Chapter 8
Run
Lorri
More tea. The galley is warm. The hours move and the conversation moves with them, easy now in a way it wasn’t before, as if telling him the hiding thing has opened a door that I didn’t know was closed.
He tells me about being told he was defective — not in those words, not directly, but in the careful, gentle way that people tell you something is mistaken with you while insisting it’s fine.
“Skiveth males are supposed to — there’s an instinct.
A recognition. It fires in your twenties, thirties at the latest. Everyone has it.
” He looks at his mug. “I didn’t. The physician said I was a late bloomer.
Then they said I was atypical. Then they stopped using words that meant eventually and started using words that meant never. ”
“They told you it was broken?”
“They told me I would love differently. Which is the kind way of saying I would love less. Or wrong. Or not at all, not the way my species is built to.”
I look at him across the table. The male who slayed a Vrennak with his bare hands.
The male who stood between me and five hundred pounds of corrupted predator and made a sound that stopped it in its tracks.
The male who checked my hip with two fingers when he wanted his entire hand and asked, may I before every touch.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I say.
Something flickers across his face. Quick. Unguarded. The almost-smile cracks into something more real and more broken than anything I’ve seen from him today.
“Yeah,” he says, almost inaudible, “it is.”
We sit with that. The two of us. The girl who learned to hide and the male who was told he was broken. Two outsiders in a warm galley, finding out the same thing at the same time: that the shape you were told was wrong might just have been waiting for the right fit.
“Captain,” HORATIO. Very soft. “The air composition in the galley has shifted. I am not going to speculate on the cause.”
“HORATIO.”
“I am simply noting it for the atmospheric log. Which I am maintaining for scientific purposes. Exclusively.”
The datapad is still on the table from the cargo manifest. The station network is accessible; lockdown restricts movement, not data.
I have been thinking about something since the tongue conversation and the ridge conversation and the temperature conversation and the way he went still when I said I liked his hands.
I search: Skiveth biology. Sensory processing.
The results load. I tilt the screen toward me. Casual. Like I’m checking the cargo manifest.
Forked-tongue chemoreception. Airborne pheromone detection.
Processing ranges. The specific paragraph that says Skiveth males can detect shifts in the biochemical state of nearby individuals through airborne sampling, including: stress hormones, adrenaline, immune response markers, and arousal indicators.
Arousal indicators.
He can taste when I’m turned on.
He has been tasting it since I walked up the ramp.
Every flutter, every spike, every time his jaw did the thing or his shoulders moved or the command voice went through me.
He has tasted every single one. He has been sitting in this galley, tasting the air between us and knowing what I’m feeling. Not guessing. Knowing.
I scroll further. Temperature complementarity. Thermoregulation compatibility. The section on bonding biology — pair bonds, hunt instinct, claiming — is long and detailed, and I skim past it because it’s dense and clinical, and the part I’m interested in is three sections down.
Skiveth courtship behaviors. The hunt instinct, when activated, manifests as a heightened predatory-pursuit response.
The male experiences an intensified drive to pursue the identified mate, often expressed through tracking, chasing, and physical demonstrations of capability.
The pursuit is consensual — the instinct includes a hard wired requirement for reciprocal engagement.
The female must initiate or accept the chase for the behavior to activate fully.
The female must initiate or accept the chase.
I set the datapad facedown on the table.
The sauce is drying on the lucky top. My hip aches.
I have a gauze pad on my temple and bruises forming in places I haven’t found yet.
A Vrennak nearly killed me two hours ago.
I should be scared. I should be curled up in a corner processing the near-death experience with the quiet dignity of someone who understands the gravity of what just happened.
I am not scared; I am alive. I am more alive than I have been in years — maybe ever — alive in the way you are alive when you have nearly died and the world has not ended and the male sitting across from you can taste you in the air and his ridges go dark when you talk and he asked may I before he touched you and he caught a Vrennak with his bare hands because you were behind him.
I look at him. He looks at me and he knows I’ve been reading. He can probably taste the exact moment the information landed.
The flush starts at my neck. He watches it travel.
His ridges darken.
“So,” I say. My voice is doing something new. Steadier than it should be. Lower. “I’ve been reading about Skiveth biology.”
“Have you?”
“Interesting stuff. The tongue thing — I had that mostly figured out already. The thermoregulation — fascinating. The ridges — you weren’t entirely honest about those, by the way.”
“I was — partially honest.”
“Partially.” I hold his gaze. “There was a section on courtship behaviors.”
His spoon stops. His whole body goes still. Not the dangerous still. The oh no, still.
“Courtship behaviors,” he says. Flat.
“Something about a chase? A pursuit response? The male chases, the female — what was it — initiates or accepts.”
“You read the courtship section.”
“I skimmed it.” This is true. I skimmed it. I skimmed right past the bonding and claiming sections because they were long and clinical, and the chase section was right there and much more relevant to my immediate interests. “It sounded — fun.”
“Fun.” His voice has gone very controlled. “You think Skiveth courtship pursuit sounds fun.”
“I think,” I say, and the words come from the place in my chest that held a Vrennak’s gaze and didn’t blink, the place that has been growing all evening, fed by his laugh and his hands and the sauce on my top and the way he went dark-ridged and furious when I told him about the hiding, “that I have been hiding my entire life. And I am very, very good at it.” I lean forward.
Just an inch. “And I think you said earlier you were trying to be civilized. I asked how that was going, and you said badly.”
He is looking at me with an expression I am going to remember for the rest of my life. The blue eyes and the wide pupils and the dark ridges and the jaw and the barely held restraint cracking at the edges.
“Lorri,” he says. Low. “Do you understand what you’re asking for?”
“I’m asking for a game.” I hold his gaze. “Hide and seek. Your ship. I hide. You find me. I’m told I’m very difficult to find.”
The galley hums. HORATIO is silent. The air between us — and I know now what it tastes like to him, I know what he’s reading from across this table, I know the chemical composition of what my body just broadcast — the air between us is thick with me.
With wanting. With a signal I could not hide if I tried, and I am not trying.
His tongue flicks. Quick. Tasting. His eyes close for a fraction of a second. When they open, the blue is dark.
“You should stay away from the cargo hold,” he says.
“Everywhere else is fair game?”
A beat. Two. Three. His ridges are so dark they look black.
“Everywhere else is fair game,” he says.
I smile. A real one. A full one. The one from the place underneath the anxiety and the self-doubt, from the place that calmed a Vrennak and didn’t flinch.
“How much of a head start do I get?”
“How much do you want?”
“Sixty seconds.”
“I’ll still find you.”
“Try me.”
Something shifts behind his face, something old and low and patient. It’s something that is not the almost-smile and is not the charming courier and is not the careful male asking, may I. Something that says I told you some answers change things.
“Sixty seconds,” he says. “Starting when you leave this room.”
I stand. The lucky top is stained. My hip aches. The gauze is peeling. I am a disaster. I have been a disaster all day.
The top is lucky. The top has always been lucky.
I head for the hatchway. At the door, I turn back.
He is sitting at the table with his hands flat on the surface and his ridges black and his pupils narrow and every line of him held in the stillness that I am understanding is not calm.
It is the opposite of calm. It is the stillness of something waiting to be let go.
“One more thing,” I say.
He waits.
“I beat the evacuation drill officers. Every single time.” I hold his eyes. “Nobody has ever found me when I don’t want to be found.”
Something shifts in his face. Something wilder. Older. Something that belongs on a male whose instincts have just been handed an invitation and a challenge in the same breath.
“Lorri.” My name. The lowest register. The one that goes through me like a hand down my spine. “When I find you — and I will find you — I am going to put my hands on you.”
The galley stops. My lungs stop. The entire atmospheric recycling system on this ship stops.
“I am going to put my hands on your waist,” he says, “and I am going to pull you into me, and I am going to put my mouth on the place where your neck meets your shoulder. And you are going to let me. And then we are going to see what happens next.”
His voice is steady; his ridges are black.
His pupils are slits. He is sitting at the table making promises with the calm of a male filing a cargo manifest, and the calm makes my knees go liquid and my skin prickle from my scalp to the soles of my feet.
Not if. Not maybe. When. When I find you.
When I put my hands on you. When you let me.
When.
The air between us is thick with me. With wanting. With a signal I could not hide if I tried, and I am not trying.
“Run, little human.” Low. Rough. A promise wrapped in a command. “I’m already counting.”
I run.
I run and my legs are shaking and my heart is hammering, and the ship is warm and dark and I am running through a corridor I barely know in a stained lucky top with a Skiveth male counting down behind me who has just told me exactly what he is going to do when he catches me and every nerve in my body is lit and I am terrified and I am alive and I am —
Laughing.
I am laughing. I am running and laughing, and the sound comes out bright and breathless and slightly unhinged, and it echoes in the dark corridor, and I have never in my life felt less sorry for taking up space.
The corridor narrows at the turn.
I have fifty-two seconds. I have been hiding since I was nine years old. I am very, very good at this.
But for the first time in my life, I am not hiding because I’m afraid of being discovered.
I am hiding because I want to be found.