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"What happened?" She turns fully toward me now, moonlight illuminating genuine interest in her expression. Not judgment or disgust, but desire to understand.

For the first time in years, I find myself explaining the full circumstances of my "reassignment" to someone who has no reason to care beyond curiosity. Someone who, against all logic, seems to genuinely want to know.

"The Northern Purge." The words taste like ash. "Intelligence suggested resistance leaders were hiding among civilian settlements in the contested northern valleys. Standard protocol called for elimination of entire communities to ensure no targets escaped."

"Elimination," she repeats, understanding immediately. "Slaughter."

"Yes." My tail lashes once, sharp and controlled. "I refused the direct order. Suggested targeted extraction using intelligence assets instead. My... disagreement with command strategy was deemed insubordination."

"So they sent you here," she concludes. "To this backwater posting, away from where your principles might infect other officers."

The accuracy of her assessment burns like truth often does. "Officially, I was given important border responsibility fitting my experience."

"And unofficially?"

"Exiled to a forgotten outpost where my career would quietly end, far from any meaningful command decisions." The truth Irarely acknowledge even to myself comes out without bitterness. It simply is.

"I've killed in battle more times than I can count," I continue, meeting her gaze directly. "But I won't slaughter innocents to advance my standing. Not even when ordered."

Something shifts in her expression—recognition, perhaps, of the core principle that cost me everything I'd built within Confederation hierarchy. Her scent changes subtly, warmer notes emerging that suggest respect rather than the fear or disgust my appearance typically brings out in humans.

"That's why you extended defense to Blackridge," she realizes. "When most commanders would have secured only the fortress against dragon incursion."

"Strategic defense includes civilian stability," I respond, falling back on practical justification rather than admitting the deeper principle driving my decisions. "Conquest without protection is just destruction."

"Not exactly the Prime philosophy taught in settlement history," she says, a hint of something like amusement in her voice.

"Most Primes aren't particularly philosophical."

The unexpected observation draws a genuine laugh from her—the sound vibrating through me like physical touch. The claiming mark at her throat catches moonlight as her head tilts back, exposing the vulnerable line of her neck in a display of trust that stirs something primitive in my chest.

"We've come a long way," she observes after her laughter fades, "from that first claiming."

The reference to our initial joining—my cold efficiency, her reluctant submission—hangs between us, acknowledged directly for perhaps the first time without anger or resentment coloring the memory.

"Yes," I agree simply, uncertain what more to add.

She turns her gaze back to the distant mountains. "I used to watch the dragons flying over those peaks and imagine what it would be like to be claimed by one of them. How majestic and powerful they seemed from a distance."

The admission stirs complicated emotions I can't fully identify. Not quite jealousy—the dragons never had her, after all—but something next to it. Protective possessiveness mixed with satisfaction that her fantasies proved false.

"And now?" I find myself asking.

She considers the question seriously before answering. "They're still beautiful," she acknowledges with honesty that surprises me. "But now I see the cruelty behind the majesty. The calculation in how they use omegas as resources rather than... partners."

The word choice—partners rather than mates or property—creates another surge of that strange warmth in my chest. She moves slightly closer, the careful distance we typically maintain outside of heat necessity shrinking without either of us consciously deciding it.

"I never thought I'd say this," she admits, voice barely above a whisper, "but I'm grateful it was you who claimed me, not them. Even at the beginning, when it was cold and clinical... you never treated me as expendable."

The admission creates complicated satisfaction I'm not entirely comfortable examining. My claiming was hardly a gift, regardless of her reevaluation given what she now knows about dragon brutality. But before I can respond, the wind shifts, bringing her scent to me more directly. And with it, the undeniable confirmation of what I've suspected for weeks.

My nostrils flare involuntarily, my pupils contracting to vertical slits as I process the scent markers that no human nose could detect but which are unmistakable to my enhanced senses. My hand moves before conscious thought can intervene,reaching toward her middle before stopping just short of contact.

"What is it?" she asks, noticing my sudden tension, the frozen position of my outstretched hand.

The moment of truth arrives whether I'm prepared for it or not. "Your scent has changed."

Her brow furrows. "Changed how?"