Chapter 11

ELEVEN

I knew,of course, that the bond would be a distraction. I knew that feeling her, always with me, would make me want her even more than I already did.

But I hadn't realized how hard it, and I, would be.

Kimba and I lost two days. We moved from bed to bed, and I had to reprogram the cleaning robots to deal with the cum that covered the floor when I'd fucked her against the hallway wall, the kitchen, the window, over the back of the sofa and every other place the "mood"—as she calls it—struck. I was dizzy with a constant need for her, and she was no less affected.

Even now, fully dressed and surrounded by the faintly beeping machines of my war room, I placed equipment between us or nothing would get done.

If I could reach her, I would drag her over it and we'd wind up back where we started.

She looks up at me with an amused smile before going back to the map she's been studying while I've tried to pay attention to the data Andrea sent over yesterday.

"There's something here." She snatches a light pen from the top of the console and circles the place on the screen, leaving a glowing border around it. "I'd bet everything I have that this is why so many have managed to slip past the sensors closest to the inner caldera."

I move around beside her and can't stop from touching her, even though it's probably a mistake. She leans into me. Not a mistake.

"I think this is your problem." She taps it again.

"I want you to tell me why," I say, but I hold up a hand so she doesn't start now. "But wait until the others get here. You shouldn't have to explain this twice."

"The others?"

I've already sent the summons.

"Shouldn't you be the one to tell them?"

I dip down to kiss her and then immediately pull back. We're about to have guests. We can't get distracted.

"I did not fall in love with you because of what you currently do for a living—"

"Assuming Margot does let me have my job back."

"—and I didn't fall in love with you because of what you did when you got here, or even before that. But I am very happy that you can fit into all aspects of my life and they're going to learn that's the case soon enough. This is a partnership. Completely."

Something simmers, low in the bond. "I don't want to do your job."

"I'm not asking you to take over. But I also didn't ask you to sit in that chair and find what you did." I kiss her again, hating her ill ease. "If you don't want to be the one to tell them, you don't have to, but if you don't want to be a part of this, you're going to have to stay downstairs… I don't think you know how to turn off that part of your brain when there's a puzzle on offer."

Tension pulls taut and then snaps. The release vibrates across my skin.

"I'll tell them," she says, not perfectly at ease, but she knows herself well enough, and I'm right.

"Thank you."

She presses up onto her toes and kisses my cheek, just beside the corner of my mouth. "You may come to regret it."

Closing my hands tightly, I shoot her a look, because she knows how badly I want to slip her pants down, bend her over the console and fuck her before the others get here. She blows out a breath and steps back, pursing her lips.

"It gets easier," she says, clasping her hands behind her back. "It doesn't diminish… it's just easier to resist after you've been fighting it for years."

And that's why it doesn't seem to be affecting her as much as it is me. Because she's done this before. "Promise?"

She bites her lip. "No. Sorry." But she doesn't look particularly apologetic.

I glare at the location she's circled and pull up the newest of the maps Core and Richter made and then send a drone out to see if it can't capture better imagery.

"They'll be here shortly."

"They don't know who I was… before I became me. What makes you think they'll take me seriously?"

"If they don't, I'll throw them out the window?"

She laughs, "I'm being serious."

"They are going to listen to you because you are the one speaking, and they will take you seriously, because they are going to hear you. Anyone who hears you is going to know you know what you're talking about."

She nods, but she's fidgety as she goes to the couch, so I give her space as we wait.

I haven't found anything else useful when I see the indicator that someone has pulled into the garage.

Kimba's focus is out the window on the swirling snow, and I'm glad she's all the way over there when Arc hops off his bike and pulls his helmet off.

He's been out patrolling, but he isn't wearing a suit. I'll have to talk to him about that. Again.

"Sorry if I'm interrupting," he says loudly as he opens the door.

I ignore the speculation on his face when he finds us yards apart. "The others are right behind you."

"Goody." He goes to sit on the couch and I catch the odd glance between us. He knows. And maybe that's why he doesn't say more than a "hello" to her before pulling out the game he and the other cold boys play instead of actually talking to each other anymore.

Trench and Richter arrive next and I'm surprised that I don't see Laurel in tow, but I imagine she is at home with a promise not to go near any doors or windows.

Arc shoves the game away as soon as they arrive, like he's hiding it, and turns a bored glare on his brother.

"Find anything interesting digging through your latest dead body?"

Trench doesn't give him the satisfaction of being offended, so he adds, "Or do you just like playing with corpses."

"I'd offer to dissect you, but your skull is empty and the rest of you is just piss and wind."

"Are you two always this mean to each other?"

Arc blinks at Kimba like he'd completely forgotten she was there. "You'll have to excuse us. My brother and I are like… what is the Earth saying Jen likes? Oil and water, I think."

"They like to stab at each other verbally, because I won't let them do it with knives." I say, sitting beside her.

"They're among the very few of us who are biological brothers," Ric says, earning a glare from Arc, as if he hadn't just admitted the same moments ago.

She looks between them, "I suppose I can see that. There's something similar about your chins."

Both men suddenly look very concerned about the mentioned anatomy, and it shuts them up.

A moment later, Hazard comes in and goes directly to the fridge, as always.

He pops a bottle top into the trash and joins us with a small bow to Kimba.

"So glad to see you're here to stay."

Trench and Richter both look at us and ask the same question.

"Yes, Kimba and I are now bonded," I say. "But no, that's not why you're here."

They congratulate us all the same and I'm a little unsettled by the sincerity in Arc's delivery.

Richter yawns and Hazard offers him a drink from his coffee—Hannah got him hooked on the stuff while none of the rest of us can stand it.

"What are we in for?" Ric asks, pushing the bottle away.

I don't need to set anything up for Kimba. She's spent years performing to others, years before that charming and selling her entire race. So I signal to her and let her take a completely different stage.

"We haven't been able to figure out who tried to hire me yet. We're still working on that. But I was looking at the Zone maps and noticed something odd in the location markers of where the monsters are popping up." She takes the remote from me and changes the window behind her to the map. Its lights flicker as a pre-programmed simulation cycles through. And I sit back to watch.

The only time in my previous life that Edan had made me feel uncomfortable was when he'd first pushed for me to be the one who sold the CSS officials in the southern hemisphere on maintaining a permanent Agency port. I had a passable grip on their language… and he wanted to show me off.

But it is the reason I no longer feel uneasy about men watching me. It's why I don't feel awkward explaining to the four men on the couch opposite how they may have been failing at their jobs.

I use the equivalent of a laser pointer to make sure they're looking where I want them to.

"This crescent shape, here, shows the normal areas the cavrinskh trigger your sensors on this side of the caldera. You've got three known exit points from the underground cave systems you've managed to block off, but the rest seem to come over the edge of the interior caldera, right?"

I don't wait for a confirmation.

"Outside of this crescent, you have these." I circle the points that made me ask questions. "Abnormalities that could be indicative of a serious problem."

When I look back, Arc has leaned forward, elbows on his knees, a scowl twisting his face. "I'm confused. Are you, or are you not, one of Margot's dancers."

"I am." I don't explain my CV to him. In the end, he'll respect what I have to say, or he won't.

"They're clustered here. But these outliers," I circle the pinpoints that are well outside of the normal range. "They're testing you. I think they've been looking for a way to get around you. Looking for ways to get further into the Zone before they trigger any of your sensors."

"I wouldn't be surprised. They're incredibly intelligent." Trench scowls at the board before he looks at me. "Why didn't we put this together?"

"Maybe because you've been looking at it with each individual occurrence? Maybe because you haven't considered the possibility there's more to this than just wild animals?"

And I have found that Sians as a whole are far less suspicious than humans.

Maybe not these ones, though.

"We still should have noticed." Arc looks pissed. Not at me. He glares at the map like he, personally, is responsible for the places they've gotten through, even though they're not in the trio's territory.

"Each time one of these outliers pops up, it's during or right after severe weather. If you were writing them off as being confused by zero visibility in a snow storm, I wouldn't be surprised." I look back and three of the four of them glare at the map like they're trying to memorize it. "If they are intelligent and they do want to get out of the caldera to kill the rest of the women and children on this planet…"

"Not going to happen." Arc practically barks the words at me and D says his name with a quiet harshness that makes the air cool a few degrees. "Apologies, dajzha. We take this task we were given very seriously."

"I'm glad." I take a deep breath and brace myself for their next reaction. "Especially since it looks like they've found a way out. At least twice."

I was prepared for confusion or anger… The stillness makes my skin crawl.

"What?" Richter is the one who breaks the silence. "What do you mean, twice?"

"I was going to bring it up at the meeting." D says, pulling their attention away from me. "My CSS contact called me in because he recognized the wound on a dead man. He'd been killed by another cavrinskh."

"Another man." Richter's jaw tenses.

D nods. "Another Company man, it seems. No other casualties."

They descend into a harried conversation. Questioning the changes I too would like answered, but that's not the right focus right now.

"We need to stop them from getting out before we worry about why they aren't going after women and children like they normally would."

The four of them go silent the moment I speak and I ignore the amusement D feels at that.

"We need the brotherhood to find the exit point. We need you to figure out how they're bypassing the sensors. And we need to make sure that stops."

D turns sharply to Arc. "Don't even think about going out to hunt them down until you've gone home and changed."

The pale green man settles down into the sofa, a scowl on his face. "Wouldn't dream of it."

Trench watches me and I know he has a question. "Ask it."

"How does someone go from a spec ops cadet on Earth to a statesman's wife in Gongii to a dancer… and then wind up here, second in command of the brotherhood?"

A hard lump coils in my throat and then drops to my belly. "How do you know what I did on Earth?"

"A name change doesn't erase your files. And he was in love with you." Trench turns a sharp glance toward D. "I had to make sure you weren't the one behind the assassination attempt."

"Be very careful, friend." D says, muscles coiled like he plans to lunge across the room and strangle Trench.

I squeeze his hand and push some of my own calm through the bond.

Trench cared enough to check. I won't be mad at him for that.

He looks at D and shrugs. "It was a possibility. If it was someone else, you'd have checked it out the same as I did."

"Or," Richter says. "Maybe you'd call a meeting to expose her with half the information."

Something like shame passes across the bond, "I take your point."

"Will you show me how you dug that information up?" I ask, pulling their attention back to me. "If you found it, someone else could have done it the same way. Knowing how might narrow our suspect pool."

Trench dips his head in agreement. "Once you two register your pairing, it becomes public record and more people are going to look at your past."

"I'll talk to a friend with the CSS, see if he can't bury that past deeper."

"Is he bonded?" Hazard asks.

"No."

"You may have to convince him more than you would others." He looks at me with a half shrug of his shoulder. "Only one in fourteen hundred of the Sian men who are of-age and have marked an attraction to women have bondmates."

Richter scoots forward. "And until you have that bond, you don't really know what it's like."

Or, I think, glancing at Hazard, until you've fallen in love with a woman you'll never really be able to have.

"He'll help."

"Fucking—" Arc literally jumps out of his seat, turning to Kilo who had been standing behind him. "Where did you come from?"

"I've been here the whole time." Kilo smiles and takes the coffee from Hazard. "It's not my fault you guys like to forget I exist."

He turns that smile on me and I wonder, "Is that your thing?"

Dipping his head, he looks rueful. "That's me. Utterly forgettable."

"I hate when you do that." Arc goes back to his seat, glaring at the other brother.

"I promise, I only use my superpower for good… or to fuck with you, specifically."

I don't think I like that particular super power.

"But," Kilo says, turning back to D, "Your guy will help, even if he doesn't want a bondmate of his own."

Arc scowls and turns back to me. "So we pay attention to those outliers. We look for more patterns with snowstorms, and… then what?"

"I don't know." I shrug, ignoring the warmth down my spine—I'd forgotten what someone else's pride felt like. "Obviously we can't ignore the caldera, simply because someone's trying to kill D."

The look Arc gives me bordered on suspicion. "Okay, what do you want us to do then?"

I glance at D. This is his territory, and I'm about to trample all over it, but he doesn't look like he has a care in the world.

"D sent a drone to check these locations." I point to the map over my shoulder. "We'll see if there's anything there, anything they have in common. Once those come back, we should assess and someone—a team, probably—should go to inspect them physically."

Trench and Richter bounce ideas off each other, Arc asks me a few more questions about my previous employment. Kilo watches quietly while Hazard glares at the coffee in the other man's hand.

None of them look to D.

He lets me talk, lets me answer their questions. He only speaks when I look to him for an answer I don't have. And when he gives it, they immediately turn their attention back to me.