“Judy is a woman’s name,” Risk tells him. “A jury is a group of twelve people convened to try a crime.”
“People try crimes on Earth? Is there a loophole, so long as there are twelve of them?” Exasperated, Andrea takes her baby back and tells him. “I’ll walk you through it later. You havegotto stop using phrases you don’t know the meaning of.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
Kimba pauses beside us after scolding Kilo about his dirty boots.
“You.” She looks at each of us in turn, scolding, “haven’t registered your bond.”
“We’ve been busy,” I tell her, trying not to think aboutwhywe’ve been busy.
Arc’s grip on me tightens.
“I’m sure you have,” Kimba scowls at us.
“We’re not going to register it,” Arc says, pulling her attention away from me. “If the people who want her want her unbonded, knowing she is might send them after someone else. Someone whoisn’tprotected.”
Risk scoots forward, elbows on knees, “Until we know it’s better to have a legal record, we’re going to keep it our little secret.”
“What’s a secret?” Jess asks, having just arrived. “And why haven’t you responded to any of my messages?”
Kimba grimaces and scoots quickly away.
This feels like a rip-the-bandage-off situation, so I do.
“I was enjoying my honeymoon for as long as I could,thank you.”
Her eyes go wide, and Arc flinches. I donotwant to know what she just thought.
“But you can add a new finding to your notes. A bond can form between a human and up to three Sian men.”
She looks at Arc again, not the others, and the coil of discomfort in my stomach doesn’t belong to me.
Arc exhales slowly and I squeeze his hand before I stand up and take Jess by the shoulders. I turn her and then shove. “Let’s go do this in private shall we?”
“You don’t have to go,” Arc tells me, but…
“I do.”
And all three of them are relieved when I push Jess away again.
“I assume you want more blood, right?” Rolling up my sleeve, I walk to the smaller version of a medical unit they keep tucked away up here.
“Please tell me you didn’t bond to them just because I called you a commitment-phobe. I know you’re impulsive, but this is serious.”
“Mom probably would have slapped you for that,” I remind her, and she has the decency to wince.
“I’m very aware of how serious it is, Jess. I’ve put disclaimers on more pieces of Agency media than you’ll ever read in your life.”
Her brows furrow as she punches in the correct sequence on the machine. “I know you’re all grown up now?—”
“You sure? The way you said that makes me think you don’t.”
“It’s hard for me tonotthink of you as that twelve-year-old who ran away because you were mad at me.”
“Well, you’re going to have to figure it out.”
The machine beeps and her mouth presses firmly into a line. “You have to admit that it feels a little playground payback that you’d bond to him.”
