“A Caro?”
She goes even pinker. “Zia.”
“I’m just saying. From what I’ve read, Caros are...” I search for the right word. “Intense about the people they care about.”
This was one of the things I’d learned after That Day, when the preter world came out of hiding and suddenly everyone was googling supernatural races like they were studying for the world’s weirdest final exam. Caros were known for being fiercely protective and, according to multiple sources, incrediblyaloof, incredibly obsessive, incredibly ruthless, and just about everything incredible in a Cruel Intentions sort of way, I suppose.
Which is a very clinical way of saying: when a Caro likes you, they really like you.
“It’s just lunch,” Trish mumbled.
I give her anuh huhlook, and she buries her face in her hands. “I really don’t think it means anything special.”
“But you said this is a seven-maybe-eight situation.”
She peeks at me through her fingers. “Do you think it’s too fast?”
And there it is. The actual question underneath all the blushing and the chopstick-staring and the magnificent full-body flush.Is this real? Can I trust it? Is it safe to feel this happy?
I know that question.
I’ve asked it myself, once, about a boy who made me feel like the center of his world for two years before reducing our entire relationship to four sentences on a phone screen.
But Trish isn’t asking about Billy. She’s asking about her own story, and her story isn’t mine.
“I think,” I say slowly, “that the man you’re dating is going out of his way to make sure you eat well. And I think that says something good about him.”
Trish lowers her hands. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She smiles then. Small, private, the smile of someone who’s falling and hasn’t hit the ground yet and is still in that breathless, terrifying, wonderful space in between.
I smile back.
And I don’t think about the fact that nobody has ever sent me anonymous gourmet lunches. Or that the one person who was supposed to be my scientifically compatible match chose his parents’ money over me. Or that I’m eating onigiri on a rooftop while my best friend’s secret Caro boyfriend sends her food that looks like it belongs in a magazine.
I don’t think about any of that.
Mostly.
THE AFTERNOON PASSESthe way afternoons at Lykaios Holdings usually do: quickly, because the work is absorbing, and quietly, because the design wing operates with a focused hush that I’ve come to love.
I’m working on packaging prototypes for a new line of portable safety devices, compact units that emit a frequency only vampires can hear, designed to give humans a few crucial seconds of warning during an attack. The technology itself was developed by a joint team of Caro and Lyccan scientists, and my job is to make the outer casing intuitive, durable, and something that a person would actually want to carry around every day rather than shove in a drawer and forget about.
I’m saving my final files when I hear it.
Laughter. Not real laughter. The sort that’s sharp at the edges and aimed at someone.
I don’t look up. I’ve learned, over the years, that sometimes the best thing you can do is not look. Not engage. Not make yourself a target by acknowledging that you’ve heard something you weren’t supposed to.
But the voice carries.
“...honestly can’t believe they hired a human for the design team. I mean, it’s not like there’s a shortage of qualified preters who could actually—”
The voice drops. More laughter. Lower this time, conspiratorial.
I keep my eyes on my screen. I click save. I click it again, even though the file is already saved, because the repetitive motion gives my fingers something to do that isn’t curling into fists.
