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“What do you mean?” he asked, a huge divot forming between his brows, his angry face an absurdly hilarious contrast to his ears. “You thought I did not have them?”

“No, it’s just that I’ve never seen a Zabrian’s ears before. You guys have had your hats on this whole time. And unlike your men here, we didn’t get any anatomy references to prepare us for what you looked like.”

Speaking of which…

I slipped my comms tablet out of my pocket, held it up, and took a picture. He reared back, then scowled, when the light flashed.

“What did you just do?”

“I took a photo. For my new book.”

“Yourwhat?” There was a hint of gravelly warning in his voice. A warning that I chose to ignore.

“My new book,” I informed him, putting my tablet back into my pocket. “If the marriage program is to continue here – and that’s a big if, Warden – I want the future brides to have all the information necessary to make their decisions. So I’m writing a book on Zabrian males, similar to the one I wrote on human females.”

He looked like he wanted to argue, but I’d spooked him with my ominousif the bridal program is to continuething.

He wanted brides for his men. Which meant he couldn’t complain.

“And you need a picture of my ears for this?” he grudgingly asked after a taut silence.

“Oh, I’ll need more than that,” I replied with feigned cheeriness. “For the next thirty days, you get to be my own personal Zabrian-human liaison!”

The warden looked like he’d rather shit in his own hat.

Finally, he sighed and rubbed at his jaw.

“What does it mean?” he asked, suddenly softer now, his voice like a whisp of smoke against my skin. “What does it mean when a human’s stomach growls?”

My spine wanted to melt. I gritted my teeth and steeled it.

“If you had read the book I wrote,” I told him tartly before pivoting and heading for the kitchen, “then you would know.”

7

TENN

Though it looked and smelled more than palatable, I ate little of the food Fallon and Darcy had prepared. Part of that was because it felt rather ridiculous to consume food that had been arranged in the shape of a smiley face on my plate, something Fallon had very proudly claimed credit for.

But the larger, more nagging part was that I could not stop staring at Tasha.

She was seated between Darcy and Cherry, the three human females on one side of the table facing me. Silar and Fallon were stationed at the ends of the table, each one brushing elbows with his wife.

I was the only one seated on this side of the table.

And for the first time in a very long time, I felt a subtle, sudden creep of loneliness, like an intruder stealing through me in the dark, hoping to cause some secret pain before I noticed and beat it back down.

I liked my men. I spent a good deal of time with them.

But I was not entirely among them. When it came down to it, they were the convicts, and I was the warden responsible for them.

And here, now…

They were parts of couples, each of them with a wife at their side.

I had no one at my side. All I had was a face made of meat and cheese smiling lopsidedly up at me from my plate. That, and a pretty human woman across the table who steadfastly pretended that I did not exist while she ate.

As I was clearly not capable of ignoring her the way that she ignored me, I watched her. Watched the way her delicate jaw worked as she chewed her food. Watched the way the candlelight of Fallon’s kitchen turned her eyes to dark and dreaming pools. Watched the way the frosty distance she held me at vanished when she smiled so sweetly and so sincerely at either Darcy or Cherry.