Page 11 of Kiss of Fury

“Gud murrring,” Bob said.

“One student is out due to molting season, so this is everybody.”

“I won’t hold up class, then.” Her heart squeezed at her son’s forlorn expression. “You’ll do great!” She ached to hug and kiss him goodbye, but the only thing that would make this moment worse for him would be to embarrass him in front of a roomful of kids. She’d been scolded for PDAs before.

“Of course, he will!” Ms. Jularee said. “Why don’t you sit next to Firbol?” She gestured to a vacant desk next to the furry kid they’d seen at dinner the previous night.

Brody shuffled to the desk like a condemned man going to meet his fate.

I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m so sorry.Mother-guilt kicked in. She felt nervous about starting her new job, and she was an adult. Brody was a little boy. He had loved his old school and had adored his teacher. He had a good group of friends. Overnight, his young life had changed. She’d tried to make the relocation sound like a grand adventure, but he’d still lost all the things that mattered to him.

But if not for Cosmic Mates, she could have losthim. She’d shielded him from the legal battle with the Dorns. She couldn’t tell her son the grandparents he’d never met, who’d previously disowned him, now attempted to steal him. Each time she’d escorted him into school and left, she lived with the fear he wouldn’t be there when she returned.

If he was less than excited about attending a new school full of aliens, her relief that he would be safe was immense.

She’d almost burst into tears when Fury said she could stay. For the first time in a year, she’d slept through the night. Clearly, he wasn’t a kid person, but he’d been more than fair. If he never warmed up to Brody, that wouldn’t necessarily be bad. She’d hate for her son to get attached to him when they would go their separate ways soon.

And while they wouldn’t find romance, maybe they could become friends.

She left the classroom with a lightened step. A new planet, school, job, and marriage of convenience seemed like a lot, but compared to what could have happened, she could handle it. Piece of cake.

It’s so nice to have ordinary stresses again.She entered the infirmary.

* * * *

“You look like the cheese fell offyercracker.” Dusty pushed the brim of his ten-gallon hat back with a red pincher. In love with the American West of yore, the lead ranch hand did his best to imitate a cowboy—as depicted in the old spaghetti Westerns he binge-watched. An alien who’d never set claw on Earth, he resembled a lobster in chaps and spurs.

“What happened? Was there another delay in her arrival?” Jason Steel eyed him sympathetically. Bothon the run from Solutions, they had arrived at Refuge together, Fury assisting the other cyborg with getting a wife through Cosmic Mates. Steel’s bride had arrived three weeks ago.

Fury sank onto a bale of dried grass and rested his arms on his knees. “No, she got here all right,” he said glumly.

“She’s not what you expected?” Steel guessed.

“She brought a kid with her.”

“Why in tarnation did she bring a baby goat?” Dusty asked.

“He means a child,” Steel explained.

“A son.”

“Well, shoot. Whadda ya upset for? That’s a two-fer. You gotyerselfa wife and a family.”

“I didn’t want a family; I only wanted the wife.”

“Don’t you be lookin’ a gift horniger in the mouth. There’s plenty of men who’d be glad to walk in yer boots.”

“What do we have going today?” He changed the subject to avoid any more cowboy homilies.

“There’s a strip of fencin’ out yonder that needs repairin’. Hornigers plum busted through it. Round up them varmints and then fix the fence.”

Steel wiped a hand across his mouth to hide his grin, and, despite his misery, Fury’s lips twitched. Sometimes Dusty was a bit too much. “Fine. Are we taking one of the conveyances?”

“Unless you and Jason got Demon broke yet.” Dusty glanced at the shaggy, six-legged animal munching grass in the stall. An adolescent, it already stood fifteen hands high from hoof to withers. When full grown, Demon would be huge.

Hornigers resembled a cross between a horse and a cow, except they had a rhinoceros horn at the end of their long noses and a full rack of antlers atop their heads. Nor did they have the sanguine equine/bovine personality. They were aggressive and dangerous. However, Haven Ranch had a pilot program to try to domesticate them so they could be used for work and transportation. But they had to start with young animals, the younger the better.

“Conveyance it is,” Fury said. They had achieved some progress with the beast. Demon now allowed people to approach and touch him—but he became a different animal if they attempted to mount him. “Steel and I will head out…in a spell.”

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