Page 234 of Hunters and Prey

Allie smiled back at me.

When I looked at Black, however, he was scowling at me faintly.

I couldn’t tell exactly what he was thinking, but I could tell it bothered him he hadn’t even heard me and Allie talk.

Allie spoke to him before I could figure out what to say.

“Did you have any lag, my brother?” she said politely. “In terms of being here, and feeling more or less yourself…?”

Black frowned, his sculpted lips turning at the corners.

“I woke up in a field,” he said.

Allie nodded.

She seemed to be waiting for him to go on.

When he didn’t, she exhaled.

She seemed about to ask him something else, when she looked at her son, and frowned, her eyes puzzled. Looking from him to Black, then back to her son, she paused, as if bewildered. Her irises slid briefly out of focus, then back, shifting so rapidly, I barely caught the transition.

“Wow,” she said, still with that puzzled frown on her lips. “Narik is really into you, isn’t he? I’ve never seen him do that before. With anyone.”

Following her gaze, I looked at the little boy, who was still on the other half of Revik’s lap, the half not occupied by Allie. Their son, Narik, was staring at Black, his blue eyes completely riveted by every move Black made as he ate out of the bowl. Black was looking at him now, too, his gold eyes unusually light in the sunlight through the window.

He gave the boy a faint frown, as if he couldn’t figure out why the kid was staring at him, either.

I glanced at Revik, still smiling a little at the exchange between his son and Black, only to find Allie’s husband scowling, looking at Black in something like resentment.

“I saw that tattoo on your back,” Revik said then.

His words held the faintest hint of an accusation.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Revik said without a pause, his voice more pointed. “That’s not a common tattoo among our people, brother. A dragon like that… of that size. Taking up most of your back. Yet it’s clearly done in seer’s ink. A seer put that on you. Why?”

Black gave him a narrow look.

Whatever Revik meant by the question, Black seemed to know a lot better than I did.

I saw them staring at one another, silent for a beat too long.

“A seer who owned me on Old Earth gave it to me,” Black said, his voice as flat as his eyes. “Against my will. I was twenty-eight.” Pausing, he added with a very sarcastic-sounding politeness, “As for what it means, I suspect he just liked looking at it, Illustrious Sword. I’d tell you to ask him, but he’s dead. He died and I changed hands.”

I caught the faint implications in most of Black’s words that time.

I suspected I still hadn’t caught all of them, though.

There was a silence.

Then Revik looked at his wife, his jaw hard.

I didn’t know if they were talking to one another in their heads, but I suspected they were. If anything, the heat kept growing in the male seer’s glass-like eyes, even as he clutched his son more tightly to his lap. After a long-feeling silence where their exchange went on, Revik abruptly stood up, sliding out from under his wife, but taking his son with him.

Turning from his wife, he glared briefly at Black.

“Just leave my son the fuck alone,” he growled. “He’s my son. I don’t give a fuck what you are. Oh, and by the way?” He glared at Black harder. “She’s also my wife––”

“Husband.” Allie clicked at him mildly. “Stop.”

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