3. Chapter Three #2
Second son of House Sethrak. Runs their intelligence arm, the Velvet Warrens. Controls half the information flow on this side of the planet.
None of those files prepared me for the reality of Zavin Sethrak standing in my apartment with one hand locked around me. And I’m painfully aware he’s not pinning me down because of any personal interest.
Now his grip hasn’t loosened, his heat is soaking through my shirt, and the worst part, the absolute worst part, is the flush creeping up the back of my neck.
Every place where he touches me feels far too noticeable. My brain is screaming threat. Run. Danger. The rest of me is proving considerably less helpful.
A forked tongue darts between his lips, tasting the air between us, and the motion is fast enough that I’d miss it if I weren’t close enough to count the scales along his jaw.
He’s reading me. Not my face, not my expression.
The chemical information my body is broadcasting into the air he’s breathing, and the interest in his expression sharpens into focus. He’s getting a very detailed report.
“Your security is shit.”
The words leave my mouth before my survival instincts can strangle them. He blinks. The vertical pupils widen a fraction, and then his expression deepens into a register I don’t have a category for. He laughs.
Not the polished sound I’ve heard Sethrai produce in the markets, the weaponized charm of a species that monetizes seduction.
This laugh breaks loose without choreography, rough at the edges, startled and real, and the realness of it disarms me faster than any blade because a genuine reaction is the one thing I can’t plan for.
He still hasn’t let me go. I’m still pinned against him, still absorbing staggering amounts of heat through my shirt. When he laughs, the sound rolls through him and into me, and my breath catches despite myself.
“You got deeper into our architecture than any rival intelligence operation has managed.” The warmth hasn’t left his tone.
“Then you should ask for a refund from whoever built it.”
His sleek brows lift. He adjusts his hold on me, not releasing me, just shifting me closer. The movement could be practical. It could be deliberate. I resent that I can’t tell the difference.
Those amber eyes remain fixed on mine. The vertical pupils track tiny changes in my expression while the heat-sensing pits along his jaw angle toward me, gathering information I can’t hide.
Temperature.
Pulse.
Every involuntary signal my body is broadcasting into the air between us. Including the flush creeping up my neck.
Including the traitorous heat low in my belly that has nothing to do with the temperature in the room and everything to do with being held against him while my body responds to the proximity with a specificity I deeply resent.
“I’m not here to kill you.” Reassurance from a crime lord feels a lot like a contract with invisible terms. “I’m here to collect you.”
“I’m not a package.”
“Agreed. You’re an asset.” He straightens to his full height, and the motion lifts me slightly, my feet barely touching the floor, and the ease of it, the sheer indifferent strength, sends a pulse of heat through my belly that my brain files under irrelevant, irrelevant, completely irrelevant.
“An asset is hired. Not taken.”
“An asset is… recruited when talent is discovered.” His tongue darts again, tasting the air, and this time I track the gesture and the prickle of awareness it raises on my skin. “And we can discuss the terms of your… employment… once I’m breathing air that won’t kill me. Or you.”
The atmospheric modifier clicks through its cycle on the shelf behind us, punctuating the silence, the quiet mechanical breath.
The amusement in his expression sharpens into something more focused, and the understanding that slides into his features is worse than threat and worse than charm.
Understanding means leverage, and leverage is the only currency that matters when you’re standing in someone’s apartment and looking directly at the shape of their life.
He’s seeing the whole equation. The empty client queue.
The packed escape bag. The apartment small enough to cross in a handful of strides.
The desperation that drove me into House Sethrak’s network in the first place.
The hardest thing isn’t the exposure. The hardest thing is the flicker that crosses his face afterward, too fast to fully identify, because it doesn’t look like satisfaction.
“Percy comes with me.” I’m shaking and for sure he feels that through my layers of clothing.
His attention shifts away from me and toward the room, and I can feel it before I see it. Those amber eyes sweep across the narrow bed, the workstation, and the battered mug balanced on the desk. He’s looking for a person.
“Who is Percy?”
The question is so genuinely puzzled it nearly cracks me open.
I tilt my chin toward the window. “He’s my datapad.”
Another pause follows. I can’t see his face, but something about the silence behind me changes before he finally asks, “You named your datapad?”
“He’s more trustworthy than any living being I know.”
“I know the feeling.” He releases me, finally, and the absence of his heat leaves a cold imprint along my spine that my body resents.
I’m at the window before the sentence ends, hauling Percy’s case back through the gap, the reinforced corners scraping the frame as I drag him inside.
The case is intact. The seals are intact.
I run my thumb across the latch and the lock clicks open and Percy’s display blinks amber, alive, undamaged.
“You never would have gotten away.” He says it from behind me, conversational, as if we’re discussing the weather and not how he broke into my apartment and pinned me against his chest. “Not from me.”
I close Percy’s case and turn around. “Don’t be so sure about that.”
The half-smile returns. He doesn’t argue, which is worse than arguing, because it means he’s confident enough to let my defiance sit unanswered.
I face him and seeing him from the front is worse. From the front, I get the full picture. A six-foot-eight Sethrai male with copper-and-bronze scales, amber eyes bright with genuine amusement, and a body built for the kind of violence that doesn’t need to advertise itself.
The backup drives press against my ribs inside my jacket. The secondary devices are still tucked into their pockets, exactly where I put them. Everything I packed in the minutes before he arrived is still on my body.
“If I’m coming with you, I want to bring my mug.” I nod toward the workstation.
He crosses the room and picks up the ceramic mug from the edge of the desk. When he turns back, he’s holding it with an odd degree of care.
His gaze moves across the rest of the room. The narrow bed. The dead overhead light. The cables crossing the floor. He arrives at the same conclusion I did months ago.
There’s nothing else worth taking. The next person who lands in the Splits with three hundred credits and a prayer can have what’s left.
“How do you live here?” The question is quiet. Not pity. Something worse.
Genuine confusion, as though the idea of this room as a life doesn’t fit anywhere in his understanding of the world.
“It’s better than the alternative.”
He holds my gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Something shifts behind the amber of his eyes, a thought he chooses not to share.
“Then I hope you prefer mine.”