by Elise Jae
“Wait… your name is Lauren?”
“Yeah.” She looks at me like I might have memory issues.
I laugh, because, of course it is.
I knew the story of the other woman… probably better than she did.
“You were supposed to be bonded to my friend. His bondmate was the one the other guy tried to kill.”
A flutter of uncertainty crosses between us. “Small world.”
“Or maybe fate has us wrapped up in a more tightly woven web than we thought.”
I twitch inside of her and I know we need to go, or we’re going to be here for hours still.
“Come with me,” I say it, even though I don’t let her feet touch the ground until we’re standing in front of the sink.
“I’m told you have to go do things… after.”
She chuckles as she nods, and slips into the bathroom beside the vanity area.
There’s a shower, but I don’t want to wash her from my skin—not until I know she’ll mark me again, and soon—and I don’t want her to wash me away either.
When she comes back out, I’ve collected her clothing—and three things that would have given her away if she hadn’t hidden them—and gotten most of mine back on. In my profession, you learn to dress quickly.
When she takes her underwear from me, her other hand reaches out and traces the jagged white line of one of my many patchwork scars.
“Someone said the monsters have been dealt with.”
“Not exactly.”
“So I can expect you to come home with more of these?”
The sound of the word “home” on her lips fills me with a warmth I know she can feel. “I can honestly promise I will try to come home in one piece any time I’m called out into the Zone.”
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
I wasn’t supposed to have a bondmate—in fact, I’d made a promise—but it wasn’t one I’d broken knowingly. And there was no way I’d try to undo what’s been done.
Wren is mine. I may not have asked for her—it would be a lie to say I never dreamed of her—but she is mine and I am hers, and there is nothing anyone can say to change that.
She does something with her hair, twisting it up and securing it with what I thought was a bracelet. I’m a little disappointed she doesn’t look thoroughly tousled anymore.
I want to claim her. I want everyone to know she’s claimed me. But that way lies madness.
“How did you get in?” Because I can’t walk out the front door with her. Margot would descend on me like a vulture and I have no idea how I’d explain.
“I snuck in through the back. I figured it would be easy enough. No one expects a woman to be the one trying to dodge a cover charge.” She tugs her skirt down a little more, making it long enough to qualify as barely indecent.
That’s another reason I can’t walk her out through the front. Anyone who saw her with me would try to take her away. Try to save her from the Brotherhood’s brute.
“Will you wait here for a few minutes before you sneak out?”
She nods.
“And when you go, make sure you hit the orange button beside the door.”
“Cleaning crew?”
“Exactly.”
She presses onto her tiptoes, but her heels are high enough the shift doesn’t make too much of a difference and I bend to meet her. The kiss is soft and sweet and I’m tempted to try to walk out the back with her, but I draw too much attention, and she’s technically broken three laws by coming to Margot’s tonight.
Not that I think Margot would press charges….
With a groan, I leave. Because if I don’t, I might tumble her back onto that bed.
The hallway seems darker, the music louder. And I don’t look around the group room as I head for the front door. If anyone I know is here, I don’t want to waste time talking to them.
Still, I have to weave through tables, and every footstep feels like I’m slogging through a mire.
She pulls at me. The tug of her presence, a sharp drag… like an anchor I never knew I needed.
“You stuck around longer than I thought you would.” Margot isn’t exactly blocking the front door, but I’m not going to get past her without a few words.
“What can I say, you managed to provide me with another distraction. You’re good at creating those.”
Eyes narrowed, she studies my face, probably trying to figure out what I mean by that bullshit.
But she doesn’t push, doesn’t try to draw it from me. “See you around, Fault.”
I pause, looking back at her and realize there’s more to the accidental bonding than I’d first considered.
“No,” I say, watching Margot’s brows pinch. “I don’t think you will.”
It was barely a minute, but it feels like that conversation left an enormous gap and I worry that I won’t pull the car around back to collect her in time.
It occurs to me then, I don’t even know how she got to the club in the first place.
She’s waiting for me against the back wall of the club, and she slips into the passenger’s seat wiggling her dress down a little more.
“One hurdle down…” She says as she relaxes into the seat. “The next one is mine.”
“How so?”
“I have to go tell the Agency rep that they don’t get to send me back to Earth after all.”
Three
WREN
“What?” Mary’s question is so shrill and sharp that I half expect Fault to come charging in to her home.
He’s waiting on the porch and I know he heard both what I said, and her aghast question.
Mary’s bondmate is somewhere on the other continent for his job, so we’re the only ones in the house—and I expect the comm to ring any moment when he feels her shock.
But it doesn’t.
“I unexpectedly found myself in a position to secure my own bondmate.” I don’t like the way that sounds, but it’s the way it came out and I’m not going to back down from it. “I know it’s unorthodox and it was not planned, but it’s happened and we both know there’s no going back.”
She blinks at me.
In the months I’ve known her, it’s become clearer and clearer that she lives by rules. And when rules are broken, it takes her time to readjust. I’m just lucky my pronouncement overshadowed the whole “you snuck out like a teenager to have sex” conversation.
“That’s not the way this is done.” She’s not mad, exactly, just… trying to recompute.
“I am aware of that, and I am willing to keep the events of this ‘match’ to myself.”
For half a moment, I expect her to say something about payment, but the man in prison and my anonymous sponsor already covered the cost of my match. There was no reason at all for her to think she could get away with trying to charge Fault for me too. Especially as one wrong word could lead to questions of extortion… and probably lose her her job.
Neither of us want that.
“Well then. I suppose you should collect your things and go then, shouldn’t you.” Her lips twitch and she rubs her brow, looking more frustrated than I’d have expected. “I will of course need to speak with him, to be sure all of the paperwork is in order and there are no mix ups later on.”
“Of course.” I know he’s about to join us, I don’t have to go get him, but I turn out of habit, and Mary catches my wrist. “I am happy for you, Wren. Please don’t mistake my confusion for anything else.”
“I’ve lived with you long enough, Mary. I know how well you like things ordered. I’m just sorry I couldn’t work this into a tidy little box for you.
She smiles softly but then, the door opens, and I’m not a big enough person to distract her.
Her eyes go wide and then they just keep getting wider. “Oh my.”
“Fault, this is Mary. She has some questions she needs you to answer while I grab my things.”
“Of course.”
As I walk away, he gives her basic details I
don’t even know yet. It’s a strange system, but one I signed on for a long time ago. And maybe that’s why it’s not so strange to feel this content with the sudden change in my circumstance.
My bags were packed for tomorrow’s departure, but I take the time to change into something a little warmer. I know where we’re going, but I have no idea how long it will take to get there, or how much snow I’ll have to trudge through to get into his house.
When I come back down, Mary is actually smiling. She’s closed out of whatever application she had to fill out with him and… she laughs at something he said.
It’s the first time I’ve heard her laugh and I am sorely tempted to ask what he said. But there’s something in the contentment he feels, something private. And I don’t want to take that from him.
He glances at me and I know he knows I’ve been watching.
“Thank you,” I say to Mary, truly meaning it. “For everything you did in regards to the mix up and while I’ve imposed on you.”
“I’ll miss having you around, but I’m happy you’ll only be going a few hours away instead of a whole galaxy.” Mary squeezes my hand. “After you’re settled, let me know when you’re in town and we’ll get lunch or drinks.”
“I’ll do that.”
Fault takes my things, and we head back into the night… back to the beginning of our new life.
The car is still warm, and I snuggle down into the seat, wishing I could crawl into his lap instead. Safety protocols are a pain in the ass sometimes.
“She said you have more things in storage?”
I nod, even though he isn’t looking at me. Simple yes or no answers filter through the bond with a clarity I didn’t expect.
“I got special dispensation to bring more than the normal Agency candidate.”
“How did you manage that?”
I haven’t thought about it in over three weeks, but half the things he’ll ask me are things my original bond mate should have known. Maybe the Agency will send the file the have over for him to check up on me.
“A very wealthy sponsor made an anonymous donation after reviewing my file.” His brows pinch, and I know he’s wondering what he’d never say out loud. So I say it for him “What’s so special about me?”
He glances at me sideways. “If I’d seen your file, I might have broken a few rules and paid a premium to have you….”
“I’m flattered, but it’s not my looks that got me special attention.”
“Then what?”
“I scored a perfect one hundred.”
“On what?”
He must sense my confusion. He should know.
“I hadn’t applied for a bondmate.”
A few things make more sense now that he’s admitted that.
“A woman can’t even apply to become a bondmate if she doesn’t pass the Agency’s medical exams. Each of us also has to go through a fertility screening. And you don’t get past the door if you’ve got a bio score lower than a ninety-two, though I think it changed to ninety-eight at some point.... Their score says I have a one hundred percent probability of getting pregnant.”
His knuckles are white as he clenches his fist. “Strange that they would send you back, if that’s the case.”
“I honestly expected that sponsor to show up out of the shadows and either demand I be paired off or claim me himself.” Sighing, I turn back to the winding, snow littered road out the window. “The computer didn’t match me with anyone else. Maybe, if you’d put in an application, we would have wound up together months ago.”
“The Saints have always liked to mess with me, so I doubt it.” He goes quiet for a long moment before he asks, “Do you want children?”
“Of course.” I don’t like the wariness that’s starting to haze the edges of my vision. “It’s another one of the requirements….”
But Fault…. Doesn’t not want kids. I can feel that through the bond. There’s something else going on. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.
“That doesn’t mean we have to have them right away.”
“I take a chemical suppressant. So we shouldn’t have done anything we can’t walk away from tonight.”
I don’t like the roil of emotion I feel as he says it. But I have no idea how to console him… if that’s even what he needs.
And I get distracted as soon as I see his—our home.
All I really see is a smooth, cave-like opening and windows set into jagged rocks of the cliff face bathed in moonlight. It’s like a villain’s lair in every spy spoof ever.
But when we drive into that cave-like entrance, it’s not as strange as I’d expect. Smooth concrete covers the walls, rounding anything that might have been a sharp edge, but the door to the living area… is a hatch.
“Are we going to have to go through an airlock and decontamination shower?” I ask as he kills the engine.
“No. The outposts weren’t made for us specifically, they’re all different and mine just happened to come with hatches instead of doors. I don’t think Ric has interior doors… come to think of it.”
I slip out of the car and see another car—half hidden by a pillar—at the same time Fault sees it. Apprehension…
“Were you expecting visitors?”
“No, but I should have.” He takes my hand and, after punching in a code beside the door, reading it out to me as he does, the hatch opens with a twist of the lever-like handle and I step inside to warmth and bright lights.
His home is exactly how I expect a bachelor pad would look, human or sian… except that it’s not empty.
A man who’s not quite as big as Fault stands near the windows, arms crossed over his chest, scowling into the darkness and snow, and a woman—impossibly beautiful and quite pregnant—sits on a long couch, turning to us with a wide smile as the door closes behind us.
“Kimba,” Fault says, acknowledging the woman first. “Please don’t get up.”
“Of course not.” She jerks her head toward the window “That one has threatened to confine me to the house if I don’t obey the rules for field trips.” She laughs as she says it, and I wonder how that argument went, and who actually won it.
“Wren, this is Kimba. She’s the one who’s actually in charge of the Brotherhood anymore. And that angry man in the corner is her mate, Drift. My boss.”
Drift looks at us both, but he says nothing.
It’s Kimba who reaches out to me. “It’s lovely to meet you Wren, come join me and tell me how you managed to surprise us.”
I shoot a glance to Fault, but there’s nothing ill feeling when he glances Kimba’s way. All of his energy and attention is on her bondmate. Which means, I’ll be going to her, but I’ll be listening very carefully to what Drift has to say.
FAULT
Drift looks ready to drive his fist through something. Maybe the plate of glass that stands between us and the caldera. Maybe my face. Or maybe he’ll shove my face through the window.
The only thing that makes me certain he’s keeping his temper in check is Kimba. If he stresses himself out, he stresses her out and he’s in full blown dad-mode.
I almost ask how he knew, but the paperwork Mary had me fill out…. It would have updated in the Agency system instantly.
I forget that anything with my name flags in his system. Of course, everyone’s names flag… but mine he has special conditions on.
Special conditions that meant I should never have been in a position to sign that paperwork.
Drift is watching me very carefully, his jaw tight, eyes narrowed. I knew it was coming, of course, so I don’t try to put it off.
The perverse and contrary side of my natures make me want to go with Wren, to hide behind her and Kimba. But I can’t.
“I thought,” he says when I get close. “That we agreed you weren’t going to put in for a bondmate. Ever.”
“And I didn't.” I can’t stop myself from looking at her, ten feet away, smiling softly at Kimba. “It seems the Saints decided w
e were both wrong to have agreed to your plan.”
“I didn’t think you, of all people, would disobey orders.”
“You would have seen the flag as soon as the request went in. I didn’t ask to be bonded.”
“You’ll understand if I don’t believe you.”
I don’t need to hear the rest of Drift’s questions. After all, I’m not the one who’s going to answer them. Wren’s focus is entirely on us.
“It’s my fault.”
I hate that I didn’t know she could speak our language.
It’s ridiculous.
I’ve only known her for a handful of hours. But I still feel like I should have known that.
Drift turns to her, his jaw set, but Kimba is beside her, looking at me with an indulgent smile.
“I was at Margot’s when I never should have been. But I saw something I wanted, so I took it….. I took him.”
She doesn’t actually ask it, but I can see it in the set of her jaw, I know that there’s a very specific question lurking at the back of her mind. Is there a problem with that?
And in Drift’s mind? Yes. There is a very big problem with that.
His jaw twitches. “I imagine the Agency is just as concerned with how something… unauthorized happened, as I am.”
Wren’s jaw is the one that tightens this time. “Their concerns have been dealt with.”
I bite back a smile. If she’s this quick to stand up to Drift after those few hours… he might be in trouble in the future.
“Thank you for enlightening me.”
Drift’s hand is hard around my arm as he drags me into my kitchen. “How could you be so careless? You should never have—”
“What? Gone to Margot’s? I didn’t agree to be a monk.” I turn my face to the ceiling. I don’t want her to feel my stress or irritation. “Why are we even arguing about this? What’s done is done. It can’t be changed.”
“Jessica might…”
“The fuck she might.” I have to pause, just to get my blood pressure back down. “Tell me you wouldn’t rip my spine out if I seriously suggested someone tried to separate you from Kimba.”
