Page 8 of The Monster at the End of This Courtship

Excuse me? I introduced myself just fine, thank you very much, but I shook Axel's hand and said something banal and pleasant before Priestess Alma left us alone in the gym together.

"Sorry I'm late," Axel said. "I didn't want to come."

His honesty caught me off guard, and I snorted a laugh. "I guessed as much. We've all gotta eat. I stopped by the mess and grabbed some food."

"Thank you." He leaned toward me and sniffed my neck, but then he was gone, halfway across the room before I could move again. His proximity had rendered me completely immobile.

"May I have the roast beef?" he asked when I finally joined him at the table. "It's my favorite."

"Yes, please. Take whatever you want." I had picked through the selections with rejection in mind. If Axel hadn't joined me today, I would have taken all the food back to my room and crammed what I couldn't eat into my dorm refrigerator for later.

"Ooh, and the chicken salad?" He looked so delighted, I couldn't say no, even though that had been my first choice.

"Sure. I'll have the ham and the turkey." I shuffled the food onto the two plates I'd grabbed, taking notes on what he liked. Corn chips and fake cheese seemed to be high on his list of favorites.

"I also got you a salad," I said, picking the closest one and adding it to my plate.

"I'll save mine for later," he said.

"Not big on salads?"

He laughed. "No."

"If you're going to throw it away, I'll take it back to my room."

"Oh." He smiled, and I swore I was going to fall over in a dead swoon. He was absolutely gorgeous. I already thought alpha kobolds were attractive in that "I could eat your human form" way. My fated mate was far more attractive than any other to me, even Weld.

"Sure," he said. "You can take it."

"Thank you."

We sat on opposite sides of the table, but I caught him leaning toward me and sniffing a couple times. I could smell him, too, but I didn't want to be that obvious.

I almost died of embarrassment when he handed me my sunburst yellow pocket square after using it as a napkin. "I think this belongs to you."

"It does. Thank you." That didn't explain how he'd ended up with it. It had mysteriously disappeared after Priestess Alma's visit the other day.

"Priestess Alma brought it to me yesterday." Axel wouldn't meet my gaze. "Our sense of smell is stronger as kobolds, huh."

"Yeah." I leaned back in my folding chair.

"Do you like how I smell?"

He looked so open and vulnerable. I couldn't resist telling him the truth. "Yes." I hoped I wasn't drooling out the side of my mouth. I gobbled a handful of chips to hide any outward signs of attraction.

"This is all so new to me," he said. "I've never wanted a guy before. I can't even say I'm attracted to you. You smell nice, and my body reacts to you, but I?—"

"There's no rush," I said. "You still have a tail, so it's not like we can act on our mating urges."

Ugh. Me and my big mouth. Why did I say the words "mating" and "urges" in the same sentence? Axel was going to think all kobolds ever talked about was mating. I'd thought that when I first arrived, anyway. All those classes about the history and identification of fated mates were a little off-putting, to be honest.

"Look," I said, hoping to cover my faux pas, "I want to get to know you as a person. What did you do for fun back on Earth?"

"Fun?" He frowned at me like I'd said a foreign word.

"Yeah! Like, I draw and make art for fun. I used to go on nature walks on Earth, but we couldn't really do that around here." I grinned. "I'd love to go for a walk outside the fortress with you sometime."

"Sure." He frowned at me. "Merritt mentioned something about not being able to leave the fortress. How long have you been trapped in here?"

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