Chapter 15 Settling In #3
“Dove-Mom,” Tavia says, testing the name. She’s been using it since she decided to stay—tentatively at first, then with growing confidence, then with the casual ownership of a child who has decided the universe should conform to her nomenclature. “Can you teach me to make the sauce?”
“The secret is patience and too much garlic.”
“There’s no such thing as too much garlic,” Tavia says with the absolute conviction of an eight-year-old who discovered garlic bread last week and has not yet recovered.
“She’s right,” I say. “Lividian palates process allicin differently. We experience garlic as—”
“Papa. Please don’t science the garlic.”
“I am providing relevant biochemical context.”
“You’re making dinner weird.”
Dove laughs. The sound settles into my nervous system like a calibration tone—baseline, reference, home frequency.
I watch her guide Tavia’s hands on the stirring spoon, their heads bent together, Dove’s dark curls against Tavia’s teal-streaked black, and the claiming mark catches the kitchen light.
My mate. My daughter. The family that assembled itself around a stranded courier and an electromagnetic storm and a sarcastic AI who denies having feelings about any of it.
Dove glances over her shoulder. Catches me watching.
“Optimization face,” she mouths.
I don’t deny it.
After dinner. After stories—Tavia’s scoring system has expanded to include categories for “Papa’s heart-eyes frequency” and “Dove-Mom’s accent accuracy,” both of which Pickles tracks with unnecessary precision.
After small markings dim to sleep-glow and a bedroom door seals on a child who is safe and loved and furious about being eight years too young for space.
In our quarters, Dove strips off my shirt and stands in the low amber light of the sleeping cycle, and the claiming mark on her shoulder pulses gold in time with her heartbeat, which is also my heartbeat, which will be my heartbeat for the rest of my life.
“Come here,” she says.
I go.
The comm chirps at 2200.
Dove is sprawled across my chest, boneless and warm, her fingers drawing idle patterns on my stomach that make my markings glow and chase her touch. The sheets are ruined. We’ve stopped pretending we can keep sheets intact.
I reach for the panel.
“Specialist Storm. Captain Foxton.” Mother Morrison’s voice carries the particular dryness of a woman who has been managing interstellar romantic disasters for three decades and is no longer surprised by any of them. “I assume this is a good time.”
“Perfect time,” Dove says, not moving from my chest.
“Mm. Your biorhythm data suggests you’ve had an eventful evening, but I’ll take the diplomatic answer.
” A pause. “Got a situation. Courier named Harlan—solid kid, two years on the routes, runs the Andara Sector loop. Ship took debris damage near the Kytherian border. He limped to the nearest station, but he’s stuck there until replacement parts arrive, and the station commander is a Draelith female who’s apparently decided Harlan is—and I quote—’a terrified little mammal who needs to stop flinching when I stand near him. ’”
Dove lifts her head. “Draelith. Scales, heat vision, territorial nesting instincts?”
“The full package. She’s already rearranged her station’s living quarters to put him closer to her command centre. He says it’s for ‘security purposes.’ She says it’s because he ‘smells correct.’”
“Smells correct,” I repeat.
“Draelith pair-bonding involves olfactory imprinting. Once a Draelith selects a mate, the partner’s scent becomes a neurological fixation.” Mother’s tone shifts—still dry, but gentler underneath. “Sound like anyone we know?”
Dove’s hand flattens on my chest. Over my heart. Over the markings that pulse in sync with hers.
“Send him our way,” she says. “We’ve got room. And I’ve got—let’s call it relevant experience in the ‘stranded with an alien who won’t stop sniffing you’ department.”
“I did not sniff you,” I say.
“You absolutely sniffed me. Day two. In the kitchen. You leaned over my shoulder to ‘check the seasoning’ and inhaled for about thirty seconds.”
“I was assessing airborne particulates.”
“You were smelling my hair.”
“Mother,” I say, “is there anything else?”
“Just this.” Morrison’s voice drops the professional veneer, and what’s underneath is something I recognise—pride, the specific kind that comes from watching someone you’ve protected finally find solid ground.
“Dove. Your quarterly review came through. Perfect score. First one from a frontier Specialist in eleven years.”
Silence. Dove’s fingers tighten on my chest.
“Also,” Mother adds, quieter. “Your OOPS account’s fully funded. Part-time runs confirmed through the next fiscal quarter. The sector routes have been reorganised to loop through Kepler—means you’ll never be more than eighteen hours from home.”
The word lands. Home. From a woman who’s been sending Dove into the black for nine years, who watched her run from every port and never once told her to stop.
“Thanks, Mother,” Dove manages. Her voice is rough.
“Don’t thank me. Thank the bureaucrats who approved the route restructuring. And maybe thank the sarcastic AI who filed the logistics proposal that made it happen.”
“I require no thanks,” Pickles says, because of course he’s listening. “I require updated processing cores. But I am... not displeased by the outcome.”
The line clicks off.
Dove presses her face against my chest. She’s not crying—she’s past that, settled into a state of quiet, fierce certainty that I feel through the bond like bedrock.
“A network,” she says. “We’re building an actual network. Couriers and stations and families and—”
“And a very aggressive AI with a filing habit.”
“And an eight-year-old who’s going to stow away on my ship the moment we stop watching her.”
“I give it six months.”
“I give it three weeks.”
She lifts her head. Kisses me—slow and thorough, the kind that tastes like future and permanence and all the variables I stopped trying to control the day she crashed into my docking bay.
“Round three?” she murmurs against my mouth.
“You are insatiable.”
“You’re the one whose biology optimised for frequent mating.”
“And you’re the one who read the manual.”
She grins. Rolls on top of me. Her thighs bracket my hips and the claiming mark glows above me like a signal flare—mine, claimed, permanent—and the ridges respond to her proximity with an immediacy that makes rational thought irrelevant.
The storms rage outside. The station hums. Somewhere in the greenhouse, seedlings push through soil that my mate delivered across seventeen star systems in a ship held together with stubbornness and a salvaged AI.
The equation has balanced. Not because I solved it—because she crashed through my variables and rewrote the proof.
And in a comm relay spanning half the sector, a dispatch note blinks into the OOPS network:
KEPLER STATION KS-7B: OPERATIONAL. EXPANDING. ACCEPTING REFERRALS.
Operations Specialist D. Foxton. Atmospheric Specialist C. Storm.
Status: Home.