Hallie sits across from me at the low table. A mug of steaming traq with copious amounts of sweetener is at her elbow. Her dark red hair is loose around her shoulders and she’s telling me about a move she could have made three games ago that would have ended me faster, and I am only half listening because I am too busy being happy.
“You’re not even listening.”
I blink. “I’m listening. You’d have taken my flank with the runner. I’d have seen it.”
“You would not have seen it.”
“Queen,” I say, just to watch her flush, “I always see it.”
She rolls her eyes, but the color comes up in her freckled cheeks anyway. Hallie reaches out and nudges one of my corner pieces a hand-width across the board, which is not a legal move and we both know it.
“There,” she says. “I win.”
“That’s cheating.”
“It’s strategy.”
“It’s cheating and you don’t need to cheat. What’s gotten into you this morning?”
The rain ticks against the windows and somewhere deeper in the compound I can hear Argylia shriek with laughter and one of my brothers rumble back at her.
“I talked to the women last night.”
“I heard. Roxy says you out-drank her.”
She snort-laughs. “I did not out-drink Roxy, nobody out-drinks Roxy…They told me things, Rook.” She gestures, a little helplessly between the two of us, at the board, at the air. “About how all of this works and it’s really on my mind this morning.”
I crook an eye ridge. “Is this good or bad?”
“I asked them to tell me.” She meets my eyes. “I wanted to know more about how a clasping specifically works between a human and a Xylan.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I manage.
“Because I didn’t want you to ever wonder whether I understood what you really meant when you said that you scented me and that you want to one day clasp my hand in a mating ceremony. I mean, you have told me a lot, of course. But it was good for me to heard it all from another group of women who are in the midst of it all right now.”
“You can’t make any kind of decision on this yet because there are operatives out there who want you dead,” I say, because I have to, because I will not let her mistake a cage for a home. “That’s not the same as?—”
“Rook, I’m trying to tell you that after I talked to them last night and thought it through a whole bunch, I can now see myself living here.”
“Hallie, you’ve only been here for a week. How can you know that already?”
She shrugs. “I was on Chronos for three years, but I never meant to stay there forever. It was a means to an end. It was avery high paying job and I meant to eventually return to New Earth and start my own business. That was always my dream. But I want you to know that I can see myself living on Timbur, with you. And I don’t say that lightly. I truly understand that this means a lifelong decision, that you can never leave Timbur and that I would become pregnant right away. And I say yes to all of that. In fact, that type of life sounds pretty wonderful to me and I believe I would be lucky to live out my days here, with you. I wanted you to have heard me say that, when nothing was forcing my hand.”
My two hearts are going so hard I’m sure she can hear them. “Hallie.” Her name comes out rough. I reach across the board, slow, giving her every chance to pull back, and I cover her gloved hand with mine. Cloth between us, always cloth, until she chooses otherwise and gods, she might choose otherwise. “I have wanted to have this talk with you about specifics since the night you arrived, and I have been swallowing it every single day so I don’t frighten you. So let me say one piece of it now, while nothing’s forcing my hand either.” I meet her bright gaze. “There is no version of my life that’s better than the one with you in it.”
She grins, turns her hand underneath mine, gloved palm to gloved palm, and holds on.
And then thefront door bangs open hard enough to rattle the walls.
“Crew meeting!” Scar’s deep voice booms throughout the whole compound. “Front room.Now.Everyone.”
Hallie’s hand jerks in mine. We’re both already up.
It isn’t the command that does it, it’s the way he says it. Scar doesn’t shout. He’s the one who watches a room for an hour before he picks a chair. This must be serious, in fact, deadly news.
The rest of the family pours in from every direction, half-dressed for a day off work. Heavy has a cleaning rag still in his fist. Chief fills the far doorway, Cannibal and Claws crowd behind. Doors bang. Humans arrive. In moments we’re all here.
“What?” Heavy demands. “What’s happened?”
