Chapter 6: Inspection

Perrin got out of the truck in a white dust coat over his gray suit.

Two collars climbed down after him, a man and a woman with Registry collars glowing at their throats.

"Ember." He looked at my wet, greasy sleeves. "You look like a pump."

"I fixed one. It's a whole new skill."

"Inspection," he said. "Household first. Then I'll see the rest of the kennel."

Perrin walked to our shack like he knew the way, stepping around the puddles.

He looked at the one stove, the one chair, the books.

Then at the cot.

"Cozy," he said. "Where does it sleep?"

"He," I said. "Here."

"On the floor?"

"With me."

Perrin lifted the blanket with two fingers and let it drop.

"A Registry pairing is a Hawthorne Tower suite, Ember. Silk sheets. A tuning lab with your name on the door."

"And champagne for luck," I said.

He turned to Brand. "Which side does she sleep on?"

"Mine," Brand said.

Perrin smiled thinly and turned back to me.

"Paper bonds always fail the same question. What's under his shirt, Mrs. Tarrant? Exactly."

Brand went still beside me.

In this life I'd seen him with his shirt off once, across a workshop, for barely a moment.

In the other life I'd traced every scale with my fingers in the dark.

"Black scales from his left shoulder, down the ribs, down the arm to the wrist," I said.

"They get smaller at the bottom and stop in a point, two fingers above his hip."

"On the right side of his back there's a white scar shaped like a hook. A fence wire, when he was a boy."

"He hates it when I touch it, because it tickles."

Brand was staring at me.

Perrin's eyes went to him. "Well?"

Brand pulled his shirt over his head.

The scales, the point above his hip. He turned. The hook scar.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.