Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Trunk
The words come out before I can stop them. Every head in the room turns toward me.
I don’t care.
Someone broke into our home, walked right past where Lila sat with the children and searched Ines’s room. Left it destroyed as a warning. And I was at the mine, useless, while it happened.
Never again.
“I’m staying in her room,” I continue. “On the floor, by the door. No one gets to her without going through me first.”
Ines opens her mouth. I can see the protest forming, she’s going to tell me she doesn’t need protection, that she’s leaving tomorrow anyway, that this is unnecessary.
Then she looks at my face.
And closes her mouth.
“Okay,” she responds. “Thank you.”
Chief wraps up the meeting, giving orders about locks and vigilance. The females drift toward their quarters with my brothers close behind. Scar disappears down the hallway, I assume he’ll be up all night, hunting through data, looking for evidence of who did this.
I’ll be up all night too. But for different reasons.
Ines and I walk down the hallway toward her room. Her scent surrounds me and underneath it, the faint thread again of arousal that appears whenever I’m near.
She still wants me. Even now. Even after everything.
Not compatible, I remind myself. It doesn’t matter what either of us wants.
The cleaning bots scurry past. They’ve put her room back together while we were meeting.
“It looks almost normal,” I comment. “But I can still smell the intruders. Three males. Xylan. My claws itch to find them and tear them apart.” I stomp back out and grab a blanket from my own bed and then return to settle on the floor by the door.
My frame blocks the entire entrance. Anyone trying to get in will have to go through me.
“Um, I’m going to change for bed.” Ines disappears into the small bathroom. I hear water running, the rustle of fabric. I stare at the opposite wall and try not to think about what she looks like undressing.
I fail. Why am I thinking of this? I have scented her and found her incompatible.
Why would my body and mind still find her so interesting?
This is beyond simple friendship. I literally feel possessive towards Ines Viera.
I want to touch her, but I already know that touching her will not start the claiming.
I cannot understand why this is happening.
She emerges in soft sleep clothes, her dark curly hair loose around her shoulders. The fabric clings to the swell of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips. She’s not wearing her green gloves anymore.
Neither am I.
I shoved them in my pocket when I grabbed the blanket. It felt wrong to wear them in here, in the dark, with just the two of us. But now I’m hyperaware of my bare hands and her bare hands.
She climbs into bed and pulls the covers up. Stares at the ceiling.
I hold my personal crystal in my palm. Its blue glow is the only light in the room. The familiar warmth of it steadies me.
“You should rest,” I tell her. “You have a long journey tomorrow.”
“So should you, but I’m worried you won’t be able to because you’re sleeping on a floor with only one blanket. You’re not even in your pajamas. I feel bad sleeping when I know you won’t be able to.”
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep in the next room either. My best chance of actually sleeping is me being right here, in front of your door. Knowing you’re safe will bring me peace.”
She bites her lips and looks at me. A watery smile spreads across her face.
The silence stretches between us. I listen to her breathe. The soft rhythm of it fills the dark room.
“I keep thinking about what Scar said,” she admits. “About the investigation. I feel like I failed. I came here to help your family and instead I made things worse. Brought danger to your home. And I’m leaving tomorrow without having solved anything.”
“You didn’t make things worse.”
“Someone ransacked my room. While Lila and the children were here alone.”
A growl rumbles in my chest. “That’s not your fault. That’s theirs. Whoever did this, they made a choice. And they’ll answer for it. When Scar finds them — and he will find them — I want to be there. I want to watch them pay.”
She turns her head toward me again. I can see the outline of her face in the crystal’s glow, the shine of her eyes. “Why did you volunteer to be my handler?” she asks. “Chief said you offered.”
The question catches me off guard. I consider lying, but the darkness makes truth easier. “Well, I didn’t actually offer, they decided I was the best one because I was the least trusting towards a stranger and a journalist. But when they assigned me, I grumbled but didn’t say no.”
“And now?”
“Now I wish you weren’t leaving.”
The admission hangs in the air between us.
I can hear her heartbeat quicken.
“I had a friend,” she offers suddenly, changing the subject. “At university. Her name was Ana.”
I shift slightly, settling against the door. Listening. This feels important.
“She was brilliant, kind and ambitious. We graduated at the same time and we started our careers. We were going to change the world together.” Her voice goes soft with memory. “Then, at her very first job, she was accused of fraud. Embezzling funds from the nonprofit where she worked.”
“She didn’t do it?” I already know the answer because I can hear it in her voice.
“She didn’t do it,” Ines confirms. “Her supervisor was the real thief. He’d been siphoning funds for years, and when he realized he might get caught, he set Ana up to take the fall. Planted evidence and manipulated records. She never had a chance.”
“What happened?”
“She was convicted. Everyone believed the evidence. I tried to investigate, tried to find proof that she’d been framed, but I was young and inexperienced.
No one would talk to me.” Her voice catches.
“By the time I found the real evidence, financial records proving the supervisor had been stealing, it was too late.”
I wait.
“Ana died in prison from an illness that wasn’t treated in time. She never got to see her name cleared.” A breath. “I was too late. If I’d been faster and more experienced... she’d still be alive.”
“That’s why you do this,” I say.
“Yes. That’s why I came here. Your family’s story reminds me of Ana’s story. Powerful people destroying innocent lives and getting away with it.” She swallows. I hear it in the darkness. “I can’t let that stand. Even when I can’t solve it. I have to try.”
I’ve misjudged her. From the moment she arrived, I saw a threat. A journalist here to exploit our tragedy, twist our pain into entertainment. But that’s not who she is. She’s someone who couldn’t save her friend, so now she saves everyone else.
We’re more similar than I thought.
My personal crystal glows softly in my palm. The silence stretches.
“I was the one who found them,” I tell her.
The words come out before I can stop them.
I never talk about this to anyone. Not even my brothers.
But the darkness makes it easier. And she shared her pain with me.
It only seems fair. “My parents,” I continue.
My voice sounds flat to my own ears. “Scar and I came home from a late shift. We’d only just started training as miners.
The door was broken and there was blood in the hallway. ”
She doesn’t speak, just listens.
“We found them in their bed. They’d been killed in their sleep.
Never even had a chance to fight back.” I pause, remembering the smell of blood and the stillness of their bodies.
My mother’s hand hung off the edge of the mattress.
“Scar screamed. I’d never heard him make a sound like that before.
He was always the joker, the one who laughed at everything. After that night, he stopped laughing.”
“Texon...”
My name in her voice. Soft. Pained.
“He hasn’t smiled since. Not once, in all these years.” The words keep coming, pulled from somewhere deep. “Now he just investigates. I think he believes if he solves it, if he finds who did this, maybe he’ll feel something again.”
“And you?”
The truth aches in my chest. “I couldn’t protect my parents. So I try to protect everyone else. My brothers. Their Brides. The children.” I pause. “And now you.”
“They’re lucky to have you,” she whispers.
I grunt in response. “Sleep.”
She exhales and rolls onto her side. “I’ll try.”
Many hours later, gray light seeps through the window.
I’m already on my feet, folding the blanket. My body is stiff from the hard floor, but I’ve had worse nights, trying to nap in the caves. At least no one came through that door.
Ines sits up in bed. Her hair is wild, her eyes tired. She didn’t sleep much either. “The transport to the station leaves in three hours,” she says.
I nod. I don’t trust my voice.
Three hours and then she’s gone. Back to New Earth and Singapore, returning to a life that has nothing to do with me, my family or this mine.
I should be relieved. She was originally a complication I never wanted. But I’m not relieved. I’m hollow.
“Thank you. For staying. For...” She trails off. Ines sits on the edge of the bed, small, rumpled and beautiful. The morning light catches the gold in her hazel eyes. Her lips are parted slightly, searching for words.
I want to tell her that I wish she was compatible. That I want nothing more than to offer to clasp hands with her and become enflamed with the claiming. I want her to stay here on Timbur and become my bride and the mother of my offspring, if she will have me.
But this is impossible.
“Safe travels, Ines,” I respond with a rough voice.
Something flickers across her face. Pain, maybe. Or disappointment.
Then noise erupts from the common room. Deep adult voices and the shriek of a child’s voice. Movement. The compound waking up around us.
The moment shatters.
I turn, open the bedroom door and walk out of her room before I can do something stupid, like beg her to stay.