word. While the rest of them watched her for every reaction. “I have met few who do not react in fear instinctively to the presence of a hunter. Powerful, Warrior, or normal Earther, doesn’t matter. The instinctual reaction to my kind is fear. Reaction to that fear vary, but it is always present. A small female? Surrounded by an entire phoenix elite, along with General smoke and the most powerful man in the known galaxy? You should be huddled into a little weeping ball annoying the shit out of us.”
Her body’s automatic response to the fear that slammed through her at his words was to calmly suppress the emotion. In this instance, it did her no favors, but it was ingrained in her to do it, and even if she could change that at this point it would only make her look more suspicious.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” she said truthfully. And went on without the filter she really needed to form, and fast, over her need to challenge those that tried to intimidate her. “Maybe you aren’t as scary as you think you are.”
She cleared her throat and went on quickly before any of the big scary men surrounding her decided to take umbrage at her tone and disprove that statement. “My father was a hunter. I suppose my reaction to other hunters was influenced by my early years with him. I learned young that fear is not my friend. He taught me many things before he was gone. I have no doubt the way I move has something to do with that training as well.”
“And where is your father now?” The General asked, every eye on her. Even the ones who had been looking away before watched her now.
“I have no idea,” she said again truthfully. “He left as soon as I was able to take care of myself,” then she added more truth so they would not get any strange ideas. “And it became clear I was not going to follow in his footsteps in power.” More truth, even if it was misleading.
“That does explain much about your situation,” Mal Ryn said as if he was applauding her cleverness. Though those cold eyes continued to drill into her as if he were unconvinced. “But that still leave the question of how a woman who looks like you is not only unmarried, but untouched at your age.”
Serenity sucked in a breath of shock at that. “How could you possibly know…?” She couldn’t finish because he stepped closer, into her space, close enough that the heat of his power that touched every inch of her, ramped up so that it was almost a pleasure pain and had her catching her breath for another reason.
“That you are sweetly untouched? That if I lay hands on you right now that I will be the first to have touched your so soft skin?” Mal Ryn smiled again, and his words might have been construed as seductive, or romantic if she was not looking into those cold eyes. From as close as he was it was even more obvious he felt absolutely nothing. “I can read it on you as clear as these hunters can probably smell it.”
He was playing with her; she knew it and still her breath caught. She had to take a moment to steady herself and calm her reactions. Fear she had no problem dealing with, but this man was pushing other buttons, on purpose she knew. Trying for a reaction that he could use against her.
She would not give him one, so she left her hand captured in his, and calmly answered his question instead. “My father scared off men when I was young and foolish enough to want a man of my own, and by the time they started showing interest despite who my father was I had lost what little I had.”
He studied her in the silence as she felt other eyes on her, other minds working over all that they had heard and balancing it against what they saw in her. She let them until she finally pulled her hand from the warm one holding it captive and raised her chin. She had no doubt from the gleam in his eyes that he had allowed her to withdraw it.
“So what now?” she asked quietly. “You have heard my truths; I am neither a rebel sympathizer nor an enemy of the Order. I have answered all your questions and been in the presence