Page 78 of Minding the Minotaur

“Time you pulled yourself together,” he snaps, then starts clearing up the mess I’ve left around the sofa. That’s ripe, coming from him. There’s always a pile of shit on his desk, boards and wires and switches, mixed in with paperwork from his sheriff duties. He truly is one of the messiest guys I know.

“Unless you’ve got news about Samantha, you can fuck off,” I growl.

“Mr. Congeniality again today, I see,” Otis growls back.

“Fuck—offffffff.”

Otis crumples the wrappers in his big hand. “You’re not on house arrest anymore. You should go outside, get some air.”

“What for?”

“For all the gods’ sakes,” Otis sighs heavily. “This pining needs to stop, Arlo.”

“When I know she’s alive.”

“The last word from Jax was that she is.”

“And you trust that ferret human?”

“Yes, I do. He got her into hospital.” He stands with his hands on his hips, surveying me, but not unkindly. “If you went to work, maybe you’d feel better.”

“I’m done with that.”

“Not yet you’re not. You need to keep going to the clinic, Arlo. “

“Are you implying that would be for my own good? Because I literally don’t give a flying fuck. Or is there some other reason?”

Otis pauses, long enough for me to smell a rat. “What’s it to you whether I shoot my cum into a glass bottle,” I challenge.

He doesn’t answer. I scowl at him. “There’s something else, something you’re not telling me.”

Otis sits down in the chair opposite me, takes off his sheriff’s hat and smooths down his spiky green hair.

“Arlo, the humans are up to more than just increasing their fertility.”

“Like what?”

Otis huffs out a heavy sigh. “We’ve been monitoring some worrying activity, particularly in manufacturing on level seven.”

A sliver of unease slides down my spine. I remember Clarisse’s words to me the day she told me she was pregnant, about the increased munitions production. In my despair over Sammy, I’d clean forgotten about that.

“What kind of manufacturing?” I ask.

“Ammunition. And gas masks. And on level eight, vehicles—and we’re not talking Sparkle cars, we’re talking tanks, armored cars. With that and the fertility program… We’re starting to pull the threads together into a bigger picture.”

Otis hunkers down, elbows on knees. “If you stop producing now, it will look suspicious. And then with a human female turning up unconscious in their hospital—well, a few tests could prove certain mating practices took place.”

I blush right up to the tips of my horns. “Nothing happened between us,” I lie.

Otis’s mouth twists. “Yeah, right. I wasn’t fucking born yesterday.”

“It was only the once,” I mumble, blushing madly beneath my scruff.

That was kind of true. Okay, not really.

“Whatever.” Arlo passes off the most important event of my life with a cursory wave of the hand. “While she was unconscious, they probably ran a battery of tests. You going missing in action from their program at exactly the same time is not a good look. We need to maintain the status quo while we work out their game.”

“Fuck the status quo. Sammy’s life is on the line here.”