Page 92 of Beautiful Prey

I should feel relieved, but I don’t.

He drives me down out of the towers and into the dust, pulling up at the mine gate as the shift horn sounds.

I reach for the door, but his hand closes around my wrist. “Jade.”

“What?”

He looks at me for a moment, then releases me. “Nothing. Try not to die under a rock before dinner. I’d take it personally.”

“Asshole.” I climb out and watch the car melt back into the light. Then it hits me.

I never agreed to dinner. Again.

16

ASH

He’s a stubborn fool, so determined to keep his pride that he doesn’t even realize I’m watching him.

All the fucking time.

Every camera in that mine came with the company, and I’ve pulled up his crew’s section more times this week than I care to admit.

The storm sent everyone running for shelter, but Jade stopped for me. If he hadn’t dragged me into that cave, I would have died out there, killed by a storm my own dad signed off on. Fucking poetic.

Dad’s been messaging me ever since I left Tempest. His little spies are probably reporting every move I make by now.

Let them.

Right now, I’m watching my prey walk into the mine on the security feed. He crosses the yard with his shoulders squared, back in his work uniform because even I’m not enough of an asshole to send him underground in clothes that cost more than his monthly wage. The man at the gate claps him on the arm. Jade says something I can’t hear, and the man laughs. The two of them go through the checkpoint together.

Jade never looks at the office’s glass, probably because he knows I own the cameras.

On Tempest, I watched him through the cameras because it was my job. Now I’m doing it because I can’t seem to fucking stop.

“—so nobody’s ever asked us about bringing the land back, Mr. Clement,” the curator from the historical museum says in my other ear. “Only ever about digging more out of it. If you’re serious about restoring even one of the old green corridors, there’s decades of survey work in our archive that no one ever funded⁠—”

“Send me all of it.” I watch Jade disappear down the first ladder into the shaft. “What it would cost to bring one corridor back to green. Keep my name out of it.”

“Of course. May I ask what prompted the interest?”

“No.” I end the call.

By the window, Ryven sprawls in a chair with his slate, one leg hooked over the armrest.

“You’re funding a garden on a mining planet right before your wedding.” He finally looks up, grinning. “Oh, fuck. You’re not leaving, are you?”

“I’m reviewing options.”

“You’re reviewing options.” He snorts. “Uh-oh. You’ve got that look. The one that ends with someone signing something they didn’t want to sign.” He tips his slate toward me. “Whatever you’re planning, maybe we do it back on Tempest. Seren counted five of Vasco’s men outside the hotel yesterday.”

“And?”

“A man who lost an entire company at your table doesn’t post guards to watch you leave.” His grin fades. “He posts them to watch for his chance.”

I thumb the feed shut. “Where’s Seren, anyway? I’ve barely seen him since we landed.”

Ryven laughs. “In bed with his toy.” He unfolds from the chair and stretches. “Anyway, I’m checking Onyx’s oxygen before his afternoon dose. Seren wrote the schedule on the wall like it’s scripture. I’d rather not be the one to screw it up.”