Mags chuckles. “She’ll turn you fat.”
“Soft. That’s what she’ll make me. But I won’t let her,” I grunt, thinking back to Clemson. My gut tightens.
“She’s caring for you, then? Anything else?”
My throat tightens. “What are you getting at? Abomination?”
“Not all people see it that way, Kael. We wouldn’t be here if?—”
“Your Pa was right about you. Nose always buried too deep in those romances. Not how real life works, though.”
My tattoos pulse, painful despite my employer’s current location—in town at the café. Like the flesh wants to argue. But it won’t win.
“She’s got me bathing daily. Though I’m still holding out on showers.”
“Hot showers.” Mags laughs. “Only the best invention in recent memory.”
“Still prefer the watering hole. Cold but refreshing.”
“Can you hold a minute?” she asks. I wait, listening to her speak with a man in the background.
When she returns, she asks, “Any signs of… strangeness? More unexplained things happening on the Wakefield property?”
“Herd’s good. I sleep by them nightly. Alfalfa’s still growing, though askew.”
“And no more from the government men?” Mags doesn’t hide the disgust in her voice.
“Nothing out of place, just the humming of the Starborn. Never too far away. Stronger now.”
“Because of Ash...”
“Ash? What do you mean?”
“He and the Reyes’ granddaughter. Bonded, though no one here saw it coming.”
Blood rushes through my temples, ears humming. “Bonded? You can’t mean?—”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
“But it’s been decades,” I say, pacing a distance from the herd.
“It has. But something’s different now. Wildbloods getting called home. Finding their mates.”
Her planning again. Always planning. Seeing way out to where nothing’s happened yet.
My heart thuds.
“Honestly, I was kind of hoping that you and Eliza?—”
“Never.”
The line goes quiet.
“Not a Wakefield. Not a human.” I don’t know which is worse.
“Okay, okay. Point taken. Calm down.”
“I’ll be out of here before the apples even drop.”
