But I was done running before anyone chased me. Done leaving before I got left.
Whatever James sent, whatever the Agency wanted, whatever that flag on my file meant, I wasn’t disappearing this time.
I was staying.
8
KAZAN
Maisie was still asleepwhen I woke.
She was tucked against me, her back to my chest, one hand loose against my forearm where I’d held her through the night. Her breathing was slow. The cuts on her palm had scabbed over, and her hair had worked its way across my arm and the blanket and, somehow, into my mouth.
I didn’t move.
Moving would wake her. Waking her would mean the morning had started, and I wasn’t ready for that.
Outside the window, the orchard was quiet after the storm. Water still clung to the branches of the star-fig trees. The house was quiet, too, in a way it had never been before. I’d slept in this bed for years. I’d woken in it after bad weather, bad dreams, and terrible memories.
I had never woken with a mate in my arms.
I’d been made for the pits. That was what I’d been told, and for a long time, that was all I’d been. The Bastion. A thing with fists. A thing that survived. Females had been kept separate and managed by people who thought bloodlines were their property. There had been no mornings like this. No soft hair againstmy mouth. No small warm body breathing beside me, like she trusted me to keep the world away.
A week ago, I’d stood at the spaceport and told myself I didn’t want any of this.
I’d been wrong.
Maisie stirred. I felt the change in her before she opened her eyes. Her body went still first. Then her breath caught. Then, slowly, she remembered where she was and who was around her, and some of the tension eased.
“It’s early,” I said.
She made a small sound and turned in my arm until she faced me. For one second, her eyes were soft.
Then she remembered something.
Her expression changed. Not fear. Calculation. I knew that look now. Maisie did sums when she was frightened. She looked for the damage before it arrived.
“Kazan,” she said carefully. “Last night.”
“I remember last night.” My voice was low. “I don’t regret it. If you do, tell me.”
“That’s not the problem.” She gave a short breath that wasn’t a laugh. “No. I don’t regret it. That’s the problem.” She put her hand against my chest. “The contract says you aren’t allowed to touch me. I read it. There was a whole paragraph. And I let you. Iaskedyou. If anyone finds out, they’ll take me off Ceres-9, and they’ll come after you. Your land. Everything.”
I looked at her hand on my chest. The scabs across her palm were dark against her skin.
“I’m a liability,” she said. “I figured it all out at three in the morning.”
Of course she had.
Last night, she’d tried to remove herself from my life because she thought that would make things easier for me. Now she was in my bed, doubting herself.
The old part of me wanted to answer that by finding someone to hurt. James. The hunter. Whoever had written that contract and decided my hands were safer when they were bound by law than when they were gentle.
But that wouldn’t help her.
I lifted my hand and touched her face. Carefully. She let me.
“You’re not a liability,” I said.
