Page 89 of Tracked and Taken

“Good.”

A pause.

“Good?”

“I want the marks, Tael. I want to see them. I want to know where you were. I want to feel you when I walk.”

I kiss her shoulder again. Slower this time.

“Good girl.”

Said into her skin at the hipbone where the bruise is.

She shivers at it.

I pull her closer. I kiss the back of her shoulder. I kiss the side of her neck where my mouth was an hour ago. I kiss her temple. I wrap the thermal blanket around both of us.

“What was the scar?”

Ah. She did catch it.

“Tyrre belt. A cargo operation that went sideways. I put my hand in the wrong piece of machinery trying to catch a falling container.”

“The child?”

The question is from someone who read a redacted termination file before she ever let me on her station, and has been waiting to ask.

“Yes?”

“Tael.”

“Sweetheart.”

“I am glad you caught the container.”

I close my eyes.

“So am I, Natalie.”

A silence. Her thumb moves on my knuckles. Then, in the register she marks things in:

“You said later. On the ship.” She does not lift her head. “Kesh. What happens to a male whose regulation fails?”

The quiet hour. She marked it in the lift and she has come back for it, on her side of the afterglow, with her lips still at my knuckles. I give her the true general answer because she has earned it, and because the specific answer is not hers to carry tonight.

“An unbonded Draelith male runs on discipline where a bonded male runs on chemistry. When the regulation starts to fail, the body compensates. Then it stops compensating. He loses thermoregulation first. Then fine motor. Then the nose. Then it finishes.”

“How long.”

“Months. Sometimes less.”

She is quiet. Filing.

“That is what is hunting us?”

“That is what is hunting us.”

She does not ask the question underneath. I do not offer it, which is the most expensive discipline I have deployed tonight.