Chapter 12

CHAPTER

TWELVE

JESSICA

“Can those hang out for a while? Or do we need to get them home right away?” Trench carries the samples to the car and stows them in one of its many compartments.

“They’ll survive a few hours. Why?”

“There’s one more place I want to take you before we head back into the mountains.”

“Okay, let’s go.” I bite my tongue instead of asking. If he wanted to tell me, he would have. And I like surprises.

When he stops the car in front of a very distinctly shaped building, I can only blink at it for a moment.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“If you think it’s a zurgle cafe, then, yes.”

I do a little squirm dance in my seat before I can stop myself.

“I’ve never seen one before. Just the illustrations in the Agency magazine ads.” Because for reasons no one’s figured out, photo technology can’t capture a zurgle.

“Wait… Do you think that’s why you can’t get a clear picture of the monsters?” I ask, mind whirring.

“The distortion’s different, but maybe.” He opens the car and helps me out. “I’ll see if I can get any previous research on why zurgles mess up image capture devices. Maybe we can find something similar in the cavrinskh.”

“Thank you.”

He nods and holds the cat-shaped—no, the zurgle -shaped door open for me.

I step inside and am hit by the strangest smell: cinnamon, clove, and sugar accost my nose. I have to huff out a breath and then another before I feel settled again.

It’s not a bad smell, but I wasn’t expecting a bakery bombardment, even if it’s a cafe.

“Hello and welcome to the Zurgle Zone!” An impossibly tall woman smiles down at me and plucks two little cubes from the stand by the door. “Just the two of you today?”

“Yes,” Trench grips my hand a little tighter. “I sent a reservation request.”

She looks down at the stand. “Trench?”

He nods.

“Perfect. Let’s get you to a table so we can start the carousel.” She says it with a laugh, and I look up at him, not sure if I should ask.

He offers me a smile, but doesn’t say anything until we’re seated and she’s left us with the menu cubes open in front of us.

He flips through the menu. “These cafes operate in a similar way to Margot’s. Except, instead of a bondmate, you’re assessed for whether or not you’ll be a good match for a zurgle.”

“Interesting. The carousel?”

“They’ll be bringing several out, one at a time, so you can get to know the different types, and see which one might be your favorite.” He switches the menu in front of him to Sianese. “Don’t worry. I marked in the reservation that we’re only here to browse.”

“Have you ever considered getting one?”

He shakes his head. “Kilo has one and it is too smart for its own good. I think if I had one I’d spend more time keeping it out of the lab than I’d spend studying the cavrinskh.”

“Fair. Cats can cause problems. I bet zurgles aren’t any different.”

His gaze flicks across the table and I turn.

“Oh my god!”

I hear a woman in the corner giggle, but I can’t be embarrassed by my outburst. The zurgle is so freaking cute.

Pale yellow skin striped with darker bands, the zurgle looks at me with large black eyes and seems to smile.

“This is Sampson,” our waitress says. “He knows he’s beautiful, and he will love you forever if you scritch the side of his head right here.”

She shows me, and Sampson purrs. At least, I think that’s what I would call it.

“He is our biggest boy, and we always bring him out first as a reminder that we have absolutely no idea how big they get or when or why they stop growing, so, know that you could be committing to a horse if you decide to change your mind and adopt.”

Sampson is not the size of a horse, but he is definitely golden-retriever size. Fur tufts flutter from his ears as he shakes his head.

He knocks his head against the waitress’ chin and even makes biscuits against her arm.

“He is a big sweetheart, and you can play with him if you like, but it has to be over in the lounge area.” She chuckles as she sets him on the floor and he rests his head on the booth seat, staring at me. “This guy has broken a few tables.”

“Good to know. Maybe later.” His whiskers twitch and he huffs a little sound, but he leaves, like he understood me.

“And that is Callie.”

I follow her gaze up to where a zurgle lounges in a hammock overhead that I hadn’t seen.

“She’s the closest I’ve ever seen to Earth cat coloring.”

The zurgle is almost a tortie. Black and vibrant orange gold… but with splashes of blue amongst her fur.

“Do you want to come say hi?” The waitress asks in a high pitched, sing-songy voice.

Callie rolls out of her hammock, landing on the table between Trench and I on all four feet. She looks at me with wide and glittering gold eyes and then turns away, going straight to Trench.

She climbs onto him, forcing him to hold her and curling up against his throat, purring thunderously.

“She has good taste.”

Trench looks at me like he plans to disagree.

The waitress makes a curious noise. “She doesn’t usually gravitate to men. How funny.”

That makes Trench’s brows pinch and he says nothing.

“Okay, other zurgles will wander in and out. They mostly have free rein around here. I’ll send a few specific ones your way when they free up. The main things you need to know are that you have to be gentle when you pet them. Just like Earth cats, they have teeth and claws and if you’re not polite, you might get nicked. They’ll hang out as long as they want to, and they prefer quiet environments.”

She starts to leave and then stops.

“Oh, and if you order a coffee that they give you with a lid: keep it on if you’re not drinking. Kevin will try to finish it off for you.”

“I hope Kevin is a zurgle,” I say, laughing.

“Yep.” She points to a bright red one sitting on a post over the front door. “He’s a menace, but we love him.”

She leaves and a pale blue zurgle trots over, hopping into my lap and placing its front paws on me so that it can sniff at my face.

“Hello,” I say, and it chirps back at me.

“Did you want something to drink?”

“I suppose I should get something. It seems rude to just sit here and play with the zurgles.” I scan the menu quickly. “Do we go up and order? Or will someone be back?”

“I’ll go order, so you can stay with her. Just tell me what you want.”

“A dirty chai and an orange cranberry scone?”

“I’ll be right back.” Trench leaves, walking around the room with Callie still in his arms and disappears out of sight.

I don’t love that, but the zurgle in my lap pulls my attention back. “You are a very sweet thing.”

Her eyes aren’t actually pink. They’re iridescent. She blinks at me and then smiles, like she knows I’m looking her over.

But much like Earth cats, her patience with me wears thin and she curls up in my lap. Her tail flickers, wrapping around my wrist and drawing it up to pet her.

Interesting .

“I didn’t know your tail was prehensile.” I scritch at the same spot the waitress said Sampson liked.

She purrs like an outboard motor.

I pet her, looking for Trench once more and flinch a little when there’s another man standing in my line of sight, smiling at me like he’s surprised to see me.

“Um, hello,” I say, startled.

“I was just speaking with my daughter-in-law,” he says, as if we know each other, and gestures vaguely toward a woman with a high blonde ponytail and the sharpest eyeliner I’ve ever seen, whose attention is fully on the pink zurgle in front of her.

“Have you never seen a zurgle before?”

I’ll humor him until Trench gets back. “No, I’m new to the planet.”

He smiles down at the small creature in my arms. “They are remarkable creatures. Did you know they only act like cats because you expect them to?”

“Really?” I look down at the one in my lap who doesn’t seem to like the man.

He nods. “They are incredibly intelligent.”

“But how do they know how to act like cats?”

He taps the side of his head and I can put the pieces together.

“They can read minds?”

His smile gets wider. “Yes. With the right connection, a zurgle can figure out exactly what you need and give it to you. If it likes you, of course.”

I’m starting to question his sanity, because surely, that is not true. If zurgles could read minds, it would have come up.

He glances toward the hallway, like he’s looking for Trench. “Someone once theorized that we could unlock that potential too.”

The way he says it is so unsettling, I shift away from him.

“I didn’t get your name.”

“How silly of me.” But he doesn’t give it. He reaches down before I can stop him and pets the pale blue zurgle. It’s too rough and she hisses, claw raking through my skin before she bolts.

“Ow, fuck.”

I flinch away, but the man grabs my wrist.

“I am so sorry.” He presses a cloth to my arm… like he had it at the ready. “Please forgive me.”

I watch him instead of speaking, trying to memorize him because something doesn’t feel right.

“Who are you?”

He shrugs as if it’s an apology and then looks at the blood on the cloth like he’s measuring it. With a smile, he says, “Again, I apologize.”

He turns for the back door.

“Wait!”

But he doesn’t listen to me, and before I can struggle out of the booth seat, he’s gone. My arm smarts like a bitch.

Trench comes to my side a moment later and snatches up another napkin, pressing it tightly to my skin. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just annoyed and, ow.” I wince at the sharp pain that slices through my arm. “Maybe not.”

A waitress hurries over with a first aid kit. “Oof. Someone got you good.”

“It wasn’t the zurgle’s fault.”

Trench’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

“There was a man. He pet her too roughly and she got me when she bolted. He was—” The woman he’d called his daughter-in-law is gone. “I don’t know who he was.”

The salve the woman uses burns a little, but she promises it will heal up in a few hours, not days. Trench swaps our drinks out for to-go cups.

We’re half way back to his outpost before I ask the question that’s been confusing me since it happened.

I’ve already told Trench everything that happened, but, “Is there something he could do with my blood?”

He hesitates. “I don’t think so.”

Regardless, I don’t like it.

TRENCH

Thankfully, Jessica doesn’t fight me when I take her straight down to the medfac when we get home. She lets me assess the wound and run the machine through to confirm that the waitress was right and it will heal up in the next few hours.

Jessica watches me with a quiet amusement. “Thank you,” she says when I lift her back off of the table.

“For what.”

“Caring for me.” She presses up onto her toes and kisses me, but drops back on a sigh. “I have work to do.”

I go get the samples case for her, and she takes over my dining table as she inputs the data from the vials and writes notes. I watch her for a long moment before I step away, going into the lab where she won’t see what I’m about to pull up.

I already asked Drift to get in touch with his friend at the CCS, and as I skim through the security cameras around the city, I find a man who’d left around when Jess said the stranger had bolted.

I can’t see his face. City security cameras blur for privacy, so I tag the timestamp and send it back to the agent who sent it over, requesting a wipe. I don’t know if he’ll give it to me. But it’s worth the ask.

Checking the time, I do quick math for the next lava flow and clean out the specimens that are too old to keep and dump the remains into the pit, watching them sink and letting the bright, molten lava sear at my eyes.

When I go back to the living area of my home, Jess has put her hair back up and glares down at her work, the screen in front of her reflecting green off her glasses.

She’s completely taken over my dining table.

I watch her and let the heavy weight of certainty settle in my stomach.

Jessica is my mate. I don’t need the bond to know that.

Her head jerks up, and she smiles at me. “You’re back.”

“I am.”

She looks at the table as if she didn’t realize what she’d done. “Oh, I hope this is okay? I work out of my dining room at home and I just kind of… defaulted.”

“It’s more than okay. Do you need assistance?”

“You okay to be a sounding board about this kind of stuff?”

“Sure.”

“I’ve only gotten through a few of these, but the computer has pulled in a few counts.” She looks at the screen in front of her and her brow creases. “The stopper works incredibly effectively. We’re talking zero swimmers. The two participants not on it…”

She lets out a shaky little laugh. “I honestly don’t know how anyone wouldn’t get pregnant.”

“I am told that before the stopper was created, our planet was on the verge of overpopulation.”

“Fascinating.” She makes a note and then goes back to her screen. “PH is compatible—part of why our species work together. Density is high, as I mentioned…” she trails off for a moment. “Volume is very high.”

“I’m sure those are all things the Agency checked into.”

“No, actually. The Agency doesn’t appear to have done any research on this. Something I honestly can’t fathom.” She looks up at me, lips twisting. “Though, it’s more likely that they’re lying to me about that so their research doesn’t influence mine.”

“They could have just told you that.”

She nods. “They could have. There are a few other elements I need to identify. I expected there to be something missing from the bonded men, that’s where I would have started to try to isolate what it is that actually makes the bond between us.

“There are elements present in some, but not in others. But they’re present in both bonded and unbonded samples. So… what would an unbonded male be missing that other unbonded men might have?”

“Do I have it?” I ask, knowing she has plenty of my samples.

She tabs through screens and then—

“Oh!” Jess jerks back a little as if the numbers are going to jump out and bite her.

“What is it?”

She looks at me, and this time, I do feel studied. “I’m not sure. I need to do a little more research.” She tabs through a few more screens. “And I am going to need some more samples.”

“I am at your disposal.”