Rook Takes Queen (The Fever Brothers #7)

Chapter 1

Rook

The compound is loud tonight, as it is always nowadays.

This isn’t bad, simply an observation.

My loud, raucous family devours their meal. All my brothers together, along with their brides and offspring. I sip my drink and watch them all, with a smile on my face. What would I do without them?

Chief, the brother chosen to be the leader of our mining crew, sits at the head of the table, next to his bride, Naomi, her belly round and high under the table.

Scar sits to his right, forking something yellow onto his plate and saying nothing, the way he does.

Trunk is seated beside his pregnant bride, Ines, with one claw on her thigh under the table.

Cannibal and Roxy are across from them, their daughter Zora between them, trying to feed purple-root to a stuffed creature that has no mouth.

Heavy and Jana sit near me, at the far end, their son Rux in a high chair and Jana already pregnant again.

Claws and Lila are squeezed in beside them, their daughter Argylia between them, Lila rounder than ever.

Hook and Leah have come down to visit from the employee housing, and Leah’s second pregnancy is just starting to show.

Daxon, my eldest brother, lives off-world now with his bride, Darcy, and their offspring.

The rest of us still live here, on Timbur.

So it’s only eight of us Margol Xylan brothers at the table tonight.

There are nine of us, total, and the colony calls us the Fever Brothers, though no one asked us if we wanted the name.

On Timbur, a mining crew is usually a patchwork of males drawn from a dozen family lines, because attunement to the Illibrium crystals that power the known universe, doesn’t run clean through a bloodline.

Within a single family some sons, and rarely daughters, feel the fever and some never do; a father attuned to the deep seams might raise five sons and see only one of them take the calling.

But every brother born to our line came up attuned, every one of us is able to bond with a personal crystal and feel the Illibrium sing in the rock the way you feel heat off a fire.

The crystals have agreed to allow us to extract them, carefully, from the mine.

When my oldest brothers came of age they mined together.

I am the youngest, and when I came of age and proved attuned, I joined the crew too.

The other miners started calling us the Fever Brothers before I was old enough to swing a pick, and the name stuck the way names do.

And now, the Fever Brothers are in fact, a large family line. Seven humans have arrived on Timbur, and strangely, each of them was scented by one of my brothers as a match, and each couple performed the hand-clasping ceremony.

The other miners, and really the whole colony of Timbur, call us “human lovers.” They find it odd that all of us have mates not of our own species, and specifically from the rare human species.

I have to admit it is odd. What are the chances?

You’d think at least one or two of us would’ve mated with another Xylan, or at the very least another species besides human.

I look at the pleasant human faces smiling and laughing at the table tonight. Good thing I happen to really like all of these humans. Before Saxon originally mated with Leah, I’d never met a human in real life and barely knew what they were, and now I understand humans as well as my own species.

Only Scar and I are still unmated.

And I assume I’ll be different from my brothers and eventually end up with a Xylan, though.

Someone sensible, from the mating database, once all of this crap happening to my family finally ends and we’re all safe—this is when I’ll get in touch with official matchmakers and let them know I am formally ready to start being paired for hand-clasping ceremonies.

This will need to happen with Xylan who are off planet, because I’ve covertly scented all the unmated females on Timbur and confirmed that none of them are my future mates.

Cannibal bursts out laughing at something Roxy says to him, causing food to fly out of his mouth.

I grin and shake my head.

These humans have enriched our lives. The Fever Brothers were demoted to the worst domicile on the settlement, the one at the dead end of the road that looked abandoned from the outside.

After our parents were murdered and Daxon was banished, this is where they put us.

They tried to bury us here, and yet we grew.

I am happy for my brothers; I want to be clear about that.

I’ve helped carry furniture into new rooms, held squalling newborns in my claws and become close with the seven human females who are now my sisters-in-law.

I wouldn’t be upset to also find that I had a human bride…

but it does seem impossible that all of us would mate with humans, right?

“So Kryzon’s moved,” Scar suddenly comments.

Chief grunts in response. “When did that happen?”

“Yesterday. He was transferred from the peacekeeper facility to the prison colony on Arkell-Seven. Two hundred rotations, no parole.”

“Good,” Heavy mutters.

I half-listen while they go over it all again, the way we’ve gone over it a hundred times since the night of the attack.

Kryzon won’t give a name, a faction, or a single Chronos contact.

The peacekeepers have offered him everything and he refused all of it, which tells you exactly what you need to know, that whoever he answers to is more frightening than two hundred rotations on a prison rock.

“You’ll spend the rest of your lives hunting someone you’ll never find.

” These were Kryzon’s last words to us. I had him cornered against the rock outcropping at the tree line when he said it, and I remember thinking that he wasn’t afraid of me, or of any of us.

He was instead afraid of someone we couldn’t see.

“And Grytel?” Cannibal asks through a mouthful of food.

Every eye goes to Ines, ready to hear her update on the happenings of the CEO of Timbur Minecorp.

“He’s still cooperating,” she responds. “Fully. Grytel has been briefing me for the next article and briefing Scar separately. He’s not our enemy.” She glances at Chief. “He wants to know what happened to your parents as much as you do now.”

Chief’s jaw works. It is still hard for all of us, giving up the idea of hating the male we’ve mistrusted for rotations. My brother nods in acknowledgement. “Then we work with him.”

“It’s so weird,” Lila comments. “I thought Grytel was the enemy and now he’s suddenly our ally?”

“The Four Sectors is a weird place,” Ines shrugs, and lifts her glass. “You never know when everything can suddenly change, hopefully for the better.”

“Exactly,” Roxy remarks and lifts her glass too. “I’ve come to believe that in life, when all looks lost, that’s the moment things change for the better.”

Voices rise at the table, in agreement. And just like that the room brightens again. Everyone lifts their cups, even the offspring.

I lift my own cup.

And then I hear a knock on the front door.

The whole table stills at once.

We do not get visitors. Ever. And the last time this family met something unexpected at a door in the dark, we buried our mother and father the next morning.

Our compound sits at the edge of the jungle past the last of the employee housing, and the only beings who come down our road are family, and family does not knock.

I’m already standing.

My body is out of the chair before the second knock lands, because the perimeter is mine. I cover the watch, monitors the sensors and do the long, quiet walks of the fence line in the dark.

Chairs scrape behind me. But I’m faster than all of them and I want it that way, I want to be the first because what if on the other side of that door is trouble.

The hall is dark on purpose; a lit hallway behind you when you open a door at night just makes you a target with a glow around your edges.

I open the door to the sound of the rainstorm that’s rushing across our corner of the planet this evening.

The underlying scent, beyond the wind and rain, hits me before my eyes have finished adjusting to the dark.

A breeze carries it again, right across my face.

I’m startled, with no words to express what is happening to me.

The scent rushes into my lungs and hits my heated veins.

My personal crystal flares hot from within my pocket, a sudden burning point, the way it does down in the deep when it’s near a live seam in the caves, except there’s no seam here.

Nothing but her. The silent, bedraggled female who stands on the porch with a bag in her arms.

My body, which has been dormant my whole life, flares awake all at once. I have to put my claw flat against the doorframe because for one humiliating second I’m not certain my legs will hold.

So much for the sensible female from the database. The universe sent me this shadowy female instead.

Then my eyes adjust, and I see her clearly. I turn on the light. She lifts her chin and blinks up at me.

A human female I’ve never met before has arrived.

She is small, delicate and soaked through, her clothes plastered to her.

Dark red hair is stuck to her face in wet ropes.

Freckles are scattered across her nose and cheeks.

She’s shaking, hard, from the cold or from fear, I can’t tell yet, maybe both.

She clutches the bag against her chest with both arms. Her blue eyes are huge and fixed on me.

“Are you a Fever Brother? Is this the Fever Brothers compound?”

I instantly understand that I must protect this female. “Yes, I am a Fever Brother,” I confirm, “which means you’re safe now. You came to the right place.”

“Oh.” Her breath stutters.

Behind me I hear the heavy tread of my brothers filling the hall, the scrape and rustle of a whole family rising from a table.

She hears it too. Her eyes jump past me to the dark behind my shoulder and her whole body flinches. She takes a step backward.

I turn, blocking the sight and sound of my intimidating family so that the only thing she has to look at is me. My hands are open and my voice gentle. “That’s just my family. We were having dinner. They’re loud, yes, but they mean well. Come inside, out of the rain. You are safe here,” I repeat.

The footsteps behind me stop. Good. My brothers understand from my body language to keep their distance.

She gives a curt nod and steps forward, inside of our compound.

I shut the door behind her, protecting her from the rain and the cold, and whatever else she is running from.

Then I finally get a closer look at this female who arrived out of the rain and I’m stunned for a moment by her beauty.

The full lips, the colorless, soft skin.

She’s looking at me like I’m the only safe thing in the universe.

And I know in that moment with total certainty that I would burn down the sky before I let anything touch her.

I guide her down the hallway, toward the dining room. “You are here to meet the Fever Brothers. You are in luck, we are all here right now and I am taking you to see them. Do not worry, I will remain right next to you.”

“Thank you,” she whispers.

The hallway empties and I take her to the dining room.

“Rook.” Chief’s deep voice questions. “Who is here?”

“She’s human,” I respond, giving this basic information before I even formally start introductions. They need time to process what just happened to me at the front door of our compound and how it will profoundly change my life, as well as theirs.

The room goes silent for a beat.

“And I’ve scented her,” I explain.

“Oh, hells,” Cannibal drops his fork and loudly remarks.

“Another one?” Chief questions.

“Another one,” I confirm.

The female’s gaze flicks between me and the rest of the beings in the compound, lost, not understanding the importance of what I’m saying.

More of my family crowds forward, wanting to see the new visitor.

Meanwhile, my female doesn’t know she’s just walked up to a stranger’s door and turned his entire life upside down.

“That’s seven,” Leah says, delighted. “Seven humans now. How do you miners keep—”

“Welcome,” Lila calls out, warm and huge.

The female flinches at the volume and shrinks back again.

I shift on instinct, putting more of myself between her and the noise, blocking it like I can block sound with my body. “She stays,” I declare, loudly for all to hear. It comes out of me as a growl. I have never growled at my family in my life.

“Of course she stays,” Chief answers, without a half-second’s pause. No question in it. Just my brother, backing me, the way he always has.

“Obviously,” Scar says, dry as dust.

The rest of them murmur their agreement.

The female blinks up at me. “I…” she starts. “I have come here, to meet the Fever Brothers, because I have information, about Chronos. I didn’t know where else to go,” she whispers. “Someone told me the Fever Brothers would—” She stops and swallows. The bag tightens against her chest again.

“You’re safe here,” I remind her. “You were right to come to us.”

“Okay,” she breathes.

Jana stands up briskly. “Right. Food. You look like you haven’t eaten in two days.”

“Three,” the human admits in a small voice.

“Three. Okay.” Jana is already moving. “Rook, bring her in, sit her down. Somebody get the med kit. Lila, a clean towel. Naomi, there’s a blanket on the back of my chair, pass it over. Move, people.”

The compound erupts into the familiar choreography of taking care of someone new.

I guide my human further into the dining room with one claw at the small of her back, making sure to only touch her through two layers of fabric. Luckily, she already wears the gloves of the unmated.

She sits down, still holding her travel bag against her chest like someone might take it from her.

I crouch down beside her chair. “I am Maxon of Twenty-Four,” I tell her quietly. “My crew name is Rook.”

“Maxon,” she repeats.

“What is your name?”

She swallows. Looks at me for a long moment. “Hallie,” she finally says. “Hallie Longwell.”

“Hallie Longwell,” I repeat back to her. “You are safe here now.”

She exhales shakily.