His face was still. Unreadable. He must never lose at card games. "How did you pass my security?"
She was afraid to tell him how easy it had been. "Drone girls are invisible."
He looked at her and waited. Sasha glanced down at her twitching fingers, at her thin, gray dress, over his shoulder—anywhere but at him.
He waited.
Eventually she told him everything. Merrick complaining about him, remembering her father talking about him—deciding to meet him, sneaking away—stealing an ident-card from a distracted beta guard and a dirty uniform from the laundry so she would smell like one of his household drones before becoming a part of his drone herd at a shift change to easily slip into his compound.
Drones liked her. She found out who cleaned for him. She befriended Mary and took her place.
She begged him not to punish the drones. They really didn't know. They couldn’t scent her. They’d thought she was one of them.
Constantine’s mouth tightened, lips thinning with displeasure at the story.
"What do you want from me, Sasha, daughter of Edin?"
Her stomach dropped, sliding over her lap like a slick, wiggly thing. It slid cold all the way down her legs to her feet, leaving her mouth dry and the food she’d eaten wanting to come up and out. She took a couple of deep breaths. Peeked at him. The still, expressionless cold face.
Brain matter on the wall. There was that.
And the hour or so she had spent in his lap, eating his lunch and coming back to herself.
He asked no other questions, his face a mask of patient, chilly boredom. He didn't shift uncomfortably or impatiently. He was a predator waiting for his prey to give itself away. Wolf meet rabbit.
"I had a proposition for you," she whispered quietly at her hands. He didn't move, but she did. Her hands twisted. She picked at her fingernails. Pulled at the too short drone dress that had made her smell like one of his. "Maura is dying. She may be dead now. Dover's End, the bar, is mine. The recipes that matter are mine. The combination to the safe is mine. My mother's third husband-mate, Merrick, thinks he can force me into a marriage agreement. I won't do it. I get to choose. The law says that breeders choose."
Constantine smiled, a wolfish pull of lips away from his canines. "So, you come here to me? Do you want me to help you find a husband? What of your Selection?"
He saw her wince. The facial expression answering some of his questions. "You thought to ask me? You could have made an appointment for that, you know. But, that aside, why would you think I'm a better choice? You said that Merrick and your father complained about me. Were you thinking the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' and all of that?"
"My father..."
"Your father would never have sent you here. This is the last place on this planet he would want you. Even if I were the last man alive, the only man capable of helping you, your father would have told you to choose death."
His words came out in a chilly, biting whip. Sasha felt as if he had beat her across the face with each one. She lifted her hand helplessly to her cheek. Had he actually struck her so quickly she couldn't feel the sting yet?
He wasn't hiding his feelings now. His face was angry, brows slashed down. He must remember her father.
Her voice small, Sasha agreed with him. "He hated you. I don't know why."
She couldn't stop her eyes from flickering to his for an answer, but his cool expression didn't change to guilt or shame. It was just cold. Just dangerous.
"But he respected you. He respected your steel spine. I don't know who else... There's no time, you understand. Merrick said you were honorable. I need honorable."
"You are a child. Even a drone can tell you are still a child. There is plenty of time."
He made it sound like being a child was a derogatory thing. He might have said “dog-shit,” or “slave,” or “whore” in the same tone of voice.
"There isn't time. I'm older than I look. And Merrick won't wait. He won't chance it. Dover's End is—it is everything to him. Hurting me, breaking me? That’s the icing on the cake. He won't wait, and he already has a sector Administrator who will lie about my being ready and willing."
"I don't want a bride-mate," he told her coolly, eyeing her up and down.
His answer shocked her. Incomprehensible. Every alpha wanted a breeder bride, their nature craved it. A long lived man like him, of course he wanted a woman able to give him his legacy and add to his years. Didn’t he? If not her, he must at least want more power and property, another biological imperative for alphas.
"But you at least want Dover's End, don’t you?" She asked. He had to want it. Merrick complained about him more than her father ever had. "It could be in name only, our pairing. A business arrangement."
"A business arrangement? You are a registered breeder."
