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“Name.”
“Sera’n.” The name came out flat, and she watched my face as she said it.
I knew the name from the file.
“Anyone else?”
“No.” One beat. Two. “No one.”
“Why did you flee?”
Her laugh sounded exhausted this time. “Let’s see. My supervisor told me to forget what I found. Then he disappeared. My access started vanishing. Someone searched my quarters. Then I got ordered to report for reclassification.”
She pointed toward herself. “I am a human woman who was brought here to mate. Do you know what ‘reclassification’ sounds like from my side of this conversation?”
I said nothing.
I did know.
Apparently she saw something in my face anyway.
“Exactly.”
I shifted my attention back to her. The faint scent of ozone still clung to the air between us. “Sera’n disappeared when?”
“This morning.” Her voice was tight, clipped. She wrapped her arms around herself, a gesture that seemed more protective than defiant now.
“After you showed him the records?”
“Yes.” A single syllable, bitten off.
“What records?”
She hesitated, her gaze dropping to the floor before lifting again. I waited, letting the silence stretch.
Her shoulders slowly lowered. “Deceased warriors.”
That matched the access history.
“Continue.”
“Duplicate files. Different accession numbers. Different compatibility histories.”
I remained still.
She went on. “Some records showed human matches that weren’t in the originals. Others had changed data. Mine was one of them.”
“Yours?”
Her mouth tightened. “The warrior I was originally matched with.”
The one who died before bond acceptance.
“Yes.”
“What changed?” I asked.
She looked away, her fingers twisting together. “The compatibility result.”
