Chapter 3
Rook
“Hallie is going to think she needs to leave, in order to keep us safe. You’ll need to talk her down. Make sure she doesn’t do something stupid and brave.”
Scar says this from the chair across from me.
My brother has his typical sour expression on his face and his literal scar runs purple down the side of his cheek.
I know he seems angry most of the time and other beings on Timbur mainly avoid him, but I remember when he wasn’t this way, before our parents died.
And I know that he’s focused on his life’s work—solving the murder of our mother and father, which I find admirable.
We’re alone in the front room, the fireplace already crackling steadily, the windows still gray with the hour before dawn. I haven’t slept much, having spent half the night listening to her through the wall, at the slightest shift of blankets.
I nod in agreement. “She looked surprised, last night,” I say. “When she stepped inside and saw all of us. I think she expected to find a crew of hardened, unmated miners with nothing to lose. And instead she found a compound full of happy humans and small children.”
A raspy chuckle. “Well. I’m still a hardened, unmated miner.”
I take a sip of my traq. “You are,” I agree. “You are.”
“And you aren’t anymore?”
Heh. My mind wanders back to that amazing moment when the wind blew her pheromones into my lungs. “I don’t think I am…I scented her the moment I opened the door. If I were to clasp hands with her, I believe we would be compatible and that would start the chase.”
He leans forward. “Which makes it even more important that you talk her down.”
“Who needs to talk what down?” Claws questions as he enters the room. Cannibal and Chief are behind him. All three of my brothers sit heavily into nearby chairs.
“Scar thinks Hallie feels guilty about the danger she brought to the compound,” I tell them. “He thinks I need to be careful, that’s she’s going to run the second she can, to take it away from us.”
“She is a flight risk,” Chief agrees.
Claws looks over at me. “Does she understand what you meant when you said you scented her?”
“No.” I scrub a claw over my face. “I assume she doesn’t.
She didn’t question me about it when I walked her to her room last night.
And I didn’t mention it again because I simply wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.
There was so much more on my mind after her revelations.
How would she know that there are Xylan who can scent their mates prior to clasping?
To her I’m just the male who opened the door. ”
Claws shakes his head. “I’d wait to tell her.
It’s too soon. She just arrived and only met you.
There’s much you still need to find out about her.
Would she want to stay on Timbur as your mate and the mother of your offspring?
Does she want offspring? Was she planning to eventually return to New Earth? ”
“Also, there is much danger right now.”
“Exactly.”
“Roxy came here with killers behind her,” Cannibal remarks, reminding us that this isn’t our first incident of finding a female in danger.
“And she made it through, barely needing my help. A female like yours has stayed alive this long by running her own defense. Just a reminder to not treat her like a soft flower. Humans are small and adorable, but they are strong as steel on the inside.”
We all murmur our agreements.
“I’m not sure how long this information can be kept from her anyways, about our rare ability to scent our mate ahead of clasping,” I remind them. “Every female in this compound knows too. How long does a secret like that last in this house?”
Cannibal lets out a low, grim laugh. “Someone’s going to say something. You know they are.”
“They mean well,” Claws says. “That’s the problem. One of them is going to be kind to her and apologize for something and it’s going to come right out. I’m so sorry, it’s only because you’re Rook’s mate.” He winces. “At dinner. In front of the whole table. You watch.”
“Then we tell them all to be careful,” Chief says.
Scar makes a sound that’s almost amusement. “That has never once worked in the history of this family.”
“So how much danger is she actually in,” I ask the room. “Truly.”
“A great House on Chronos built a plan to take over Minecorp and the deposits of Illibrium they meant to keep buried forever,” Scar says slowly.
“And their own Keeper walked out the door with all of it, in her head, where they can’t even reach it to destroy it.
There is no version of this where they let that stand.
They will spend whatever it costs to erase her, and they will not stop.
” He meets my eyes. “And I’ve already learned that she came in through the transporter station on a real visa.
The transporter staff logged her. The moment her former employer thinks to look — and they eventually will — there’s a clean line drawn from Chronos, to Timbur, to this road.
” A pause. “It isn’t if they come, Rook. It’s when.”
“Then she stays here,” Chief responds. The crew leader’s voice now, settling it.
“We need her, she’s the only one alive who’s read the whole plan, and her memory is the proof.
And she’s safer inside these walls than anywhere in the Four Sectors.
She stays hidden. Yes, the transporter staff knows she arrived, but as far as the wider colony knows, no human arrived last night.
The Fever Brothers took in no one.” He looks around at us.
“Which means nothing changes. The crew works the mine, same shifts, same faces, same routine. The brides too. All of us carry on with our lives as if nothing has changed. Anyone watching sees an ordinary cycle.”
“And how do we make sure she doesn’t do something stupid, like run for the next commercial ship off planet?” Claws asks.
“Someone stays back. In the compound, out of sight. Guards her, keeps her hidden, keeps her here.” Chief’s gaze comes to me, and the corner of his mouth moves. “I don’t think I need to ask for a volunteer.”
“No,” I say. “You don’t.”
“Maxon?”
We all turn.
Hallie Longwell stands in the doorway, as beautiful as ever.
My heart literally skips a beat at the sight of her.
She wears the clean clothes someone left for her, her dark red hair dry and loose around her face, the freckles standing out clear across her nose, and she’s looking right at me.
Over her shoulder is that bag again, that she arrived with.
The conversation dies. Five enormous males caught mid-scheme, going abruptly, guiltily silent.
Her eyes move over all of us, sharp even now, reading the silence for exactly what it is. She purses her lips. “You were talking about me.”
“Yes,” I respond, making sure to always tell her the truth. “We were trying to understand the threat level of what you were telling us last night.”
A flicker of surprise crosses her face, that I didn’t dodge it.
Then she lifts her chin. “Good. Then you’ve saved me the trouble of bringing it up myself.
” She steps into the room, already holding a cup of warm traq.
“I’m ready to give you the rest of it. And then we need to talk about me leaving, before I get every single one of you killed. ”
Across the room, Scar’s look finds mine. Told you.
A heavy sigh escapes my lips. I’ve got a big job ahead of me. I need to convince her to remain with us, thereby saving this female from herself, and the only tools at my disposal will be my charm and winning personality, both of which I often find lacking.
Hallie takes the couch nearest all of us. And I quietly stand and move so that I’m seated beside her. She gives me a nervous smile and then looks back at my other brothers.
“Start with the House,” Scar says. “You said Royal Pigment. Which one?”
“House Vaszneth.”
The name drops into the room and I watch it land on my brothers’ faces. Even Scar goes still.
“You know it?” Hallie asks.
“I know of it,” Scar responds. “The way you know of a storm on the far side of the planet. They are one of the oldest, richest Royal Pigment Houses on Chronos.”
“I kept their records.” She wraps both hands around the traq but doesn’t drink. “Which means I saw how the orders moved. Who signed what, where the currency went and who it went to.”
“Can you give us names?” Chief questions.
“Researchers, mostly. Everything was kept quiet, off the main ledgers and paid through accounts that don’t have the House’s name anywhere near them. And there were lots of shipments I was never able to trace, going out to coordinates that aren’t on any registry I had access to.”
Chief leans forward. “Going where?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point. Someone took a great deal of trouble to make sure the Keeper couldn’t follow those particular records.” Her mouth twists. “Which is how I knew they were the ones that mattered.”
“And you can prove all this,” Scar says.
For a moment she just looks at him. Then she reaches into the bag she hasn’t let leave her side since she arrived, and she lays a single document on the low table between us.
The whole room goes still.
Because it’s real and signed.
Scar takes it like it’s made of glass. I watch his eyes move down as he reads it.
“Kryzon,” he murmurs. “This document proves he was in the Royal Pigment district on Chronos. The residence he kept visiting, late, that I could never put a name to.” He looks up at Hallie.
“He wasn’t visiting a person, he was reporting to a House. ”
“I don’t know anyone named Kryzon,” Hallie says carefully.
“No,” Scar responds. “But your House does.” He sets the document down. “This connects. I don’t have all of it yet. But this connects.”
Hallie shifts in her seat. “So,” she says, and her voice goes brisk and falsely light, the voice of someone already planning her way out.
“Now you have hard evidence so you can start unraveling all the details. Please use this to find a way to stop this from happening. They’ve already started the theft of Illibrium, pretending to be buying it for power stations, and then using it instead as a test subject, trying to get it to bond to Royal Pigment Xylan.
It’s best if I’m not here, in this compound with you anymore.
” Hallie starts to stand. “You don’t need me sitting here painting a target on your families. I should—”
“Stay,” I boom.
Her eyes widen and she sits back down in her seat.
I soften my voice. “You leaving doesn’t make us safer.
The line that leads here is already drawn.
Scar has already done intel and we know about the visa and the transporter station.
We need you with us because you know all the details in that smart mind of yours and we’ll need to be constantly asking you questions and helping us to unravel what you’ve learned.
” I hold her gaze. “You’re not a danger we’re tolerating, Hallie.
You’re the only one alive who’s read the whole plan.
We don’t need you gone. We need you here. ”
“But I am bringing danger to you, your brothers, the women and the children here. I refuse to be the reason any of you are hurt.”
“I refuse to be the reason you get hurt.”
She licks her lips. “That’s annoyingly logical,” she mutters.
“I have my moments.”
And then Chief lays out the rest of the plan plainly, exactly as he said earlier.
The crew keeps working the mine, normal as any cycle, because routine is the best camouflage there is.
Her presence stays secret, as far as Timbur knows, no one arrived.
And someone stays back in the compound with her.
“Who?” Hallie questions. She’s already looking at me.
“Me,” I say.
She doesn’t argue, just holds my gaze a beat longer than she needs to, then nods, once, and looks away, and busies herself with the cooling traq.
The meeting breaks up around us. Brothers rising, the document going with Scar, the morning resuming its ordinary shape.
Children are giggling somewhere down the hall.
I hear Jana’s voice in the kitchen. And then it’s just the two of us in the lull, her sitting with her cup and me beside her, not wanting to be anywhere else in the universe.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “For giving me the room next door. And the—” she gestures vaguely at the traq, the clothes, the whole night of being cared for. “For all of it. You didn’t have to.”
“I did, actually,” I say, before I can stop myself.
She glances up, a small line forming between her brows. “What does that mean?”
Everything. It means everything. ”It means you’re my guest,” I say instead, “and I take that seriously.”
She huffs something that’s almost a laugh, shakes her head, and looks at me, really looks, the way she did on the porch, like she’s trying to work out exactly what I am.
And I am close enough now, in the quiet, that when I breathe in I get all of her.
The clean scent of her after sleep. The traq.
And underneath it, threaded all the way through it, something new.
The scent of her arousal.
It takes me a full second to understand what I’m smelling.
When I do, every thought in my head goes silent at once.
She wants me. The female I have been so carefully, so honorably not touching skin to skin is sitting six inches away, looking at my mouth, and her body is telling me, in the one language I cannot possibly mishear, that I am not the only one who wishes this could be more.