Page 223 of Hunters and Prey

Truthfully, he couldn’t get much of anything off the other seer––not directly.

What little bits of insight reached him felt like whispers, coming to him from some other part of Black’s own light. The male seer himself was a fortress of hard, complex shields, charged frequencies of light that grew nearly physical as Black stared at them through his aleimi.

Looking at this farmer-monk-soldier seer’s aleimi was like looking at a light-blue diamond of hard, fast-moving frequencies.

For the same reason, Black didn’t lower his own shields.

Still, there was something incredibly still in that light.

It drew Black, even as it made him cautious as fuck.

Whoever this guy was, he was a badass.

Worse, he was trying to hide that fact from him.

Black knew from experience that the seers who hid that kind of thing were generally the seers who could seriously fuck you up, if they had half a mind to do so.

Black was still thinking about that, studying the other male’s face, when he saw those glass-like eyes fall out of focus. From the look there, Black knew the black-haired male was scanning him.

He wasn’t trying to hide it, which was an old-school seer’s way of doing it politely, by being open about it. Even so, Black felt his nerves rise, even before he felt the first few flickers of the other male’s light.

Before Black could figure out if he should say something, or even what he was looking at, exactly, a hot, liquid pulse of light swam over his lower column.

Black’s breath stopped.

His heart leapt to his throat as he froze like a trapped animal.

He felt something swim over the aleimic structures down below his feet, examining them openly. He felt the other male’s curiosity, his open probing. It felt like someone gripped him down there, examining him like some kind of twisted doctor.

The other male gripped him lower on his column then, and Black jumped violently, cursing, letting out a gasp.

The other male backed off at once, clicking out of his scan.

Black felt his body still reacting, regardless of the scan having ended. It all happened so fast, it felt like it took his body and the more conscious parts of his mind a few seconds just to catch up. Black’s heart pounded so hard it hurt in his chest. His breath hitched. He felt the blood drain from his face.

When he could finally talk, his voice came out in a near-snarl, deeper than usual.

“What in the ever-living fuck––” he growled.

“Sorry––”

“Sorry?” Black’s voice grew into even more of a threat. “Don’t do that again.”

Despite his words, he was shaken.

He was shaken to the point where he still struggled to breathe.

No one had ever done that to him in his life.

Never. Not on Old Earth. Not anywhere.

No one had ever touched him down there, or examined that part of his light.

No one had ever even been able to see those goddamned structures, much less move them around and touch them, like he was some kind of lab specimen. No one had ever even noticed ninety-nine percent of what lived in Black’s light, especially below his feet. No one had ever even thought to scan him there––no one but Miri, and only after he showed her, after he asked her to do it.

Only on his honeymoon, while he bonded with his mate.

This male had gone straight there.

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