Page 5 of Kiss of Fury

“The infirmary opens at zero nine hundred, so then I suppose. You can work it out with Dr. Twygg. The school opens at zero eight thirty. Which reminds me, I’ll find out when Juju is arriving to perform the ceremony, and I’ll send word. It will probably be in the late afternoon. “Sound good?” Phibious asked.

She nodded.

Fury shrugged.

She bit her lip. “What, um, would happen if the marriage didn’t occur?”

“Since your pending marriage factored into your asylum, your sanctuary would be revoked. For both of you.”

Anger sparked in Fury’s eyes before he blanked it out.

That got a reaction.Her lies could jeopardize them both.

“If there are no other questions, I’ll let you get on with your lives,” the foreman said and left.

“Moooom, I’m hungreee.”

Chapter Three

Already the kid had become an irritating intrusion. Fuming, Fury stomped beside the woman and the boy as they headed to the mess hall. He had requested a wife, not a child! His whole life, he’d longed for a woman to love, someone who would love him. A kid did not factor into the picture. He had no wish to play second fiddle to a snot-nosed pint-sized human. The kid hadn’t produced any nasal mucus yet, but he had vomited all over himself.

Worse, the situation trapped him between a rock and a hard place. While her dishonesty gave him cause to break their Cosmic Mates contract, doing so could jeopardize his sanctuary.

He’d intended to have it out with her as soon as Phibious left, but her son whined about being hungry, and she insisted on feeding him. “We can talk after my son goes to bed,” she’d said.

“Is he going in the next ten minutes?” he’d snapped.

“Let’s get you another coat,” she’d said to the kid, and, ignoring Fury, had rooted around inside her trunk.

The two of them left the cabin, and he reluctantly accompanied them. Night was falling fast, and they wouldn’t find their way back to the cabin in the dark.

Inside the mess, he shouldered ahead to the cashiering line.

“Hey, handsome! The usual?” asked Kuadra, the quadrubrachian cashier.

“Two meals.” He nodded. His metabolism burned a lot of calories. His friend Steel used to order triple meals. No one knew they were cyborgs; everyone assumed they just had big appetites.

The kid gawked as the four-armed cashier simultaneously swiped Fury’s pay card through the reader, assisted a customer on the other side, scratched her head with a third hand, and had one left over to tap a beat on the counter.You haven’t seen anything yet.

He moved out of the way. Verity stepped up.

“Card please. One adult, one child?” Kuadra asked.

“Yes, please.”

Another quadrubrachian—Kuadra’s spouse—loaded up their trays. Fury pushed down the line and collected the drink and dessert accompanying the meal.

The mess hall was packed, but he spotted a table with space for three and made a beeline for it.

Four aliens sat at one end. They nodded a greeting and resumed eating as he took his seat.

“Slide in,” Verity said. The boy eyed the lizard men warily but then scooted onto the bench. The table came up to his armpits. She took the seat next to him.

Fury began eating, and Verity followed suit. The boy stared at his plate. The kid’s meal had protein nuggets—probably ground horniger—a starchy vegetable patty cut into star shapes, and a savory-sweet purple vegetable mash.

“Eat your dinner,” she said.

“I don’t like it.”

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