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I pause on the threshold, my heart starting to pound. I didn’t leave them on.
There are gruff voices coming from inside. Banna had gifted me a small taser-like weapon the size of a lipstick. I pull it out of my bag and edge forward, holding my breath.
“Don’t be a baby,” someone’s saying. It’s a familiar voice, low and gravelly.
“That move could have crushed a rib,” is the flat reply.
I drop my weapon and my bag and throw myself around the corner.
“Kalla?” I cry, as I come upon a scene I wasn’t expecting.
My mate is rooting through my refrigeration unit, while his brother lays on his back on top of a towel that’s been strewn over my couch. Kalla whips around at the sound of my voice, drops the frozen bag of dumplings he was holding, and runs to my side. He smiles as he sweeps me up into his arms. I’m lifted right off my feet, dumbfounded but happy just to hold him and bury my face in his shoulder.
“You’re here,” I whisper, digging my fingers into him. He’s inhaling the scent of my hair and silently squeezing me against him like he never wants to let me down.
“I’m here.”
I peek over his shoulder, noting through blurry vision that Vala is looking pointedly at the wall to give us privacy.
“Um, would you like to fill me in on what’s going on?” I ask slowly. “Your… your brother?”
Kalla reluctantly lets me down.
“I understand you’ve met him,” he says. He looks surprisingly sheepish as he says, “Well, I nearly killed him just now. I thought he was a bounty hunter stalking you.”
“What’s the matter with you?” I exclaim. “Is he alright?”
“I am fine,” he calls from the couch.
Kalla clears his throat. “I, uh, put down a towel to protect your furniture. And I’ll be sure to clean up the mess from our encounter.”
I massage my temples, trying to wrap my mind around this.
“I would, however, appreciate the frozen item I was promised,” Vala says with a groan of pain.
“Why the hell did you think he was a bounty hunter? I mean, he’s eight foot tall with silver hair like someone else I know! You can’t recognize your mirror image?”
“He was outside with a helmet on, peeping through your window,” Kalla explains, turning to pick up the abandoned dumplings. He chucks them at Vala, who nearly fumbles the catch. “Apparently, he’s been checking in on you, so naturally, I feel quite guilty knowing that.”
“I’ll say!” One look at Vala tells me that my mate held nothing back in their fight. How else could a wall of muscle be moaning flat on their back?
“I have been swinging by to see that your light comes on at the end of your usual shift,” Vala says. “Just to be sure there is nothing amiss following our hit on the bounty hunters.”
“That’s very sweet of you,” I say, walking over to check on him. Kalla follows right behind me.
“Vala explained to me how they dealt with your predicament. I told him how grateful I was,” he tells me. “I came from that place directly, and I was very confused when I concluded I had no reason to slaughter every one of them.”
“According to my associate,” Vala says, “the company had no idea you have a mate and no inkling that Kaye might be close to you. He went through their entire file on you. Kaye was listed as a contact of Raina Jones, the one whose farm they went to investigate. And even she was merely a distant associate in your sphere of contacts. They are ‘grasping at straws’ as my human mate would say. They are nowhere close to determining the identity of the ‘Ashbringer.’ After the death of that bounty hunter they sent to EC-12, they were about to move on from the project, citing it strained resources too much to become lucrative.”
“From what I read today; it seems they’re convinced that another agency sabotaged them. So whatever your ‘associate’ arranged was well-done and didn’t arouse any suspicion,” Kalla says.
Then I watch apprehensively as the brothers awkwardly nod at one another. It’s as if neither of them knows what to say. I know both of them have been yearning for this reunion. Yet now that it’s here, they stare at each other and say nothing.
“Have either of you eaten? I can make us something—”
Vala manages to sit up while clutching the frozen dumplings to his stomach.
“Actually, if you are both well, then I should get going. My mate will be worrying for me,” he says.
