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“I meant where are we headed?” I clarified, gesturing to the control panel before us as I rested my chin on the top of Natalie’s head.

The sensation of heat in her face drifted through my consciousness as she realized how thoroughly we had defiled the ship she apparently piloted alone. I sensed no other life forms, and while my psychic powers had not been fully activated until I fed from my mate, they had always been accurate on such broad observations.

“Oh.” Natalie let her head fall back onto my chest, looking up at me. “I was just bringing the ship back to the port after dropping off all the passengers at the new colonies.”

“And this port is on your home planet?” I asked, sensing a strange sadness creeping into Natalie’s psyche. My arms tightened around her, as if I could protect her from it, even though I did not know its source. “I will accompany you there,” I assured, not wanting her to be afraid I would be unwilling to follow her to her home.

Natalie shook her head, the purple tendrils of her hair tickling my chest. “Earth isn’t home. Not anymore at least. I’ll never go back there again if I can help it.”

Brief flashes of violence and war rattled through my brain: falling from the sky in a burning starfighter, losing her eye only to have to relearn how to see with a cybernetic one. I didn’t mention these images, as I got the sense that Natalie didn’t know she had shared these memories with me and had no desire to speak of them right now.

“Then where is your home?” I asked. I itched to know everything about my mate, and hear it from her own lips, even though we were already more intimately linked than I had ever been with another being.

“I don’t have one. Yet,” Natalie admitted, an aborted shrug an attempt at playing off her pain. “But these solo flights pay well, and soon I’ll be able to settle somewhere far from Earth. Build myself a life there.”

My heart panged in my chest, and my wings came around both of us in a protective shield once more, as if the black cocoon could protect my mate from the pain of her admission.

“I have a home with the Entari,” I pointed out. “I’m not there much, because I’ve always felt like it was much too big for one person.”

My mate shifted against me, and a bubble of hope grew between us, golden and bright and beautifully fragile. But I would protect it until it was solid and indestructible.

“It would feel more like a home with a mate there,” I said, hoping she might like the idea. “And our homeworld is so far from Earth that we have never heard of your planet.”

Natalie twisted in my arms, turning to face me. Her one organic eye was bright, light shining through like the lonely dark of space had been shattered to make way for a galaxy of stars within her. The heavy feeling in my mind, which I realized now had been my mate’s oppressive loneliness, skittered away into darkened corners in the wake of the newfound light of hope.

“If I were at your home, would you be there too?” she asked, only slightly hesitant.

My fingers drifted over the punctures from my fangs in her neck, down to the now smeared tracing of my name on her chest. The sight made myxigiapurr, the glow of my tattoos flashing to briefly illuminate the enclosed space made by the curtain of my wings. Such markings were a sign that her kind didn’t appear to fully appreciate the significance of, but they were as binding of a promise as any I could make.

Perhaps I should be dismayed that it had happened so unplanned—although maybe it wasn’t as unplanned as I thought. Maybe the uncharted asteroid that had knocked my ship off course, throwing me into the deep abyss of space on an otherwise uneventful trip, had been sent with a purpose—to put me into the path of this remarkable mate, a woman so unexpectedly wonderful I had never even managed to dream of anything like her.

“My mate, I will go wherever you go,” I swore. “From here to the farthest star.”

Natalie smiled, and joy bloomed in my heart, amplified exponentially, for it belonged to both of us.

My mate chuckled wryly. “I’m glad I responded to your distress signal.”

I pressed my forehead to hers. “Perhaps you have saved us both.”