Page 51 of Fathom

I stared out at the cultivated grounds, at the sheer wealth that the landscape exuded, and knew that it bothered me because I thought Eun was more like me. He was an alien. There were so many things that were different between us, but the thing that seemed the same was the fact that he was on the same economic level as me. I knew that other women dreamed of marrying a billionaire, but I'd seen the reality of that too many times.

I had been around enough men who had the money. The kind of men who wanted custom-fitted suits and could afford to pay for them. They were the kind of people who couldn't even see me, like I was an object in the room rather than a person.

They seemed more alien to me than anyone.

The hyena with the scar on his face stepped out of the driver's side and hurried around to open the door.

"Yes," Eun said quietly, almost reluctantly, as he exhaled. "This is where I grew up."

I turned toward him, brows drawing together. "I don’t understand."

Because I didn’t. When I first met him, he was sleeping on a thin mattress in a one-room apartment above a noodle shop, working as a delivery boy.

And this place... this was royalty.

This place spoke of the kind of money you got by taking it away from the masses.

"My family..." Eun dragged a hand through his hair, the motion tense, agitated as the strands twitched around like they were searching for something to hold on to. “They are important.”

I didn’t fully understand what was going on, but it was obvious now that Eun was estranged from his family, or at the very least, distant in a way that didn’t match the cultural norms I’d started to pick up. From what I’d seen in the media and in observations, families here were deeply involved in their offspring's success. It was startling to realize that Eun came fromthis,this opulence, this world of sculpted stone and uniforms, and yet had been living paycheck to paycheck in a studio that barely fit a mattress. Or so I’d thought.

But now I wasn’t sure.

He’d gotten us a new apartment almost overnight. He bought me things without hesitation. He never once showed concern about money. Maybe he’d never been struggling at all.

But why was he working in the restaurant?

Eun stepped out of the car first, then turned and extended his hand toward me.

I slid mine into his. The moment our skin met, a jolt of awareness danced across my nerve endings, fire and shiver all at once. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be back in our apartment, tangled up with him. The moments we had shared, skin to skin, heat to heat, had only stoked the fire inside me. I craved more of him. I was painfully aware of how close he was.

As we ascended the wide stone steps toward the entrance, several figures bowed low on either side. Their uniforms were tailored in muted greys and white that matched Eun's skin color exactly, almost as if his skin was chosen to reflect house colors. None of them looked predatory. Different species, yes, but all with rounded features, dull teeth, and blunt fingers. Those were all markers of the prey species on the planet.

The massive doors opened into a vast atrium of cool, polished grey marble. A staircase curved upward and split in two at a landing lined with art and soft golden lighting. I barely had time to process the sheer scale of the place before a woman stepped through a side corridor with the kind of grace that made the air go still.

She was lupine with four arms, taller than me, and looked vivid and gorgeous with thick silver fur that fluffed out from her body like she'd just brushed it. She wore a deep red dress, the color of fresh blood, and her claws were painted to match. Her eyes caught mine, and for a moment her ears flicked back, a subtle movement, but the skin around her nose wrinkled.

Eun tensed, his fingers tightening around mine, and my heart skipped a beat at the pressure.

"Welcome," the woman said, her voice warm, but her smile was all sharp teeth.

Eun stepped forward slightly, angling his body so that hewas partially between us, a quiet, instinctual shield. “Mother, this is my wife, Leija,” he said, lifting our joined hands to display the rings.

Wife.

The word sent waves of warmth through my heart even as, for a moment, I wished I had my workbooks to hide behind. I wished I’d brought one with me now, something to anchor myself with like a liferaft, but they were all in the car, forgotten in my haze of nerves and awe.

“Leija, this is my mother, Eunadice.”

Eunadice.She’d named him after herself? That thought fluttered through my mind like a bird that had flown into a cage and didn't understand yet that it couldn't get out. She named him after herself, and yet she appeared to be a completely different species. They looked nothing alike. Was he adopted? Or did the species on this planet give birth to greater variety, with children being far different than their parents?

I had no way of figuring it out right away, and I wasn't about to ask.

“Nice to meet you,” I said carefully.

I’d watched enough shows by now to know that meeting the parents was often a high-stakes moment. There were several standard greetings between new mates and parents, depending on tone, family role, and species. I went with the greeting gesture that appeared most frequently in happy endings: the open-armed embrace. A gesture of warmth, of trust, of optimism.

I let go of Eun’s hand, stepped forward before I lost my nerve, and opened my arms to offer a hug.