I wanted to protest the whole conversation, but that was just stupid. Surral taught us what we needed to know as we grew up, and she was the one who’d given me my birth control implant to begin with, when she’d seen how Gabe and I had started looking at each other when we were seventeen.
“There’s about a year left,” I said.
“In that case”—she turned back to her cabinet and rummaged around—“you need another ovulation suppressor. I don’t know if I’ll see you again before the year is out, and it’s sometimes less reliable toward the end.” She looked over at me again with the sterile packaging of the tiny implant in her hand. “Unless you want children, of course.”
I did. Someday. I thought. Unless it was too dangerous. What did I know? I kept getting shot at, and there was a huge bounty on my head. But none of that mattered for the question at hand because…
“I’m not sleeping with anyone,” I repeated—a little dully to my ears.
“Maybe not now. Or again. But ten years is a long time. Let’s just replace it, yes?”
I nodded and let my doctor do her thing. Out with the old. In with the new. I felt the slight pinch as she got the previous implant out from under my skin and then injected me with its minuscule replacement.
“You can remove it at any time,” she reminded me. “Any qualified nurse can take it out.”
I nodded again, but right then, I couldn’t imagine my life being stable enough for kids, which made me sad as hell. It wasn’t even stable enough for a boyfriend. A good, fun, steady guy. Not one who lied, and snuck around, and took his blood money from the galaxy’s most powerful and dreaded Dark Watch general.
“I waited seven years after losing track of Gabe and then slept with the absolute worst person in the whole galaxy,” I blurted out. “Yesterday.”
Surral arched her brows, taking in my confession. “Why did you choose the worst person?”
I didn’t even try to hide my dejection. “Because I thought he was something else.” Shade had fooled me. He’d made me believe he was everything he wasn’t.
“Did he hurt you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. I glanced up and found Surral looking like a force of nature, ready to rip Shade up.
“Not like that,” I hastened to reassure her. “Not physically.”
I couldn’t help it. I rubbed my aching heart. I didn’t add any details. I didn’t tell her that he’d been about to act on the dead-or-alive bounty he’d been keeping a secret while he earned my trust. And I didn’t explain how he’d been waiting for the right moment to haul me in to the Dark Watch and claim his prize. All that had been next on his agenda—after the beautiful sex.
She was quiet for a long moment and then finally asked, “No sign of Gabe, then?”
I would have asked her the same question soon—her or Mareeka. Now I didn’t need to. If he still hadn’t checked in here in nearly a decade, he was either in prison, or dead.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Well, let’s not assume the worst,” she said, peeling off her surgical gloves.
Her words came out forcefully enough to make me think they were more for her benefit than for mine. At this point, I was pretty resigned to the worst.
“I lost my cat.” While I was confessing things, there was also that.
The ache in my chest grew. Poor Bonk. I hoped he got off that platform somehow. If he did, would he go feral on the streets? Fighting for scraps? I had all that food, the fancy litter… He would have had such a good life.
“I’m sorry, Tess.”
I bit my lip. “Yeah. Thanks. And I have no clothes,” I added, curling in on myself.
Surral turned to another cupboard and pulled out a pair of candy-pink scrubs with lime-green trim. I didn’t know where she got these things. It was as though color elves wove them during the night and then delivered them to Starway 8.
Or maybe her contacts in New India provided them. As a rich and established group with a colorful culture they’d held on to for eons, the Sector 15 planets were strong enough to get away with some snubbing of the Overseer’s drab example.
I put on the scrubs. They fit like a box, but at least they were almost long enough. My bare feet didn’t bother me. The floors here were never cold.
“I’d better go,” I said. “There’s a massive price on my head.”
