Chapter 12
Rook
“He lives,” Hook announces when I proudly stride into the kitchen with Hallie’s hand in mine. “I owe Heavy ten credits. I said we wouldn’t see you for a week.”
“You still won’t, mostly,” I growl.
The whole table laughs. Hallie’s cheeks go the deep pink I’ve already decided is my favorite color in the Four Sectors.
We’re only out here for an hour. Maybe less.
The bond is a live thing under my skin, a low constant hum that pulls toward her every second she’s more than an arm length away.
The first week after a claiming is a fever of its own, a pair of newly mated fools who can’t keep their hands off each other while their bodies finish deciding they’re one thing now.
We actually showered and dressed, which is a win. We are being very mature, reasonable adults who wanted a meal and the sight of other living beings before we go back down the hall and don’t come out.
I can’t stop touching her. Her hand, her wrist, the small of her back.
I don’t try very hard to stop. This is the female I saved by standing in front of her and taking a blast from a ferocious Royal Pigment operative in high tech armor.
And then she returned the favor, attempting to save my life by clasping my hand when the power went out, using my own personal crystal to recharge the surgery shield.
What she did was super charge my recovery. The Queen saved the Rook.
And now she’s my mate and we’ve planted our first offspring in her womb. Despite all the treachery and violence of the last few days, I have to admit I’m still happier than I’ve been since before my parents both passed away.
“Sit before you fall over, both of you,” Jana says, shoving a plate at us. “You’re swaying.”
We sit. Hallie’s thigh presses warm against mine under the table and I have to concentrate on the plate.
“You’ve got that look again,” Hallie murmurs, low, just for me.
“What look?”
“Like you’re three moves ahead of everybody and it’s making you sappy.”
I bring her knuckles up and kiss them. “All my best moves are for you.”
She grins. “Very true.”
Chief makes a disgusted noise from the end of the table that does not match the small, pleased look on his face.
It’s Hallie who turns the morning serious.
She’s got her data slate out, the one she shielded with her own body in the attack. She sets it on the table and the mood in the kitchen shifts.
“Sorry, but I was hoping we could take a moment to talk about this again.” She looks over at my brother.
“Scar’s seen all of this, of course. But I think I might’ve found something I wanted to bring up.
I want to say it out loud, with everyone here, because I think I’m reading something none of us said plainly yet.
” She looks at me, then at Chief, then around the table at my brothers. “And it’s about your parents.”
Scar leans forward. He’s been quiet in the corner, the way he always is, that ruined face giving away nothing, but his eyes are sharp on her. “Tell me.”
“As we all know, the House sent those three operatives. House Vaszneth, on Chronos—that’s confirmed, that’s not in question anymore.
” She pulls up something on the slate. “But here’s what I keep coming back to.
I was the Keeper of Records. I spent three years reading documents like these, and what I see here, which was covered by dense technical language, is that your parents were the target from the beginning. ”
“Years ago, your father found the seeds of this plan of theirs to change the way Illibrium is mined,” she says, gentle and relentless.
“Someone on Chronos was building a plan to phase the Margol out of Illibrium mining entirely, to push every Margol miner off the work and replace them with Royal Pigment. To take the most valuable resource in the universe out of the hands of the people the Illibrium actually chooses and put it in the hands of a House.” She swallows.
“Your father figured out what was coming. And your mother was helping him gather the proof. The two of them, quietly, trying to expose it before it could happen.”
“And then they died,” Chief says. His voice is gravel.
“And then they died.” Hallie doesn’t look away from him.
“The cargo accident. The cover-up. With the two of them gone, the only people who understood the plot were gone, and the proof scattered, and it just stopped. For years. They needed them gone, so they made them gone, like closing out a line on a ledger. It was a business decision.”
Nobody says anything.
I think about my parents, who I barely remember, because I was the youngest. I think about a House on a planet I’ve never seen deciding my mother and father were a problem to be solved.
A growl rumbles in Cannibal’s chest.
“You’re sure,” Heavy says, rough.
“I’m sure of what the documents say,” Hallie answers, careful, honest. “I’m sure your father found something and your mother helped him and the timing isn’t a coincidence. I can’t give you more than the records give. But the records give a lot.”
“It’s enough,” Scar says.
We all look at him.
He’s risen from his chair, and he’s holding the slate now, scrolling slow, and his scarred face is colder than I’ve ever seen. “Grytel will confirm the Chronos side; he’s been waiting for exactly this thread.” He doesn’t look up. “We have Ines to help with this research.”
“Yes,” she agrees, fiercely. “I’m on this new line of research.”
“House Vaszneth. We have a name now and finally a reason for what happened. We have proof their reach extends all the way here, because they sent three of their own to this compound to bury it.” Now he does look up, and his eyes move over all of us, his brothers, and land last on me.
“They came into our home and Rook almost died. And they have been sitting safe on Chronos this entire time thinking we’d never know their name. ”
“We can’t touch them from here,” Chief says, not arguing, just laying the board out. “Vaszneth’s untouchable from Timbur. We don’t have the reach.”
“Not yet.” Scar sets the slate down with great care.
“There’s one thing I still don’t have, and it’s the thing that keeps me up.
I don’t know how they reached our power grid.
That cascade wasn’t an accident, somebody put their hand on our systems and squeezed at the exact moment it would’ve killed my brother.
I don’t know how. And until I do, I’m not going to pretend we’re safe.
” He says it flat, no drama, which is how I know he means every word.
“But we have the name. The rest is mine to chase.”
And that’s all he says. Of course he has support for all of this from the entire crew as well as Ines, who is an attack creature in her own right.
But he’s always been so single-minded in his determination, it isolates him, when isolation isn’t necessary.
He’d carry the whole thing alone if we let him.
Hallie reaches under the table and finds my hand and squeezes.
“Okay,” she says softly, just to me. “I’m done. I said the thing. Can we…?”
“Yeah.” I’m already standing, already pulling her up with me. “We can.”
“Aaaand there they go,” Jana announces to the room. “Pay up, Hook.”
I get her down the hall and into my room, well, our room. The word is still new and enormous in my chest. I close the door behind us, and the rest of the universe goes quiet behind it.
For a moment we just stand there. No fever this time.
That’s the thing I keep marveling at. In the holosuite I was barely a thinking creature, run by a drive a million rotations old.
Now I’m just Maxon, in my own room, with my mate, and there’s nothing chasing us and nothing dying and nowhere either of us has to be.
We have a whole week. We have, gods willing, a whole life.
I tuck a strand of that dark red hair behind her ear. My claws are careful. My personal crystal hums in my pocket, thrilled that I’ve taken Hallie as my bride. “You did a brave thing out there. In the kitchen,” I tell her. “That wasn’t easy to say.”
“It needed saying.” She leans into my hand. “Your parents deserved better and I want their killers brought to justice.”
I have to take a breath. “Thank you,” I manage, “for giving us the means to make that happen.”
She tips her face up. “I love you.”
And there it is, plain, in the daylight, no fever burning it out of her.
“I love you,” I tell her back, and it’s the easiest thing I’ve ever said. “My Queen.”
She’s laughing when I kiss her, and the laugh melts into something warmer.
I walk her slowly backward toward the bed with my hands framing her face like she’s the most breakable, precious, unbreakable thing in the Four Sectors.
My hand finds the flat of her belly through her shirt and rests there and she covers it with her own.
“You scent it now too?” she whispers.
“Since the holosuite.” I can’t keep the wonder out of it. “Ours. Already.”
I undress her like I have all the time in the world, because I do.
My bride loves my cock. She’s admitted she’s obsessed.
I groan when her hands go around my throbbing erection and she handles me rough, just as I like.
Then I start on her nipples, pinching and sucking until she’s crying out for me to “fuck her hard.”
I love this female so much.
Soon, we’re both having yet another seismic orgasm. We’ll do this again in about another two hours. I’m getting a little sore and so is she. It’s good to take a rest.
“I’ve got you,” she breathes against my mouth.
“I know.” I’ve never known anything better. “You’ve had me since I opened the front door.”
She laughs.
And then we fall asleep in each other’s arms. It’s the best moment of my life.