The almost-smile becomes an actual smile. Full. Devastating.
“I heard,” he says.
I am not wearing the lucky top. The lucky top is in a bag on the hover-cart. My mother said every first day, and I am starting a new thing without it.
I don’t need it.
The luck was never in the fabric. The luck was in me. In showing up. In walking through the door, even when the door had teeth.
His hand comes up. Cool fingers. The backs of them brush my jaw — light, quick, a touch that sayslaterandeverything.
Behind us, Xor’s crimson mouth curves. Just barely. Tael doesn’t look back. Tael is already somewhere else in his head, tracking something that isn’t in this corridor.
I don’t look back either.
“Let’s go,” I say.
12
Courier Support
Jazil
Shewalksbesidemethrough the concourse, and every male who looks at her makes my claws itch.
Not extend. Not yet. Itch. The sheaths tighten and the tips press against the inner housing and the instinct sends a signal that saysassess, evaluate, determine threat leveland the signal has been firing on a continuous loop since the corridor outside Flossie’s office where the silver-eyed tracker looked at her like she was worth studying.
Tael Vosk. Draelith. Tracker. Looked at her for five seconds. Said her name. Saidrare skill.Said it in a voice that was professional and respectful and not remotely interested in her the way I am interested in her, and it does not matter. The instinct does not care aboutcontext or nuance. The instinct clocked a predator-class male within conversation distance of my mate and issued a standing order, and the standing order iswatch him,and the standing order is not going away.
She is walking beside me, and she is wearing my shirt, and the bite mark is visible at the neckline, and she does not know that every Skiveth on this concourse can read what that mark means. She does not know that the mark is broadcastingclaimedin a language she didn’t read because she skimmed past the section on bonding and went straight to the chase.
Except she is not claimed. That is the problem. The mark is a bruise, not a bond. The mark will fade. The bond would not. And the difference between the two is a section of a manual she hasn’t read and a choice she hasn’t made, and I will not — will not — take the choice from her by letting instinct run the show.
The urge to claim is getting stronger. Every minute. Every step through this concourse with her beside me in my shirt, the warm-sweet scent of her trailing behind us, the memory of her body under mine and the sounds she made and the way she saidI’ve got youwhen I came apart. The instinct is sayingfinish it, complete the bond, she’s yours, she was always yours.And the instinct includes consent. The instinct requires consent. But the instinct is also very deafening, and the loudness is making it hard to think about anything except the fact that she is right here and she is warm, and she smells like me and I want to press her against the nearest bulkhead and —
Walk. Walk to Morrison’s office. Be a professional. Be a professional whose mate is walking beside him in his shirt. Be a professional.
“You’re doing thething,” she says.
“What thing?”
“The jaw thing. And the ridge thing. Your ridges have been dark since the corridor.”
“Have they.”
“They have. Is it —” She glances around the concourse. At the people. At the males. At me. “Is it because of the tracker? Tael?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Partly because of the tracker.”
“He wasn’t interested in me like that.”
“I know.”
“So why —”
