Page 7

I stiffened.

There goes your chance at getting in the first word.

Even her voice was different in person. As rich and warm as the rest of her. My tail went tight on its hook.

“Greetings, Tasha,” I said quickly. Recovering, I believed, somewhat admirably after the onslaught of her face and hair and body and voice.

But that recovery was quickly stymied when she raised her right hand in the air between us, aiming it at me like a stunner.

And I didn’t have a blasted clue what she meant to do with it.

I stared at it.

It was a very nice hand. Small, of course, in the way all human bits were small. Soft-skinned, like her face and throat. Slender little fingers with flimsy, bluntly-cut claws.

“Welcome, Tasha,” I said. “Welcome to you and your… hand.”

Tasha’s brows rose. Her eyes narrowed.

She did not smile.

Clearly, she did not appreciate my warm welcome to this world. I would have to find other ways to please her well enough so that she decided to continue running the bride program here.

“You’re meant to shake it, Warden,” Cherry said quietly from behind me. “Didn’t you read the book she wrote?”

“Clearly not,” Tasha said, an edge of ice working its way into her previously rich, warm voice. Cherry stepped around me and clasped Tasha’s hand in her own while I felt my forehead crease at the fact that she was not in fact shaking Tasha’s hand at all, merely bandying it up and down.

“Forgive me. I do not have a hard copy of the document.”

“But you have a digital copy, do you not?” Tasha countered instantly. “I sent you the digital copy so that you could in turn share it with Oaken’s device.”

Blast. She remembered that.

And now she thought I was even more of a liar than before.

She’d been here less than a human minute and I’d already managed to muck things up more than I would have thought possible.

“Of course,” I admitted. “I do have the digital copy. But a warden’s time is so rarely his own. I spend most of my days keeping track of this lot who-”

“So these men need keeping track of?” Her voice was the cold slice of a knife, her eyes, with their dark centres, almost painfully piercing. Those eyes went to Silar, then slid dangerously back to me.

“No,” I said quickly. I could not have her thinking my men were not only murderers, but incompetent goons at that. Even if they sometimes were. “I… I support the men here. Make sure that everything runs smoothly.”

“Hmm.”

My translator had no help to give where the huffy sound Tasha made was concerned. I could only surmise it was a sort of closed-mouth sigh, the result of a deep, incredulous dissatisfaction.

The idea of not satisfying the curvy, clever human before me left me feeling very…

Out of sorts, as Cherry had said.

It was a better phrase than I had at first given it credit for.

This would not do. I had to get this conversation back into territory I was familiar with. Territory where I was in charge and not helplessly floundering under the stare of a pair of pretty, judgmental human eyes with their probing, circular centres and those odd fringes of little golden hairs.

I thrust my hand out towards her.

I’d watched Cherry complete the human greeting. Blast if I couldn’t do it, too.