So there was something that one of the reviewers mentioned which I'd been hinting about the whole story... which is actually what nudged me into coming back to writing more of this... They get the "spotted the foreshadowing" award...
Spock was finding it very hard to concentrate. They had begun by centring meditations to try and prepare for the meld, attempting to control as much of the emotion within him as possible. There had been tea and incense. Now as he sat opposite the priestess who would be communing with him, likely more than once over the next few days, he tried to concentrate on the flame as he had been asked, but his mind kept going back to T'Leiarel. It was almost like there was an echo of her fear at the back of his mind, but that couldn't be true. It was probably just his imagination stirred by the hormonal shifts. It took an especially strong bond to be able to feel a bondmate who wasn't there, and he didn't have a bond with T'Leiarel, a day in her company was hardly enough to forge one. At least he thought that was the case, as far as he knew it took a lot of effort to try and forge any bond in adulthood, let alone one strong enough to connect them like that.
"Are you ready to begin?" Spock looked up from the flame to concentrate on the priestess's question. He nodded, more an intention than a fact, he wanted to be ready, and he had done his best, but he could hardly say he was emotionally still given the depths of his longing to go to her. He wanted nothing more than to run to her, and he doubted that would grow any quieter, but the priestess had to be used to some feelings in those she worked with. "This may feel uncomfortable at first."
It did feel a little invasive, melds often did but right now it seemed even more intimate, as vulnerable and emotional as he was. He tried but couldn't help feeling that he would rather someone else was this close to him right now, closer than skin.
"Why aren't you with her right now?" The priestess asked, surprising Spock as he raised his eyebrows. "I was told you didn't have a bondmate, but that clearly isn't true. I can feel the bond. So why are you not with her? Is she unable to make it back to New Vulcan?"
"I was never bonded. My parents never made the arrangements." But he had dreamed of her, even before he was asked to find her, and she had dreamed, though not of her betrothed... if it had been of him surely she would have said? Spock hadn't told T'Leiarel he dreamed of her so that she could focus on her marriage, or on avoiding it, but what reason would she have to hide her thoughts from him. Then again what reason would she have to share them? "You are sure there is a bond, it is not that I am longing for one, or that I have been around someone during this time?" The priestess frowned.
"You can force a bond through a meld. It is a violent action, abhorrent, not something you could easily miss. Otherwise in adulthood it takes concentration, guided mutual meditation and melding and again is not something you would be likely to overlook, it is only as a child with minds still malleable that a connection can form easily." Spock hadn't done any of those things, he hadn't forced his mind on hers, they hadn't melded together, much as he wanted to right now, and there had been no ceremony as a child... but there had been a connection, the brief touch between them." With so much of his mental control stripped away already and with her thoughts inside his mind she knew the instant he thought of it, drawing the memory out so that they could both watch the interaction.
"Would that be enough?" Spock asked urgently. There was hope and fear warring in him at the answer, he had given up hope that he would ever have a bondmate, but T'Leiarel was, right as they spoke, at a marriage to another man, one she did not want but might feel pressured into doing for the good of the Vulcan race. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one. But right now all he wanted, all he needed, was her, and for her to feel the same. Though the hormonal shifts and bonding urges were less volatile in women than in men. For her to feel anything for him would be enough. "We barely spoke, we were alone, her fingers brushed the back of my hand... would that be enough?" And, though he didn't ask, because the priestess could hardly be expected to tell, would he be able to stop her marriage before it was too late? Would she even want him to when she had told him to come here instead?