Page 34 of Rook Takes Queen
I understand why, he’s enormous even by Margol standards, he barely speaks, and that scar takes up half his face like something out of a nightmare. New hires at the mine go quiet when he walks past. But I’ve sat across a tablet from him, patiently going over financials and what I’ve learned is that the scariest-looking male on Timbur is also the gentlest, somewhere down under all that ruin, and almost nobody gets to see it.
He’s my favorite. After Maxon, obviously. I’d never tell either of them.
“Oh, before I forget.”Leah drops into the chair beside Scar’s. “We’ve got two new humans starting at the mine next cycle. A man and a woman. Saxon says they came in on the same transport, so we should make them feel welcome—you know how it is, being the new human in a Xylan town.”
“Oh, we should have them to dinner,” I say, because I remember exactly how it is, being new to the planet.
Maxon nods, already moving a piece. Scar grunts from his chair, eyes never leaving his tablet, and says nothing at all, because two strangers’ names on a hire sheet are nothing to him, just colony business, just two more humans in a town full of them.
It’s funny, the thought that drifts through me while I watch him not react—because I’ve been thinking lately that I wish Scar would find what I found. He pretends he doesn’t want it, the lone unmated brother, perfectly content with his tablet and his quiet. But I’ve seen the way he watches the rest of us, the babies, the noise, the messy crowded warmth of this house. And I think he’dbe the kind of mate who’d walk into fire without breaking stride—that he’d give his life for his bride without a second’s pause, the way he’d give it for any one of us.
I hope he finds her. Whoever she is.
