CHAPTER 3 THE COMPULSION #2
His arms went under my knees and behind my back, and he lifted me.
The motion was effortless, making me acutely aware of the size ratio between us.
I was not a small woman, but in his arms, I was compact.
My shoulder pressed against his chest, and through the fabric of his uniform, the heat of him soaked into me like a compress.
The scales beneath his clothing pressed their texture through the layers, smooth and ridged in alternating patterns that shifted as his muscles moved.
He carried me down the corridor without adjusting his grip once.
His stride was long and even, and the prisoners and guards we passed pressed themselves against the walls to let him through.
No one spoke. No one questioned why the Warden was carrying a human prisoner through the station like cargo he intended to keep.
The pain was gone. In its place was a warmth that radiated from every point where his body touched mine, and my nervous system was responding to it with a dopamine release measurable in the way my muscles unclenched, the way my breathing slowed, the way the tension I’d been carrying since the transport docked two days ago began to dissolve against my will.
I did not want to feel safe in this alien’s arms. Safe was a lie.
Safe was a chemical response to a biological trigger I didn’t understand.
Safe was my body making decisions my mind hadn’t authorized, and I would be damned if I surrendered my survival instincts to a proximity response in a prison corridor.
But my body pressed closer to his chest anyway, and the traitorous warmth spread deeper.
***
The Warden’s wing was quiet. The walls were thicker here, the corridor narrower, and the station’s ambient noise faded to a low background thrum that felt almost organic.
He carried me through a heavy metal door that sealed behind us with a pressurized hiss.
The air was still recycled, still carrying the station’s chemical signature, but cooler.
Cleaner. As though the filtration in this section had been upgraded or maintained with more care than the rest of the facility.
His quarters were Spartan. A main room that served as an office, dominated by a wide metal desk covered in monitoring equipment and data terminals.
The screens threw pale blue light across the walls.
A secondary door led to what I assumed was a sleeping chamber.
The ceiling was higher than in the standard corridors, which suggested the space had been modified for someone who needed the clearance.
He set me down on a bench built into the wall. Metal, like everything else, but there was a folded blanket at one end that looked like it had been placed there with intention rather than abandoned by default.
The moment he released me, I braced for the pain.
It didn’t come.
A dull ache settled behind my eyes, a shadow of the migraine that had dropped me in the corridor, but it was manageable.
Present but contained. As long as I could see him across the room, as long as the distance between us stayed within whatever threshold my treasonous biology had established, the needles stayed sheathed.
“The response attenuates at close range.” He was standing by his desk, his back partially turned. Giving me space, I realized. Putting physical distance between us without leaving the room. “Within this proximity, the acute symptoms should remain suppressed.”
“How do you know that?”
He was quiet for a moment too long. “The station’s medical database contains records of similar responses among certain species housed here.”
“That’s the second time you’ve explained something happening to my body with a vague reference to ‘station systems’ or ‘certain species.’ I’m an engineer, Warden. Vague doesn’t work on me.”
His head turned. The scales along the ridge of his cheekbone caught the blue light from the monitors, and for a moment, the pattern shifted to something warmer.
Purple, edging toward violet. He looked at me with those impossible silver eyes, and the pupils contracted to vertical slits before slowly widening again.
“The explanation is not simple.”
“Then use more words.”
Another silence. He crossed the room to the secondary door and disappeared through it.
I heard the sound of water. He returned carrying a metal cup and held it out to me.
His hand dwarfed the cup. His claws were retracted, and the care he took not to let his fingers touch mine when I accepted it was deliberate enough to be obvious.
The water was cold and clean. I drank half of it and held the rest against my forehead, letting the cool metal ease the residual ache.
“You take half-portions,” he said, without turning around. “This morning you ate four bites and logged out of the dispensary queue in under three minutes. That stops. The response burns through reserves your intake is not covering.”
I lowered the cup. “You memorized my tray?”
He did not answer. Which was an answer.
“And today. How did you find me so fast? I didn’t comm anyone.”
“Your cuff flagged a vitals cascade.” A pause, longer than the sentence needed. “I was moving before it flagged.”
“I will arrange for your housing to be transferred to the adjacent chamber,” he said. “Until the proximity response stabilizes, maintaining distance will not be advisable.”
“You want me to live in your quarters.”