“Are you sure?”

He had to laugh a little. “Daria,” he said dryly. “I am already bringing home a human. Surely, if they can overlook that, no one would begrudge me a cat.”

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Chapter Forty-One

There were few feelings in all the universe quite as nice as a homecoming. Nicer still was a homecoming to a new home, where the paint was still fresh and everything still clean and hopeful. But nicest of all was opening that door newly-marked with his name, breathing in the scent of a hot meal, and stopping over the twining body of an orange cat to take a beautiful female into one’s arms.

Daria, his Daria, let him hold her as the evening meal threatened to surpass sizzle and move on to singe. Her hair was soft as it passed beneath his stroking hand, her breath warm as it exchanged with his, and her teeth sharp as she nipped his chin when his kiss ended.

“I trust it went well?” she asked lightly.

“Very,” he said. “I have been once more promoted. I am now a third-rank officer. Congratulate me.”

She did, most pleasantly, nibbling all down his throat to his chest as she opened his jacket before biting him hard just above his heart. One last kiss to tease him, and then she was running down the hall to rescue their dinner.

“Vey Venekus wishes an appointment in the coming days,” he called, following her. “For medical testing. Dietary questions, discussion of anatomy, ailments to which humans are prone and the symptoms of same, undoubtedly some matters of reproduction.”

“Oh God help me. All right. Is he the one with the funny eye?”

“No. He is—”

“Oh, the other one. The little guy.”

“Yes.”

“Sure, okay. I like him.”

“Tell him so. It will please him.” Tagen passed a cluttered mass of moving crates, sparing it a smile of approval. Still in their ungainly heap. Good. “For as much as it matters, I believe he likes you as well.”

She laughed, blushing a little, trying to be comfortable with the idea. She stayed busy at the cooker, working it as effortlessly as if she’d had years of experience with the device rather than a mere three days. “So…so it’s all settled? For real? I can stay and everything’s cool? Fine, I mean?”

“Yes,” said Tagen, slipping an arm around her waist. He bent to breathe in dinner scents over her shoulder. “Everything is cool.”

*

“Out of the question!” the Magistrate snapped. And when Tagen did not reply or drop his gaze, she banged both hands down on the table and showed every fang she had. “I am shocked, shocked! That you would even ask!”

“You mistake me, Magistrate,” he said evenly. “I am not asking.”

It took a while for that to sink in all the way, and once it had, Magistrate Inarr’s face seemed to bloom outward with the force of her astonishment. It made her seem younger somehow. Tagen watched, waiting in silence for outrage to come flooding in to fill that oddly youthful face. In all fairness, he couldn’t say that the meeting had taken a bad turn. It had been this bad from the very start.

As he’d known it would be, from the very instant he’d walked into the conference room and seen the four people already seated at one end of the table. The High Magistrate who had started this whole miserable affair, of course, in the same white robes of office and wearing the same bitterly annoyed expression, and who had set the serious tone of this meeting by actually introducing herself. Beside her, a scientist. Not vey Venekus this time, oh no, it was none other than vey H’sivek Kosar, head of the Department of Xenobiological Sciences. And on her left, the only other male in the room, Tagen’s commanding officer from his previous tour of deep-space duty, Dukanath Cura. Across from him, seated at the Magistrate’s right hand, Fleet Admiral and commander of the Jotan Interplanetary Allied Forces, taxan Chani Sta’al. The only person who could have made the moment more intimidating would be Jota Prime’s Governor-in-Chief, Rangan Etat, at the table.

No, meetings like that don’t have good starts. And they rarely work their way around to good endings. Tagen was prepared. He’d made a civil salute to all and taken a chair and then confined himself to trying to appear confident while keeping his temper in check.

“You took her home?” were Magistrate Inarr’s very first words, and so the debriefing was off and running.

“Her quarantine had ended,” he’d said calmly. “Vey Venekus pronounced her fit and in no danger of contracting or spreading communicable disease.”

“That’s hardly the issue!”

“I’m quite sure I filed the proper custody release forms.”

“Yes, but you were supposed to take her to the preserves! Not home, for the gods’ sakes! Really, Pahnee, you need to work on this tendency of yours to overcompensate for failures. Losing one human does not entitle you to keep another! Now sign out a hopper and put her where she belongs!”

“Respectfully, I must refuse.”

“You can’t possibly keep her!”

“I can.”

And from there, the argument had been slowly building—a barrage of mingled disbelief and exasperation from the Magistrate, countered by Tagen’s brief and extremely polite replies—until this explosion and now, this stunned silence.

“You…” Magistrate Inarr’s eyes lost their rings of white as she composed herself. She seated herself with ominous deliberation, her hands still in fists on the table. “You had best go carefully, sek’ta Pahnee. You are risking a great career over a human you had no business bringing home in the first place.”

“Her name is Daria Cleavon,” Tagen replied, still without allowing temper to enter his voice or his face. “And were it not for her aid, make no mistake, Kanetus E’Var would not be in custody now.”

Commander Cura reached out and thumbed at the media panel sunk in the center of the table and an image of Daria suddenly sprang into life in mid-air, flickering as it lazily revolved. She was still wearing her medic-whites; it must have been taken during her quarantine. Every seven seconds, she turned and her mouth moved silently, shaping N’Glish words, ‘Do I just stand here?’ before facing front again.

The Magistrate broke the silence first, snarling as she threw herself roughly back in her chair. “Gods,” she grumbled.

“Pretty little thing,” Cura remarked. His eyes cut to Tagen, cool and deeply assessing.

Tagen stared back, his own narrowing.

“She is, isn’t she?” Admiral Sta’al leaned forward, takking her claws on the tabletop as she studied Daria’s imagine. She was smiling slightly. “Clever, too. I made it a point to have a look at her while she was still contained. We spoke half the day.”

Tagen shifted in his chair. Daria had said nothing of this.

“She struck me as frightened,” Sta’al continued. “Very frightened. But well-mannered, for all that. Friendly. Quite disarming in her own way.”

“What—” the Magistrate began tightly.

“Do you know,” Sta’al interrupted, not taking her eyes from the image of Daria, “she had virtually drained her financial resources in the pursuit of the prisoner? Imagine that, if you will. An alien invades your home, takes you prisoner, conscripts you to be his pilot and guide in the search of a dangerous criminal and further requires that you spend every last crona to your credit.” The Admiral leaned back at last, folding her arms across her chest and looking thoughtful for a short time. “I wouldn’t do that,” she remarked. “Not without a gun to my head and perhaps not even then.”

Silence.

Magistrate Inarr flexed her claws again, glaring at Tagen. Finally, she said, “I am struggling to understand why you would deliberately endanger your mission by approaching a human in the first place. What egregious lack of—”