Page 126 of Tracked and Taken

“Nat.”

“I see them, Tael.”

“Mm.”

“They almost — they almost did not get this back.”

“I know.”

“Maren almost did not have her mate back.”

“I know, sweetheart.”

I do not finish the thought. He knows what the unfinished thought is. He hears it the way he has for five days been hearing the thoughts I do not finish.

His hand at the small of my back stays.

We move on.

The medical screening takes forty minutes.

The medic is Morcrestian. Female. Tusks at her lower jaw filed back to the polite length Junction One regulation requires for staff in patient-facing roles. Her name is Dr. Vrek, and she is six-foot-two and broad at the shoulder in the way her species runs broad, and she has, by the small economy of her movements, been doing field medical assessments for some decades. Her hands at my ribs are, by the contradiction my brain has to file every time a Morcrestian medic touches a patient, the most careful hands I have ever had on me in a medical setting.

She runs the pheromone-compound exposure protocol and the rib-graze documentation and the basic vital readings and the additional protocol she runs because the patient is in a configuration with a non-human male whose pair-identification status is, by the tag on my file Flossie has updated, Mate: priority.

She does not ask me about it.

She runs the protocol. She makes notes. She prints the report and signs it.

“You are clear of compound, Officer Torres. The counteragent worked. The reaction to it is resolved — your liver panel is clean, and the seizure left nothing behind. You are not going to develop any residual response. The chemistry in your body is your chemistry. Anything that happens from here is your own.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“The wound at the rib will close in five days under standard care. The abrasion at your throat is superficial — keep it clean and it will close in two. The compound exposure is going to leave you tired for some days. I am putting you on a forty-eight-hour rest, and I would advise no operational activities for a week.”

She does not ask how the abrasion got there. It is in the report anyway.

“Copy.”

“Officer.”

“Doctor.”

“Your partner was efficient with the patching. I have, in this office, seen worse field dressings done by full medics with kit. Whoever taught him paid attention.”

“He paid attention himself.”

She looks at me. The look of a Morcrestian female who has been doing medical screens for some decades and who has, by her species’ particular gift at reading bonded chemistry across the room, registered the configuration of a patient who is in love with the male who patched her up.

“Copy. Get some sleep, Officer. Come back in forty-eight hours for a follow-up.”

She leaves the screen room.

Tael comes in behind her.

He has been at the door for the duration. Not in the room.

“Sweetheart.”