Page 15 of Border Control

The two women collide, laughing and crying, El-len jumping up and down, Law-rah steady with a smile beaming from ear to ear. All-Mother, Law-rah’s beautiful, her golden hair in drenched locks and her semi-transparent covering revealing a little of the secrets within, the shadow of some other dark clothing underneath her shirt, around her chest. Some kind of protection, perhaps?

‘Support lace straps,’Nevare supplies for me.

‘Stop fishing in her mind!’I snap back at him, fists bunching. A protective streak is normal for Parthiastocks when they’re assigned to a female; my instincts react like I’ve been formally given to her.

Oh, how I want to be formally given to her. Ilia could present me as a gift as soon as he reasserts himself as our leader… I shake myself. First, he has to actually get out of the ship. Judging from Nevare’s quick mind scan, he’s well and… something else.

‘Happy,’Arik says. ‘Try it sometime, you might like it.’

I scowl at my fellow Base. ‘Someone has to be steady for Nevare.’

‘I'm not totally useless,’Arik grumbles, but mental talk stops as Ilia himself comes down the bridge, two starhounds trotting down next to him.

“Nice to see you again,” Law-rah tells our leader, and then she gasps. “Is thatFloss?”

“Yep!” El-len says happily, stroking the starhound that bounces up to her. I don’t recognize the traveler until Nevare drops an image of the old, tired quadroped padding at El-len’s side when we first landed. She was a starhound all along. I want to tell Law-rah that clearly there were always aliens on her planet, that the fact our nanites could translate quickly must be due to our languages sharing trade standard patterns, but I can’t approach a female for no reason.

‘Drop it in her head?’Nevare asks me.

‘No.’The protective streak flares up like hot betrillium branding my throat scales. What’s the matter with me?

“Right, I’d love to catch up, but Arabella is out there somewhere in the rain,” Law-rah says.

Ilia jerks his head at us, and we run to him. “Where is she?” he barks.

“Half a click that way.” I point to where Nevare tells me the dizzy-minded human and Gara’s thoughts are close together. “Gara has found her.”

“Then we help him. Get in the ship, all of you.”

At last, an order! We all pile into the sleek black interior, and our leader takes us to a spacious circular salon. A variety of sitting and reclining couches ring the outside apart from a galley kitchen area and retractable dining table of solid angarulum, its surface glittering in the low light. A central pillar glows with swirls of gold, pulsing in a steady beat. The ship’s hearts, or its equivalent. Arture places his palms on it, then flinches away, staring at his metal right hand. This is clearly a female’s vessel, and far too precious for clones.

Ilia explains, “This is the All-Mother’s personal craft, and a gift.”

What a gift it is, but Ilia’s eyes are firmly on El-len. Nevare sets an image in my mind: between them pulses a deep, thick connection as pink as El-len’s cheeks. A mating bond, and the very idea snatches the breath from my lungs.

Olorians can form mating bonds with humans?

‘Evidently,’Arik says, again curious rather than deeply affected like me.

I crane my head to put eyes on Law-rah as El-len leads her to the seating, but Ilia stops me with a hard hand to my chest.

His eyes are unreadable as he looks me up and down, and then he barks to Arture, “Get us airborne.”

“Yes, Ilia,” the pilot responds, scuttling toward the cockpit.

Our leader takes a firm hold on my shoulder. “Are you in command of yourself?”

I let out a low breath. Am I? My head is full of Law-rah now when it should be my duties to Nevare. I managed under pressure for weeks, but feeling torn in two could be a sign of unraveling.

Evidently my silence draws out for too long, because Ilia lunges for me.

FIVE

LAURA

Holy fuck,Ilia just tackled Dom. A gasp slips from me, hands to my face like a shrinking violet. One moment Dom was heading toward me with his eyes bright, and then Ilia intercepts him. They exchange a few guttural sentences in their own language and Dom goes quiet, and apparently that pisses off Ilia. He grabs Dom by the back of the neck and shoves him down, tripping him up with one leg and smashing him to the floor of the spaceship with a ringing clang.

How dare he?