dry her.

The towel in the galley. Soft. I wrap her in it, then in the thermal blanket from the bunk, then I carry her to the bunk and I lay her on it and I pull the blanket over her to her ribs.

The wound on her ribs.

I pull the med-kit. I patch it. My hands steady enough now, by the muscle memory of a tracker who has patched wounds in worse than this.

I pull on my kit. I sit at the edge of the bunk.

She turns toward me. Her hand on my chest. On my shirt where the rosette would be under it.

“Tael.”

“Sweetheart.”

“Thank you.”

“You do not have to thank me.”

“I do.”

A pause. Her thumb at the front of my shirt.

“Tael.”

“Mm.”

“How long do you have.”

“Eighteen months from pair-identification. Five days in.”

“Eighteen months minus five days.”

“Yes.”

She does not cry. She does not speak for thirty seconds. Her thumb at my shirt.