Cross-species bonding was illegal because it changed outcomes. Not hearts—outcomes. Gene forecasts. Alliance models. Succession probabilities.

The kind of things that sat in sealed government vaults and glowed quietly on analysts’ screens. You knew this because you helped write the law.

Aliens were unknown creatures to the human race and people were wary of them, that's why they avoided interactions with them as much as possible.

You were human, born unbonded, trained to see populations the way other people saw weather. Pressure systems. Migration curves. Risk.

When the first data sets came in—showing how bonded pairs subtly rewrote each other at the cellular level—no one panicked. They were curious. Excited, even.

Then the projections began to drift. Children born from bonded bloodlines didn’t belong cleanly to either species. Their immune systems adapted too quickly.

Their neural patterns resisted standard conditioning. In political simulations, entire alliances collapsed—not through rebellion, but through loyalty that could not be negotiated with.

Love, it turned out, was a variable that refused to stay in its box. So they banned it.

You stood in the transit atrium when you first met Irix, watching the air shimmer around him the way it always did around his kind—like light hesitating before deciding what to be. He was a liaison, officially. Unbonded, registered, compliant.

Safe.

“You’re staring,” he said gently, his voice layered, as if another frequency hummed beneath it.

“I’m assessing,” you replied automatically. That made him smile. His species always smiled when humans used the wrong words for feelings.

You were assigned to work together for six weeks. Six weeks of controlled proximity. Six weeks of careful distance. You spoke about trade routes, resource sharing, the slow degradation of the planet’s outer rings.

You did not speak about the way your pulse synchronized with his breathing when he stood too close. Bonding required intent. Consent. A biochemical threshold crossed willingly. But bodies were not legal scholars.