Life aboard the Asteria hadn't slowed since the ceremony. If anything, things had only gotten more complicated. Diplomatic channels remained abuzz, scientific delegations filed endless requests, and rumor-fueled speculation buzzed among the crew like an open comm line no one could quite shut off.
Anthony adjusted his uniform for the third time that morning, eyes flicking to the mirror in his quarters. The bioluminescent markings across his collarbone had faded to a muted glow, but they were still visible in the right light. A lingering, permanent reminder of a choice that had changed everything — even if no one dared say it out loud.
He headed out.
The corridors were quiet at this hour. Shift rotations always left little pockets of silence, and Anthony welcomed it. But he could still feel her.
The bond wasn't always loud. It wasn't even like a voice. More like pressure — a presence behind the back of his thoughts. He could tell when Thalia was focused, when she was annoyed, even when she was amused... without needing to see her.
And sometimes that was comforting.
Sometimes, it wasn't.
---
Bridge duty had settled into routine, though nothing felt routine anymore. Thalia was already at her station when Anthony arrived, her posture straight, neural filaments pinned into a formal configuration. If not for the gentle flare of color at their tips when he stepped onto the deck, no one might have noticed the difference. But he felt the flicker of awareness between them like a tap on the shoulder.
He took his post beside her.
They worked in silence for several minutes, the bridge a quiet hum of updates and sensor sweeps. Commander Dravic had mercifully kept his commentary to a minimum since the bonding, but his reptilian eyes still flicked toward them occasionally, like he was waiting for something to go wrong.
Thalia finally broke the silence between them, voice low but audible.
> "You didn't eat breakfast."
He blinked. "I wasn't hungry."
> "You thought about caf three times before leaving your quarters."
Anthony side-eyed her. "You're spying on my caffeine cravings now?"
> "Monitoring," she said smoothly, her lips twitching at the corners. "It's part of the bond. I'm not proud of it."
He snorted. The soft warmth in his chest lingered longer than he liked to admit.
---
It wasn't until mid-shift that the signal anomaly appeared.
"Commander," Ensign Brell said from the sensor station. "We've picked up an intermittent pulse — low-frequency, long-range, near the outer debris field."
Anthony stood. "Is it natural?"
> "Not clear, sir. Not quite noise, not quite encoded. It's… repeating, but with irregular decay patterns. Too structured to be random."
Thalia was already overlaying telemetry. "No known Coalition pattern. Not a probe, not local comms. Origin point's fixed, but we can't triangulate beyond that yet."
Captain Renara's voice cut across the bridge. "Run it against all diplomatic, scientific, and historical pattern libraries. I want to know who — or what — is out there."
Anthony's eyes met Thalia's.
He didn't say anything. He didn't need to.
Neither did she.
---
Later, as they reviewed the signal logs in the operations lab, Anthony sat forward in his chair, elbows on his knees.
> "It's not just the signal that bothers me," he said. "It's when it started."
Thalia turned to him. "What do you mean?"
> "Look at the timestamps. The first burst came twenty-three minutes after the ceremony ended on Proxima Station."
She stilled. Slowly, her neural filaments uncurled from their tight configuration, one of them drifting across her shoulder like a strand of hair falling loose.
> "You're suggesting... it's connected to the bond."
> "Or someone is watching the bond," he said. "Tracking it. Tracking us."
There was silence.
He could feel her unease as clearly as if she'd spoken it aloud.
> "Could the bond itself emit something traceable?" he asked.
> "In theory," Thalia said. "We know there are energy patterns involved — neural harmonics, low-band emissions. If someone had advanced enough sensors and knew what to look for…"
> "They could follow it. Or react to it."
She reached over, fingers brushing his wrist — a gesture they'd both grown used to in private moments, a way to reset, to ground.
> "We should speak to my aunt again," she said quietly. "She may have insight we lack."
> "And we don't mention this to the Captain yet."
> "Not until we're sure," she agreed.
---
That night, Anthony lay in his quarters, the room lit only by the faint glow of the starscape outside his viewport. He wasn't sleeping. He wasn't even close.
Thalia's thoughts drifted at the edge of his awareness — soft, distant, focused. She was awake too.
He thought about messaging her. Calling her over. But something held him back. Not fear. Not guilt. Just... gravity.
They were tethered now. In ways the rest of the universe might not understand. And somewhere in that vast darkness, something was pulling on the same line.
Something watching.
---
Through the quiet hum of the ship's systems, the signal anomaly pulsed again — faint, irregular, but unmistakably there.
And this time… it was closer.