“Threat to us?” There was the question.
I made my mouth move around the sentence required. “Unclear. Watch and report.”
Yuki turned a page. “You’ll continue as her escort.”
“Yes.”
“And you won’t provoke her.”
I looked at her. Yuki kept reading. “I have not provoked her yet.”
“No.You corrected her in three corridors, disciplined a guard for walking too close to her, and escorted her from dinner quickly enough that Leland nearly offered his arm to an empty chair.”
I said nothing. Silence was not an admission. With Yuki, it was not a defense either.
She looked up then. Her pale gaze holding mine. “Dominic.”
“Yes.”
“She’s a human intelligence operative in our compound on the week of a state dinner.”
“Yes.”
“That makes her dangerous.”
“Yes.”
She set her pen down. “It doesn’t make her yours to manage.”
The mate-bond rose in me so sharply that for a moment the room became simpler. Desk. Door. Yuki. Distance to Cordero. Threats. Paths.
I put it down.
Yuki saw. “Anything else?” she asked quietly.
I considered telling her the truth.
I caught her scent in the corridor and she’s my mate.
I considered the consequences. I considered Cordero, in the room at the end of the corridor, who at that exact moment was probably standing at her bathroom mirror taking off mascara and not knowing any of this.
“No.”
Yuki watched me. Then she nodded. “Go.”
I closed the door behind me and walked back to her corridor.
I checked both ends and the service stair. I checked the camera angle over the west turn, which had been drifting for three weeks and still needed repair. I checked the lock on the garden access door because Cordero had looked at it once from the far end of the corridor and I did not trust the amount of interest she had managed to hide.
Then I returned to her door.
I stood outside it for the rest of the night, and for the first time in seventy years of doing this work, I did not catch myself counting the minutes.
Inventory
Catalina
He was already in the corridor when I opened my door at seven the next morning. I was beginning to wonder if he ever wasn’t.
