Page 190 of Tracked and Taken

“You took the long route.”

“Yes.”

“It is, Vosk, ready.”

I do not breathe.

I sit up.

I cross the room in three steps. The jacket on the chair. The inside pocket. The two discs.

The discs are, against my palm, the warmest objects in my body for the second time this evening.

I bring them back to the bed.

I sit on the edge.

She sits up. The blanket at her waist. Her hair at her shoulders. The mark at her throat still warm. She is still flushed from me. I want that on her when the brass goes on.

I open my palm.

The two discs sit in it. Side by side. The matched pair Master Velran finished in the first week of the commission, brass to brass, the leather cords coiled neatly at his bench protocol.

She does not, for three seconds, breathe.

Her eyes are at the discs.

Her hand has gone to her bond mark.

“Tael.”

“Sweetheart.”

“There are two.”

“There are two.”

“Why are there two.”

“Because, by Draelith protocol, the bonded pair-tag is always a matched pair. The male commissions both. The male offers both. The male gives the female her disc. This one.”

I lift hers from my palm and hold it up between us. Brass. The Junction One pair-sigil at one face. Taelveth in the old Draelith script at the other.

“This is yours, sweetheart.”

She takes it.

Her hand closes around it. The brass against her palm. The disc warms the second her hand is on it, by the chemistry of the brass and registered the bonded female it has been calibrated to.

She makes a sound. The sound of a bonded female whose body has in one second, registered her bonded male’s species’ biology something that she previously had not known.

Her dark eyes are wet.

“Tael.”

“Yes, sweetheart.”

“Put it on me.”