Chapter Three

Already the kid had become an irritating intrusion. Fuming, Fury stomped beside the woman and the boy as they headed to the mess hall. He had requested a wife, not a child! His whole life, he’d longed for a woman to love, someone who would love him. A kid did not factor into the picture. He had no wish to play second fiddle to a snot-nosed pint-sized human. The kid hadn’t produced any nasal mucus yet, but he had vomited all over himself.

Worse, the situation trapped him between a rock and a hard place. While her dishonesty gave him cause to break their Cosmic Mates contract, doing so could jeopardize his sanctuary.

He’d intended to have it out with her as soon as Phibious left, but her son whined about being hungry, and she insisted on feeding him. “We can talk after my son goes to bed,” she’d said.

“Is he going in the next ten minutes?” he’d snapped .

“Let’s get you another coat,” she’d said to the kid, and, ignoring Fury, had rooted around inside her trunk.

The two of them left the cabin, and he reluctantly accompanied them. Night was falling fast, and they wouldn’t find their way back to the cabin in the dark.

Inside the mess, he shouldered ahead to the cashiering line.

“Hey, handsome! The usual?” asked Kuadra, the quadrubrachian cashier.

“Two meals.” He nodded. His metabolism burned a lot of calories. His friend Steel used to order triple meals. No one knew they were cyborgs; everyone assumed they just had big appetites.

The kid gawked as the four-armed cashier simultaneously swiped Fury’s pay card through the reader, assisted a customer on the other side, scratched her head with a third hand, and had one left over to tap a beat on the counter. You haven’t seen anything yet.

He moved out of the way. Verity stepped up.

“Card please. One adult, one child?” Kuadra asked.

“Yes, please. ”

Another quadrubrachian—Kuadra’s spouse—loaded up their trays. Fury pushed down the line and collected the drink and dessert accompanying the meal.

The mess hall was packed, but he spotted a table with space for three and made a beeline for it.

Four aliens sat at one end. They nodded a greeting and resumed eating as he took his seat.

“Slide in,” Verity said. The boy eyed the lizard men warily but then scooted onto the bench. The table came up to his armpits. She took the seat next to him.

Fury began eating, and Verity followed suit. The boy stared at his plate. The kid’s meal had protein nuggets—probably ground horniger—a starchy vegetable patty cut into star shapes, and a savory-sweet purple vegetable mash.

“Eat your dinner,” she said.

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t know that. You’ve never had it,” she reasoned with him.

Mother and son shared a familial resemblance in chin, face shape, and hair color, but where the mother had auburn hair, the boy’s leaned toward orange. A spray of freckles dusted his cheeks and button nose; her pale skin was clear. He’d lost a central incisor. Some might see the kid as cute with his mischievous gap-toothed grin; he saw a pain in the ass.

“That’s how I know I don’t like it. I want something else,” the kid replied.

“You’re not getting anything else. First, you haven’t even tried it. Second, this isn’t Earth. I’m pretty sure there is nothing else.”

For a kid who whined about being hungry, he’d become awfully picky. He should try the slop Solutions fed us.

“I’m not eating it.” He folded his arms.

“Don’t, then, but you’ll go hungry until the next meal, and don’t be surprised if they serve the same food.” At least she wasn’t a pushover.

The kid glanced at Fury for confirmation. “Is that true?”

Breakfast would be different, but he wasn’t going to say so. He pointed to a furry child with antennas a couple of tables over. “You see that alien kid? He had to face the same meal every day for a week.”

The kid sulked in mutinous silence for a couple of minutes before picking up his fork and poking one of the protein nuggets. He stabbed one and took a tentative bite.

“Well?” she asked .

“It’s all right.”

He ended up finishing his entire meal.

It was pitch-black outside when they left. They set out across the quad, and Verity bumped into him, stepping on the heel of his boot. “Sorry, I can’t see you.”

He could see fine. “Let me guide you. Keep a grip on the kid.”

He grasped her upper arm and led them across the quad and through the passage. On the other side, the cabins threw enough light that he released her, figuring she wouldn’t fall or get lost.

* * * *

“Bath then bed,” Verity announced to her son.

“I don’t need—”

“Don’t argue with me. You threw up all over yourself.” Out of the trunk, she pulled pants and a matching shirt printed with cartoon spaceships and handed them to him. Grasping his shoulders, she marched him into the washroom.

Fury parked himself at the small table, listening and watching their activity.

Water ran and shut off. The bathroom door opened and closed. She walked by the doorway. A bedroom door creaked; he heard her sigh. Then she passed through the hall again. The other bedroom door opened. She returned to the main part of the house.

“Brody’s bed is a child’s bed,” she announced.

“So?”

“You and I are going to have to share the master.”

“Isn’t that what married couples do?” He’d looked forward to the matrimonial intimacies. He’d broken into enough homes in the middle of the night to know spouses slept together. He blocked the memories of the men he’d killed in their sleep and left for the wives to find.

Grabbing a handle, she dragged her trunk toward the hall.

He sighed and got up. Picking up the chest, he asked, “Where should I put it?”

“The master bedroom. Thank you.”

He carried the trunk into the room, which contained a bed and nothing else. He returned to the table and straddled a chair.

Brody, dressed in the ridiculous spaceship clothes, padded into the main room.

“Did you brush your teeth?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She eyed him dubiously .

“I did! See.” He bared his teeth.

“Okay. Bed for you.”

“Can I have some water?”

She found a glass, filled it from the cooler, and handed it to him. He took a single sip and handed it back.

Verity pressed her lips together. “Bed. Now.”

“Will you read me a story?”

“Not tonight. I’m tired.”

“Please?”

Enough already! “Once upon a time, there was a little boy who refused to go to bed, and he made the adults angry—” Fury said.

Verity glowered at him, but the kid turned and marched into his room. She followed, emerging less than a minute later. “I’ll thank you to leave the discipline of my child to me.”

“I would have thanked you to have mentioned you had a child,” he countered.

She approached the table with the same reluctance the kid had displayed about taking a bath and going to bed.

After she seated herself, he said, “Explain yourself. And don’t give me any bullshit about how you disclosed you had a kid in the fine print. You’ve given me ample cause to invalidate the Cosmic Mates contract and send you packing.”