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Surely he can handle a couple of alien squirrels.

* * *

“Lady Sinead,if I may make a suggestion?”

I lift my head from where I’d let it fall onto my folded arms on the desk. My meeting with a Kin elder this morning was a disaster. He wouldn’t budge, and I couldn’t afford to concede. It’s more embarrassing than I expected, having Jalus stand guard throughout the whole thing. Watching me fail.

Not quite able to meet his eyes, I mumble, “What?”

“Lady Crowe, the former governor, used to visit the Kin villages to hear our concerns.”

I lift an eyebrow. “You think that might soften them up?”

“It wouldn’t hurt,” Jalus says cautiously.

I check the time on my keycuff. It’s barely lunchtime, and the rest of today’s meetings threaten to be equally unproductive.

“Cecily, can you take care of my appointments for today?”

My secretary glances up from her notes. “Of course, my lady.”

Standing, I face Jalus with palms up. “You know your people best. Show me what to do.”

Jalus steps closer. “The quickest way to the village is by flight. I can carry you, but…is physical contact acceptable? Your secretary warned me that you prefer not to be touched.”

I flash an annoyed look at Cecily. She isn’t wrong; I often flinch at casual contact and have to steel myself before handshakes with strangers.

But Jalus seems to be an exception. Because when we climb the ladder to the very top of the forest canopy and he hoists me into his arms, my heart starts to race, my insides turning gooey with desire. A faint sweet scent worms its way past my mask’s filters, filling me with the sudden urge to rip my mask off and find out what his skin really smells like. I suppress a gasp when his lower hand settles on my waist. He’s surprisingly warm for such an ethereal figure. With his four arms embracing me, I feel safe.

“Sorry if I’m heavy,” I mutter. My cheeks burn.

“You’re perfect.” His voice rumbles through me, waking nerve endings in erogenous zones I didn’t know I had. Then his eyes flit away, and a violet flush creeps across his cheeks. “I mean, you’re not heavy. The foragers make me carry laden baskets all the time.”

His heart is thumping under my hand on his chest. I try to catch his eyes, but he’s resolutely focused on the horizon.

And then he extends his wings.

I can’t hide my exclamation of awe as they shade the twin suns from my view. Light filters through the thin, fluff-covered membranes, creating a stained-glass effect.

Jalus’s wings arestunning. Orange-red bleeds into violet-blue, natural stripes and swirls painting the colors into vivid shapes that make peacock feathers look drab.

“Hold on.” His whisper in my ear turns me to jelly.

Then the wind catches us, and we’re soaring.

The view from the starship couldn’t compare to this. The warm breeze against my face, the hissing, chirping song of millions of insects, and the up-close texture of the trees’ highest branches all combine to make it a stunning sensory experience.

But we’re not alone in the sky.

As the flying shape swoops closer, I recognize the hooked, batlike wingspan and narrow, toothy jaw of a swordbeak. My Eiris geography lesson highlighted swordbeaks as the insectoids’ main predator. I suck in a breath to scream, but Jalus already has his thorn weapons ready.

He waits until the swordbeak veers too close. Then, holding me secure against him with three of his arms, he executes a stomach-dropping loop and rakes the sharp weapon down the swordbeak’s wing membrane. The creature shrieks and drops out of the sky.

My knuckles are white, fisted in his brown uniform. My breath fogs against my breather mask in little pants, my heart hammering so hard it feels like I might pass out.

The man’s gotmoves. Blazingly sexy ones.

He angles his wings against the wind to slow us down, and faintly I hear his voice in my ear telling me to brace for landing. I squeeze my eyes shut as the canopy rushes up to meet us.