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He sighs, carefully lowering himself over me.

We kiss again.

He kisses my jaw and then runs his teeth over my ear lobe and settles in a spot just beneath my ear. He licks that spot and grazes me there. “This is my spot,” he tells me in a husky voice. “I just know that.”

“You do?” I gasp.

“Yeah.” He kisses it. “But I don’t want to hurt you, baby girl. I’m in control of myself right now, and I think I might lose it if I bite you. I’d rather do it when our mates are around, or when we’re sure that Dr. Acker isn’t a worry anymore.”

Suddenly, I’m stabbed by a rush of want for his bite so intense that I’m right on the edge of begging.

And Calix is there, surging in me, smothering it, keeping the words from forming. He won’t let me beg for the bite.

Because we’re bonded, I know this isn’t out of jealousy or anything like that. No, he sensed withinmewhat I desired and he is acting out of service to me, protecting me frommyself.

In that moment, my love and gratefulness to Calix overflows, spilling out like gleaming bright golden liquid rushing out of a fountain. I gasp and sigh at the sensation of it.

I clutch Striker against me and he rocks into me, moving his knot against me, and that feels good, really good, and I whisper that I love him, Striker, but I send through the bond to Calix how much I love him, and he feels it.

Also, I feel him react to the idea I discussed with Striker, the poeticness of taking away Dr. Acker’s memories.

How did I communicate that to him? I didn’t mean to.

I’m not sure if I want my mates to know every little thought that flits across my brain. Some things I think aren’t for anyone else to hear. Some of my thoughts are just momentary worries. They don’t matter.

Calix is retreating from me, though, the sensation of him drifting out, leaving me here, with Striker, present. We are kissing again.

8

knight

ARROW WANTS TOfollow me, but I communicate with him through the bond not to. It’s weird, this kind of communication, because it’s not thoughts or words exactly. It’s just that I let him know that we don’t spook this guy and he gets that and changes his mind and decides to hang back.

Theodorus tucks his little wooden box full of chess pieces under his arm. The table out hereisa chess board, so he doesn’t need to bring a chess board. He wanders up the bank, away from the pond and I follow him.

I don’t look at Arrow as I go past him, but I can feel him.

I’ve never been in love before, so this feeling I have with him, it’s weird. I like it, but it’s weird. And I kind of don’t like the fact that I like it, if that makes any sense. It makes me feel a little bit out of my depth.

Theodorus walks between the trees and then onto a little worn footpath which winds between the shacks and trailers that are all set up haphazardly out here. Eventually, we come to a house that has a front porch with four mismatched rocking chairs sitting on it. The house has two stories and the siding was painted tan at one point, but it’s peeling, so I can see thatsomeone painted it mint green before that, because that color is beneath. The house also looks sort of lopsided, in a way I can’t quite explain, as if it’s just not quite sturdy.

But as we go in the front door, it feels sturdy. It feels like a well-built little house, which is more than I can quite say for all of the houses out here.

“Kyvie!” calls Theodorus as we step inside. “Kyvie, I want to show you something.”

Inside the house, we enter a small area with a staircase to the left and a doorway to the right. The doorway leads to a living room. There’s no one in there but I catch sight of a couch with a big shaggy dog lying on it. It lifts its face, curious.

Theodorus walks past the staircase and the dog comes out of the living room to nose its way out. It lets out a half-hearted scold of a bark at me. Who am I and what am I doing here?

“Shut it, Bowser,” says Theodorus.

Past the staircase, we emerge in a kitchen. A woman is sitting at the kitchen table while two men are standing at the sink. One’s washing dishes and the other is drying.

The woman smiles as we enter. “That was a quick chess game, Theo.”

“No chess this morning, Kyvie,” says Theodorus. He seizes me and shoves me forward. “Show her the teeth.”

The men at the sink have stopped what they’re doing to look at me.