Page 94 of Fought and Found

Xor’s jaw works. The fangs pressing. Not the claiming ache — the grinding frustration of a male who is correct and does not want to be correct and knows his mate is also correct and the double correctness is intolerable.

“Fine. Contact him. But I am conducting the intake interview.”

“We’re conducting it together. This is a partnership.”

Tael Vosk walks into SNAG Recovery Services at 1430 and the temperature in the room changes.

Not drops. Changes. The way the air changes when a second predator enters a space that already contains one. I feel Xor’s heartbeat spike in my sternum before I see the male in the doorway, and the spike is not fear. It is recognition. The biological acknowledgment of a rival.

Vosk is —

Tall. Not Xor-tall — six-five, lean, the build of something that chases rather than crushes. Dark charcoal gray skin with black rosette markings across his shoulders and arms that catch the fairy light like tattoos designed by a panther. Silver eyes — no visible iris, the entire eye a liquid mercury disc with a vertical slit pupil that adjusts to thelight with predatory precision. Sharp angular face, high cheekbones, the kind of jaw that looks severe until it smirks, and it is smirking now.

He has a tail.

Dark gray, ridged underside, perhaps three and a half feet of prehensile muscle that is currently curled behind him in a loose, lazy spiral that communicates complete confidence in hostile territory. His claws are retracted. His posture says he could extend them before either of us blinked.

“Xax.” The smirk widens. Voice like gravel and smoke, a purring bass that vibrates at a different frequency from Xor’s but hits the same register. “I heard you committed treason for a courier. I had to see for myself.”

“Vosk.” Xor is standing behind my chair, tail around my waist, seven feet of crimson Xarthian bristling at six-five of charcoal Draelith. The fairy lights blink between them like a cheerful audience. “You were terminated from SRS.”

“I was. Funny story. Involves principles. You’d know about those now, apparently.” The silver eyes move from Xor to me. He takes in the claiming mark at my throat, the notebook on my desk, the fairy lights, the tea station, Gerald the ceramic figurine — commuting from the Petal’s throttle for office-warming — perched on my monitor. “And this is the courier who dismantled a Tier 1 operative’s entire belief system in under a week.”

“It didn’t take a week,” I say. “I’m efficient.”

The smirk becomes a grin. Sharp canines visible. “I can see why he committed treason.”

“Sit down, Vosk.” I gesture to the client chair. The reinforced one. “We have a case. Xarthian male, bonded, vanished without trace. Bond going silent. Wife dying. Nobody’s looking.”

Vosk sits. The smirk fades. The silver eyes sharpen — the tracker engaging, the professional underneath the performance, the male who destroyed his career to protect a child and has been pretending he doesn’t have principles ever since.

“Bonded males don’t vanish,” he says. Quiet. The gravel-smoke voice stripped of its charm. “Not Xarthian. Not Draelith. Not any pair-bonding species. The biology fights it. If he’s gone, someone took him. And if someone is taking bonded males —“ He looks at Xor. The rivalry suspended. One predator acknowledging another’s kill zone. “That’s not random. That’s —“

“Procurement,” Xor says. “Yes.”

“My recovery rate is ninety-four percent,” Tael says.

“I know,” Xor says. “I am interested in the other six.”

The grin returns. Slower this time. Less performance, more teeth. “When do I start?”

“Now. You’re hired. Welcome to SNAG.” I open my notebook. Write his name. Tael Vosk. Draelith. Tracker. The first name under Xor’s and mine. The crew is growing. “We’ll sort out pay, accommodations, and operational parameters after —“

I’m about to lay out the case details — the notebook, the timeline, the gap nobody’s been tracking — when the door opens and Morrison walks in.

Not through the door. Morrison arrives — the way a weather system arrives, the way gravity establishes itself in a room and rearranges everything around it. Steel-gray hair. Practical bun. Blue eyes already cataloguing every person and surface. The chipped WORLD’S OKAYEST DISPATCHER mug is not in her hand, which means she’s off-duty, which means she came here on purpose, which means something is about to happen that she has planned and I have not.

She is not alone.

Behind Morrison — actually behind, as in using Morrison as a physical shield — is a woman. Human. Mid-twenties. Dark eyes, sharp grin that she’s trying to suppress and failing. Hair pulled back in a knot that’s already coming loose. She’s wearing an OOPS courier jacket with the patches still warm and carrying a box of personal belongings. The box contains three data pads, a collection of lock-picking tools in a leather roll, a half-eaten protein bar, and a small stuffed animal of indeterminate species.

“Morrison.” I stand. My exasperation is immediate and genuine. “We are in the middle of a hire interview. This is my first hire interview. I am attempting to conduct this professionally.”

“I can see that.” Morrison’s gaze takes in the two alien males, the fairy lights, the testosterone currently fogging the air quality. “Very professional.”

“What do you need?”

“I need to deliver something. Someone.” Morrison steps aside. The woman behind her steps forward — reluctantly, the grin wavering between confidence and something more fragile. Morrison’s hand lands on her shoulder. Brief. Firm. The Morrison equivalent of a shove and a hug simultaneously. “Florence, this is Petra Phan. She was a courier.”