Fathom (Mermaids of Montana #3) - Elsa Jade Page 0,54
When Sting continued to stare at him, Evens shrugged again. “And also, nothing for you, if you would like to be my first beta tester.”
Sting opened his mouth to vent his fury upon the hapless male, only to shock himself by saying, “Yes.”
Evens looked equally surprised. “Really?” He recovered more quickly than Sting. “Wonderful., I’ll have to pull everything together right away—”
“And the test shall be this,” Sting told him. “I will match with Lana.”
Evens’ eyebrows lifted so high that his cheeks went up too, half closing his eyes from below. “Well, the compatibility quizzes won’t be quite that specific. It’ll be more of a range—”
“Yes. A range of one. Lana is that one.” He marched toward the front door.
“That’s not exactly how these tests work.” The shopkeeper trailed behind him, still babbling like fast water over loose stones although Sting was no longer listening.
At the portal, he paused and wheeled around. The trench coat flared open around him in a way that must’ve dramatically revealed how unquestionably right and fitting he was as Lana’s to-be mate, judging from the way that Evens’ mouth fell farther open yet no more words emerged. “I must warn you,” he started.
“Oh yes, please,” Evens muttered. “I need another one of those.”
“I have been tested many times, and the results have been blood and death and destruction.” When Evens blanched, Sting widened his stance so there was no place for the hapless Earther to retreat. “But I will undergo one more test. For Lana. Lana is the one,” he repeated. “That will be your finding. Otherwise I will know your tests are tricks, meant to cheat and lie, that your attempt to reopen the Big Sky Intergalactic Dating Agency is destined to be a failure, and the outpost—and you—must be bombed out of existence from orbit.”
Evens flinched. “Wait. I don’t think—”
“That should not be a problem,” Sting informed him. “The mating instinct is not about thinking. It’s about hunting and claiming. I await your first test that shows Lana is my mate.”
He stalked out the door and stuffed himself into the waiting vehicle. Across the concrete pathway, a couple Earther females paused to look at him, so he quickly tucked his bare webbed feet into the car.
Perhaps if he were willing to abide by the results of the test Evens suggested, he might learn that others would be compatible, maybe even those females right there. But he’d been engineered and bred and trained and drilled and experienced in choosing his target, never faltering. He never faltered once he had his aim, and he never failed.
Always before the price of such failure had been death. This time was no different, though the target was so much smaller and more delicate. And had to be sacrificed willingly.
Lana’s heart.
He stopped by the lake afterward and took some of the parts he’d scavenged from Evens’ shop out to the Diatom. The revitalized gel was reproducing well. There’d be enough synaptic connection to sync the systems Lana had zapped when she crashed. One more day, perhaps.
For all the impassive stillness he’d learned—sometimes at the sharp end of a Tritonesse whip—the sense of time running out made his nerves twitch, as if even from a distance Lana was sending tiny jolts through him. Through the gathering shadows, he hastened back to the Wavercrest abode. He needed to see her again.
But at the door, Thomas informed him that Lana and her mother were still sequestered, as they had been all day. The guardsman’s gaze was steady. “Can I get you something to eat while you wait?”
Sting shook his head. “I do not require daily feeding.”
Thomas’s lips twitched. “Maybe not require, sir. But perhaps it’s better not to wander a closed world feeling even slightly hungry? I could at least prepare a snack.”
After a moment, Sting gave a reluctant nod. “I would not want to eat something inappropriate,” he conceded. “Thank you for the reminder. And for food.”
Thomas inclined his head. “Come with me to the kitchen. Miss Lana tells me you might be interested in a baking lesson.”
Sting straightened. “She spoke to you about me?” He tagged close behind the other male toward the inner room of the abode.
The guardsman glanced back at him, one eyebrow slightly arched. “Miss Lana has said…many things about you.”
Something fragile and bright and unguarded flashed in Sting like the fluorescent fins of Lana’s seahorses. Maybe he was hungrier than he’d thought.
Thomas began assembling so many items, some from a cabinet full of cold air, others