Chapter 2

Chapter Two

A s quick as he’d appeared, Jyx was gone, his ship speeding off into the darkness of space and taking her assistant with it. Molly wished him well; she didn’t have time to get angry about her routine being upset. They were six days out from the party and she had to get everything ready to go. When Molly walked into the main hall, she froze. One of her minions bumped into her from behind and she jostled forward but couldn’t make herself move any further.

The tree was gone.

It had been Jyx’s last assignment and he’d been so happy to complete it before he left that he’d sent her a special message to make sure she knew it was done. He’d stayed up late into the night to complete the damn thing, even painting it green like she’d specified. But in the area she’d dubbed Santa’s Corner, there was a giant blank space where her tree should have been.

The tears in her eyes waged a war with the scream lodged in her throat. The tree had been there last night, she had the picture on her communicator as proof, but this morning there was nothing to be found. Finally she forced herself to move until she came up to the closest assistant. She tugged on the alien’s sleeve until she had his attention.

“Where’s the tree?” she asked, in something that might have been called an even tone if someone didn’t know the emotions raging inside of her.

The alien looked confused, the whiskers on his face undulating despite the fact there was no breeze in the room. “What tree?” he finally responded.

Molly jabbed her hand out, almost smacking someone carrying bundled fabrics to another table. “The pipe sculpture that Jyx put together last night. It was supposed to look like a tree!” Her voice jumped up as she spoke and she choked back her anger.

The alien just shrugged. “There wasn’t anything over there when I arrived this morning.”

Molly stared at him for a moment before letting go of his arm and backing away. The tree wasn’t the first thing to disappear. Just the day before, the pipes that acted as the branches had walked away from where they were supposed to be. But Molly had been sure that was all settled when she’d found new pipes for the project. It had started with small things, a few cans of paint, some tools, one cheap information tablet. Nothing that couldn’t be ascribed to simple negligence. But the pipes yesterday, and now again today, were something entirely different. A person didn’t accidentally remove a hundred kilos of plas piping. It was unwieldy and storage on the station came at a premium.

No, this wasn’t negligence. Molly had a thief.

If Jyx were still here, this would be the perfect time for him to show his worth. He could go to the security station and report the thefts while she stuck around to oversee the decorations and confirm the timing for everything that was going to take place on the day of the party. She looked over the room, but no one stood out as a likely candidate for taking up the mantle of her assistant in these final days. Whenever she made eye contact with anyone they quickly looked away, as if she had some evil look that could send them to their doom.

Maybe she did.

But while no assistant made themselves known, her minions did seem to be putting everything together in a timely manner. She’d posted several lists of everything that needed to be done and sectioned off her workers into different tiered groupings. Everyone knew what they were supposed to do; all her presence was doing at the moment was making them nervous.

Security reporting it was, then.

Molly turned on her heel and left her people to get their work done. They knew how to contact her if anything else went wrong. She ended up at the central security desk where only an android was waiting, telling her that all non-emergency reports would be seen to in a timely fashion. It offered her a tablet to use to send in her report, but Molly didn’t trust it. No one was going to take a few disappearing pipes seriously if she didn’t talk to them in person. Luckily, the android was able to tell her where she could find the nearest security officer and she was off on the next part of her adventure.

Dock E was used for emergency ship repair and generally stayed empty, according to the tour she’d been given when she arrived on the station. But today people milled around outside, many Oscavians, and several other aliens that Molly couldn’t identify. Rising up from the center of all of them, standing half a head taller than the tallest person near him, was a golden-skinned alien who immediately captured her attention.

He had short, soft dark hair that her fingers itched to touch, and his skin would have shone under natural light. Even the fake lighting of the ship, which did favors for no one, made him look radiant, like he had been birthed by a sun. The wide collar of his top gaped and she spotted dark rectangular and triangular markings that might have been tattoos. They climbed down his neck and over one shoulder, disappearing under the dark fabric of his shirt, much to Molly’s disappointment. She felt like some huge hook had dug into her chest and cast a line out until it connected her and the golden stranger. She didn’t know his name, his species, or why he was here.

But he was hers.

God, she wanted him, wanted to talk to him, to touch him, to taste him, anything that he would give to her. The stab of need was so sudden that it threatened to stagger her in place. All thoughts of why she’d come here dissolved. She needed to have him, and she was going to do whatever she needed to do to make sure that happened.

When his eyes finally met hers over the crowd of people in between them, she caught a flash of black before they shifted to a deep ruby red. So far away she shouldn’t have been able to see it, but nothing about the man made sense. None of it mattered. She stepped towards him, ready to see what happened next.

Denya. The recognition tore through Tav as he made eye contact with the brown-skinned alien across the room. Human, he was almost certain. They were kind of rare this far away from their home planet, but it didn’t matter where she came from. She was his . He’d heard rumors of Detyens finding mates among the humans; something about the species was compatible with his own, though the compatibility had only recently been discovered. Tav had never thought to hope that one day he might take a human mate. He’d thought that if he were ever lucky enough to meet his denya then she would be a Detyen like him.

Not the case, and though unexpected, he didn’t mourn the change to his world. He had a mate.

It was almost a miracle that he could see her across the crowd; her curly hair stood out, but she was one of the shorter people around. If they were side by side, she’d only come up to his chest, but that would be perfect if they were cuddled together. He could wrap her curves up and protect her from the harsh realities of the world.

Their eyes locked and he fell into the dark, honey brown depths of hers. He knew his own had shifted to red, but while they stared at one another her gaze didn’t falter. She wasn’t scared of him, even though he’d been told by others that the shifting eyes made him look something like a monster.

He wanted to reach out and pull his denya close, to wrap her up in his arms and take a taste. Would she be sweet? Spicy? Would she taste like home? For the past few years, Tav’s only home had been his ship, and his family was his crew, even if they rotated out with startling frequency. He’d moved far away from his birth planet of Jaaxis and planned never to return. But looking at his denya, he realized that home didn’t have to be a place, not when the heart of his soul cried out for him to take the woman he saw and keep her close for all time.

As she closed the distance between them, her jaw firmed and she seemed determined, like she was carrying out a warrior’s mission. The rest of the room disappeared when she came within breathing distance and Tav forgot why he’d even come to Honora Station in the first place. She must have been calling to him. Nothing else made any sense.

“Denya.” The word left his lips on a whisper and seemed to wash over the woman who fate had ordained was his mate.

She shivered with the power of it and Tav’s lips tugged up into a smile. He wanted to reach out and cup her face, to pull her close and kiss her, but only at the last moment did he remember that they were in the middle of a large group of people and no matter what he felt, she couldn’t know what it meant. He’d need to take his time and bring her around.

“Hello,” she said. The word wrapped around him and sunk in deep. It was just a simple greeting, but to Tav it was everything . His denya shook her head, as if trying to make sense of something. “How do I… I know you. That’s not?—”

But Tav nodded. They might not have known each other in the traditional sense, but that didn’t matter. Not now. “I’m Tav.”

“Molly,” she swallowed, and seemed to be debating something before shaking her head again. “Human.”

“Detyen,” he replied.

“I’ve never heard of a Detyen before.”

Tav shrugged. “There aren’t that many of us around,” he said, but there was no need to go into the tragedy of his people just yet. That wasn’t a topic for their first conversation.

“I need you.”

“Yes.” Whatever it was for, he would give it to her, that was his newly found duty. She was his mate and Tav would not fail her.

Molly led him away and Tav didn’t even take a moment to tell his people where he was going. The Honora Station crew seemed to have everything sorted out and he trusted Juuno to take care of the ship. But, truly, none of that entered his mind until they were several hallways away. Molly told him to move and so he followed. They walked for a long time. From the outside, Honora Station seemed tiny, a dot, barely a blip, in the vast expanse of space. But inside it was gargantuan, with long hallways and twists and turns all around. Tav was already lost and he hoped his mate knew where she was going. Preferably somewhere private where they could get to know one another better.

With the Denya Price hanging heavy over his people’s heads, it wasn’t uncommon to claim one’s mate immediately upon meeting. The other choice was death, and few would willingly doom themselves, especially when salvation was right there. They could decide if a relationship was something they wanted later. But that was the Detyen way. Humans didn’t operate like that, Tav knew, and he would need to treat Molly with care to get her to offer herself to him.

And once she did, he hoped he could keep her. Maybe it was the explosive connection of the bond. Tav didn’t know, but he could already feel that she was the one for him, the only person in the galaxy who could complete him. If she cast him aside, he might continue living, but it would be a pale existence compared to what he could have with her.

When she finally came to a stop in front of a bustling hallway, decorated in bright colors and manned by dozens of people moving with determination, Tav didn’t know what to expect. “What’s going on?” he finally asked.

Molly grinned up at him. “It’s a winter party, or it will be, when I’m done with it.”

“Winter where?” They were on a space station, there were no seasons.

His mate pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “It needs snow to be real.” She tipped her head up at him. “You don’t have a snow machine by any chance?”

“Sorry, no.” Tav wasn’t even sure what that was, and his ship certainly didn’t need one. Still, he felt like a failure for letting his mate down and vowed to himself that he would ask Juuno if she knew where he could get one.

“Hmm.” Molly was going to say something else when a bright pink alien came up to her and started talking. Tav faded into the background a little, taking it all in so that he could have some idea of what his mate was doing. It was practically military in its organization, with everyone doing their jobs with a quiet efficiency that spoke to proper planning and a bright mind. A few more people came up to talk to Molly, and when one of those was a towering Oscavian who looked at her with an intensity that Tav didn’t like, he stepped a little closer, silently making his claim. The Oscavian looked at him and then back to Molly before his shoulders slumped, and he seemed to understand that whatever opportunity he’d had to make a move, that was done now.

Several minutes later his mate shoved a tablet at him and told him to supervise the delivery and building of several small sculptures. She clasped his hand for a moment and they were rooted in place for several seconds, the arcing recognition of connection too much to ignore. That desire to kiss her rose up again, but he valiantly pushed it aside. They needed to talk first, she needed to understand just how important she was, and then they could make their next move.

And so the day went on with Tav doing his denya’s bidding like it was the most natural thing in the universe. The hours melted away and by the time most of the people in the room were gone, he hadn’t realized how long he’d been working. Molly found him and took the tablet back, her face bright and proud when she realized how much he’d gotten done. Tav preened under her regard.

“You’re coming back tomorrow, right?” she asked eagerly, stepping in close.

Tav could smell a faintly floral scent mixed in with something that was uniquely his denya. “You couldn’t keep me away,” he promised. Anything to spend more time with her.

Her smile grew even brighter. “Good. For some reason, I feel like you’re it. Like I can trust you.”

He could have kissed her then, but something held Tav back. He didn’t want her affections out of gratitude for a job well done. He wanted them because she could not tear herself from his side. But Tav knew in his soul that given enough time, he could make Molly his. All he had to do was bring the holidays to a winterless place and they could find a way to warm themselves together.