It’s OK. It’s OK. You’ll be fine without him. Mostly fine. Sort of.

He’s the only one you’ve got in this world but even if he’s gone one day you’ll find a way to... to...

To not fall apart.

“Not for a while yet, I trust,” he said firmly. “Suvi, I do not want you to worry about me right now. I want you to rest.”

“I’m not worried!”

I’m just... I’m just imagining being here without you. Living in this far-flung world without the only alien who’s become familiar to me, and oh fuck, I really am worried and what the hell is that supposed to mean?

What am I supposed to do with this? This tangled bundle of resentment and worry and care that gets thorny with grief at the thought of not having him beside me anymore?

“Just lie down.” That soothing voice was Jolakaia’s, not Skallagrim’s. Exhausted, my whole body drained of resistance, I did so. Jolakaia prodded my head to the side and put a few drops of liquid into my ear.

“Keep your head like that for a while,” Jolakaia said. “Let it soak in. And try not to touch.”

My hand had already been lifting to do it. It dropped with a thump on the bed.

“Is anything.... in there?” I asked.

When Jolakaia didn’t answer, I remembered that she couldn’t understand my human questions. Skallagrim shook himself, as if from a deep and terrible dream, and translated.

“No,” Jolakaia replied. “The webbing has completely absorbed and there is nothing left of it to examine or remove.”

I shivered and fought the urge to dig my finger inside my ear to check for myself. How could the stuff have just disappeared into my body like that? It had been completely solid! Did it melt based on body heat? But then there would be liquid left or something. And it hadn’t melted in my hand!

Jolakaia said something about my heartrate normalizing. She reminded Skallagrim in a scolding tone that I needed to stay still, then after a few more checks on my ear, she left.

“How do you feel?” Skallagrim finally asked, planting himself on a stool beside the bed. He bent, placing his elbows on his knees, bending forward so that his face was in my line of sight with my head cranked to one side on the bed.

“Tired,” I said honestly. “My head hurts.”

He flinched, then raked his claws so viciously through his hair that his braid came undone. He didn’t seem to notice. Or if he did, he didn’t bother fixing it.

He hasn’t done that in a while...

“Suvi... I cannot express the regret I...” He took in a ragged breath and dragged his golden gaze up from where it had fallen to the floor between us. “I did not know it would hurt you like that. I am so sorry.”

An achy lump grew in my throat. He’d never apologized to me before. Or if he ever had, I’d never understood him.

It was something.

But it wasn’t quite enough.

“Are you apologizing for the pain I just went through right now, or for everything you’ve done? Are you sorry for abducting me in the first place?”

He hesitated, and it wasn’t a pause of uncertainty but rather of Oh, she’s not going to like my answer to that one.

“I am sorry for your pain,” he said slowly. Slowly, but so fucking surely. “But I am not sorry that I took you.”

“Why not!” It was only the migraine building behind my eyes that kept me from shouting it at him. “Why is a few minutes of my pain worth an apology, but not that fact that you kidnapped me! You took me from my own people, Skallagrim!”

His eye narrowed, and though he didn’t look happy, he certainly didn’t look contrite.

“You need rest. I don’t want to talk about this now.”

“We will talk about this now!” I started to sit up, but Skallagrim was up in a flash, his hand splayed across my décolletage and anchoring me in place.

“You must remain lying down.”

“I don’t have to do anything you say! You won’t even talk to me now that we can understand each other!” I tried in vain to sit up again, but the weight of his palm and fingers was a force I couldn’t hope to budge.

One shift of his hand and he could crush your ribcage if he wanted to. Stop antagonizing him.

“Just tell me,” I groaned. My head hurt. Everything hurt. I probably did need to rest. To just shut my eyes and go to sleep.

But I needed to hash this out even more.

“Tell me what is going on. You promised me, once. When I asked you why you took me. You said you needed the words to explain. Well, yippee! Now you’ve got them. I understand you. So just tell me what this is! Tell me why you took me and why you don’t even feel one bit of remorse about it!”

His hand, stone-heavy, slid upwards until he palmed the base of my throat. Against the solid alien weight of him, my human strength was barely a whisper. I felt puny. Fragile. Ephemeral and easily snuffed out.

His thumb stroked a slow line up and down the throbbing point of my pulse.

It seemed like he’d stand there staring down at me, caressing my throat in silence, forever. But finally, his hand stilled, and he spoke.

“I do not regret taking you because you are meant to be beside me. You are mine, Suvi. You are as much mine as my own scales and claws are. There is no force left in this universe but the one that tethers me to you. You can call it fate. Or destiny. Or the convergence of the brightest little star against the darkest span of sky. But there is only one word I need you to hear from me now and I bid you to listen well because it is the most important thing I’ll ever say.”

A hushed beat.

I didn’t breathe. Maybe he didn’t either, because when he finally said the word, it came out in a harsh, cathartic sort of sigh.

“Mate.”

I blinked in dumb confusion. His fingers twitched against my throat.

“You are my mate, Suvi. My fated bride. I have been clawing my way down a dark path towards you for a very, very long time, and at this point, little star, I could no more be without you than I could my own beating heart.” His snout tugged into a slight smile, but it was more rueful than joyful.  “So, no, Suvi, I am not sorry that I took you. And if faced with the choice again, I would still take you. Every single time.”

“Every single time,” I echoed, almost too shocked to be angry. At least, not angry yet.

“Regretting taking you would be like regretting something as inevitable and inescapable as sunrise.”

And here came the anger. I tried to sit up again, and maybe the rage made me seem stronger, because this time he didn’t try to stop me.

“Inevitable?” I said, disbelief at his audacity and lack of accountability fusing with fury. “Inescapable? No. You are the one who abducted me! You crashed into that planet and you saw me and you took me. You did, Skallagrim! No one else! You can’t blame fate for something that was entirely based on your own actions! You could have left me alone. You could have left me there!”

His wings snapped outward then back in with a fearsome, leathery crack.

“No. I could not have.” His single eye burned through a narrow slit and he gripped my chin with gentle but demanding claws. I thought he was going to say something else, but instead he just, on the bitter edge of a whisper, repeated it.

“I could not have.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Skallagrim

This was not going well. First, the unexpected amount of pain the webbing had caused Suvi, and now this. We could hear and speak to each other freely now, but understanding seemed a more distant prospect than ever. It was easier when we lacked the vocabulary for this – lacked the ability to brush up against the ugly and difficult things. It was far easier to speak on subjects like food and weather in stilted sentences than to speak of pain and longing and fate even with the swords of a hundred thousand words hacking away at the problem.