25. Hyx

"There she is again," Elyzin grumbles, nodding past my shoulder and to the right in the direction of the woman who has become my shadow in these past couple of weeks. She's trying to be subtle as she lingers in the hall pretending to be studying her comm pad, but I can feel her eyes on me.

The new scientist at the lab has been studying me like a specimen, making me feel like I'm a creature in a nature documentary. And here we have Hyx, a Kilgarian male in his primary habitat – a security desk.

"Maybe you should report to HR," Elyzin says. "Stalking knows no gender, and she might decide that you'd look better chained up in her basement."

"Kinky," I reply, rolling my eyes. We've been through this before. He wants her to get arrested for talking, and I resist. I mean, it's not like I consider her to be a threat to me. If I wanted to, I could snap her like a twig.

And ordinarily, yeah, I'd be weirded out by a random girl whom I've barely spoken to following me around. But there's something about her that doesn't feel ordinary. I'm drawn to her like she's a planet and I'm a moon forever orbiting in the pull of her gravity.

"Look, I'm just saying, if you don't report her for stalking, I just might do it on your behalf. That's not acceptable in the workplace."

I punch his arm. "When did you turn into Unel?" Our HR manager, Unel, is a notoriously massive pain in the ass. He once dragged Elyzin into the office for flirting with one of our coworkers because that is ‘unacceptable in the workplace.' Like we haven't seen him make out with one of the interns after having too much to drink at an office party.

Elyzin's mouth drops in mock offense. "How dare you? Do you really think I have a stick so far up my ass that I sneeze toothpicks?"

I snort at the visual. "Okay, yeah, that was a bit unfair. Unel is way classier than you."

He gives me the "two tentacle," which is a rude gesture where he places two fingers from one hand between two on the other and wiggles them in an approximation of our dicks. I smirk. "Case in point."

Tired of talking about my stalker, I change the subject to the game last night, and thankfully, he drops the topic. Next time I see this woman on my own, though, I'm going to talk to her. If I'm lucky, I'll learn just what her deal is.

It's a couple of days before luck smiles upon me. She's working late and Elyzin has Kaleidian flu, so I'm guarding the floor all by myself. When the door leading to the main office area opens, I perk up.

The woman looks exhausted but exhilarated, like she'd just climbed a sheer cliff to the very top. Her hair is up in a bun that has all but fallen apart, and her blue eyes sparkle.

Those eyes… they're so agonizingly familiar. All my life, I've dreamed of a woman with eyes like a cloudless sky. Her face would change, and she wouldn't always be human, but it would always be her.

I noticed them on her first day when she literally ran into me, and they've haunted me ever since. It was like all the air had been punched out of my lungs. As impossible as it was, I knew those eyes then just like I know them now. They haunt the back of my mind like a half-remembered song stuck in my head.

"Miss?" I say, getting out of my seat and approaching like she's a skittish animal.

She stares at me with naked curiosity, a mischievous smile playing on her lips. "Is something wrong?"

Why are you following me?I want to ask. "I don't think we actually introduced ourselves. I'm Hyx," I say instead.

"Libby," she replies, offering a hand for me to shake. I'm surprised by her name, and I don't know why. Libby suits her, but for some reason, I had it in my head that she was a Maya.

Where did I get that idea?

I don't have much time to think about it because the jolt that runs up my spine when I take her hand interrupts my train of thought. Libby, or Maya, or whatever her name is… Is this woman really my fated mate?

I swallow hard, wondering if I could be mistaken. But something deep inside me thinks it feels right. I want to touch her just to see if it happens again, but I have the presence of mind to realize I don't want to be too hasty and scare her off.

Instead, I clear my throat and try to joke casually. "I've seen you around a lot, Libby," I say. "My friend is convinced that you're going to chain me up and hold me captive in your basement."

"That's my backup plan," she replies dryly. She's always had a dry sense of humor.

Wait, always?

"Well, then what's Plan A? I mean, I'm not against Plan B, but I'll need a little more heads up."

She arches her eyebrow at that. "Well, you'd certainly be getting plenty of head if I did that. Whether or not it would be a heads-up remains to be seen."

A battle of wits has begun, and I fear that I'm unarmed compared to her. "We'll save that for later. What's Plan A then? If it isn't kidnapping me and holding me as your captive fucktoy, then it'd better be good."

"It is," she replies. "Plan A is to work up the courage to finally talk to the cute security guard I ran into on my first day here."

"Do you want to get dinner sometime?" I ask, surprising myself with my own forwardness. "I know a seafood place nearby."

"Sure. Let's exchange comm pad links." She holds hers out, tapping a few buttons to send her info directly to mine. Now she's on my contact list if I need to get a hold of her.

"How does seven in the evening sound?"

She smiles, revealing dimples. "Sounds like a date."

The next day, I wait outside the restaurant for her to show. Ten minutes pass. Then twenty. Then thirty. She stood me up. She actually stood me up. That's never happened before.

I'm about to go home and drown my disappointment in liquor when I see her hobbling towards me. She's wearing her work clothes and swinging down the street on crutches.

"Are you okay? What happened?" I ask, my eyes drawn to the compression bracer on her right ankle. Anger flares within me. If someone did this to her…

Wait, where did that thought come from?I have no reason to believe that someone had attacked her. Why would I assume that?

"I'm so sorry," she says breathlessly when she finally reaches me. "You wouldn't believe the day I've had."

"Okay, let's get you seated before you explain," I say, helping her inside. "Because I really want to know."

Apparently, she'd fallen down some stairs on the way out of work. It sent her to the infirmary, where they gave her a bracer and some crutches for her sprained ankle.

When I hear that it was a mundane accident, I deflate with relief, though I'm not entirely sure why. I didn't have any reason to assume otherwise in the first place.

The next date is an outdoor concert, but it's pouring rain the day we're supposed to go, so we have dinner instead. The date after that, she sends me the wrong address by mistake, leading us both to believe that the other stood us up.

And then I get transferred to another area of the compound. We're on a walk around campus grounds when I break the news to her.

For once, it's a beautiful day. She's off her crutches, and nothing has gone wrong, so of course, I have to ruin it. "They moved me out of your wing," I say.

"Oh." She frowns, disappointed. "Do they not like that you're fraternizing with a lab worker?"

I shake my head. "We rotate every once in a while to mix things up. It just happens that the transfer orders arrived –"

"As soon as we started dating," she finishes for me.

"I mean, it's not like we can't spend time together outside of work," I reply. "We just won't be seeing each other as often."

She hooks her elbow with mine and chuckles. "I know. But you have to admit that it's pretty funny timing, isn't it? Sometimes, I feel like our relationship is cursed by Murphy"s law or something."

I furrow my brows, confused. "Murphy"s law?"

"An old Earth saying. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong."

I nod. "That sounds about right."

She stops short, making me stop, too, and face her. "But I don't want it to end things or just let them fizzle out." Standing on her tiptoes, she presses a kiss to my lips. "I like being with you."

My hands go to her hips, and I pull her closer, deepening the kiss. "I don't want to end things, either," I say when I come up for air. I contemplate telling her she's my fated mate, but I decide not to yet. I want to win her on my own, not on a technicality.

"Good. Then we won't," she replies. "How about we pick a specific date night? Like, on the last day of the workweek, we go out and have some fun."

"That sounds like a plan," I say. "And when our shifts align, we'll have lunch, too." I want to say that I'd move mountains to make more time with her, but that feels like too much too soon. "I'd like to be with you as much as I can."

"Same." She gets up on her tiptoes to press a chaste kiss to my lips. "And hopefully, we'll have better luck on our dates from now on."