Page 2 of Rook Takes Queen
“Exactly,” Roxy remarks and lifts her glass too. “I’ve come to believe that in life, when all looks lost, that’s the moment things change for the better.”
Voices rise at the table, in agreement. And just like that the room brightens again. Everyone lifts their cups, even the offspring.
I lift my own cup.
And then I hear a knock on the front door.
The whole table stills at once.
We do not get visitors. Ever. And the last time this family met something unexpected at a door in the dark, we buried our mother and father the next morning. Our compound sits at the edge of the jungle past the last of the employee housing, and the only beings who come down our road are family, and family does not knock.
I’m already standing.
My body is out of the chair before the second knock lands, because the perimeter is mine. I cover the watch, monitors the sensors and do the long, quiet walks of the fence line in the dark.
Chairs scrape behind me. But I’m faster than all of them and I want it that way, I want to be the first because what if on the other side of that door is trouble. The hall is dark on purpose; a lit hallway behind you when you open a door at night just makes you a target with a glow around your edges.
I open the door to the sound of the rainstorm that’s rushing across our corner of the planet this evening. The underlying scent, beyond the wind and rain, hits me before my eyes have finished adjusting to the dark. A breeze carries it again, right across my face. I’m startled, with no words to express what is happening to me. The scent rushes into my lungs and hits my heated veins. My personal crystal flares hot from within my pocket, a sudden burning point, the way it does down in the deep when it’s near a live seam in the caves, except there’s no seam here.
Nothing but her. The silent, bedraggled female who stands on the porch with a bag in her arms.
My body, which has been dormant my whole life, flares awake all at once. I have to put my claw flat against the doorframe because for one humiliating second I’m not certain my legs will hold.
So much for the sensible female from the database. The universe sent me this shadowy female instead.
Then my eyes adjust, and I see her clearly. I turn on the light. She lifts her chin and blinks up at me.
A human female I’ve never met before has arrived. She is small, delicate and soaked through, her clothes plastered to her. Dark red hair is stuck to her face in wet ropes. Freckles are scattered across her nose and cheeks. She’s shaking, hard, from the cold or from fear, I can’t tell yet, maybe both. She clutches the bag against her chest with both arms. Her blue eyes are huge and fixed on me. “Are you a Fever Brother? Is this the Fever Brothers compound?”
I instantly understand that I must protect this female. “Yes, I am a Fever Brother,” I confirm, “which means you’re safe now. You came to the right place.”
“Oh.” Her breath stutters.
Behind me I hear the heavy tread of my brothers filling the hall, the scrape and rustle of a whole family rising from a table.
She hears it too. Her eyes jump past me to the dark behind my shoulder and her whole body flinches. She takes a step backward.
I turn, blocking the sight and sound of my intimidating family so that the only thing she has to look at is me. My hands are open and my voice gentle. “That’s just my family. We were having dinner. They’re loud, yes, but they mean well. Come inside, out of the rain. You are safe here,” I repeat.
The footsteps behind me stop. Good. My brothers understand from my body language to keep their distance.
She gives a curt nod and steps forward, inside of our compound. I shut the door behind her, protecting her from the rain and the cold, and whatever else she is running from. Then I finally get a closer look at this female who arrived out of the rain and I’m stunned for a moment by her beauty. The full lips, the colorless, soft skin. She’s looking at me like I’m the only safe thing in the universe. And I know in that moment with total certainty that I would burn down the sky before I let anything touch her.
I guide her down the hallway, toward the dining room. “You are here to meet the Fever Brothers. You are in luck, we are all here right now and I am taking you to see them. Do not worry, I will remain right next to you.”
“Thank you,” she whispers.
The hallway empties and I take her to the dining room.
“Rook.” Chief’s deep voice questions. “Who is here?”
“She’s human,” I respond, giving this basic information before I even formally start introductions. They need time to process what just happened to me at the front door of our compound and how it will profoundly change my life, as well as theirs.
The room goes silent for a beat.
“And I’ve scented her,” I explain.
“Oh, hells,” Cannibal drops his fork and loudly remarks.
