Page 67 of Alien's Heart
“Absolutely.” She brushed her fingers along his tail.
He purred. “Kitten, I’m going to make a scene if you do not stop flirting.”
She giggled. After a year, Nox still made her giggle and blush. “It’s your fault for being so handsome.”
“That is true. I am burdened with a great responsibility,” he said.
After the fire, Ruth worried about how Nox would handle the damage done to his appearance. Losing an ear and part of his tail was no small matter. Tal body language depended on the ears and tail for expression. Without those, it was like losing his voice.
Or so she assumed. Nox seemed unconcerned. If anything, his ego had increased.
“Should we go? You’ve got an early day tomorrow,” she said.
“Stay if you wish. I do not need much sleep.”
Tomorrow, the new hires started. Her fungus-resistant specimens excited the agricorp. They pumped funds into expanding her research, which included new agripods, a new lab, and even two new employees. Nox was officially on the payroll as the site manager. He handled the day-to-day tasks and all the communications with their corporate benefactors.
Turns out, Nox really did enjoy working with people. He had enough of a fuck-around-and-find-out vibe balanced with his innate charm that the whole operation ran smoothly. Who could have imagined a man once known as Scourge in such a position?
Ruth closed her eyes, listening to the music and the effervescent babble of the guests.
Nox moved beside her. She heard the crinkle of paper as he removed a letter from his jacket pocket. He turned it over in his hands. Ruth didn’t need to see the letter to know which one it was.
There was only one letter. No one sent paper mail anymore. This one had arrived a week ago addressed to Nox with no return address.
“Are you going to open it?” Ruth asked, opening her eyes.
“Not yet.”
“Don’t you want to know what she has to say?”
The letter had to have come from Harmony. Ruth had spoken honestly when she said that Nox didn’t know his cousin’s location and had no way of knowing. In the year since he and Harmony walked away from their old life, he’d had zero contact with her.
For the most part, Ashen kept his word and left them alone, though Ruth suspected that he had them watched. After all, Harmony might eventually make contact. If he monitored Nox long enough, he might lead Ashen back to his daughter. Which, as a hypothesis, was insulting. Neither Nox nor presumably Harmony was so short-sighted as to make contact. That would defeat the purpose of disappearing and starting a new life.
And yet someone sent the letter.
“It’s not really from Harmony, do you think? It’d be silly to write,” Ruth said.
“Encryption can be broken with enough time and dedication. No message is ever truly secure. A physical letter is untraceable by comparison.” He turned the letter over in his hands.
Sure.Pen and paper, the height of subterfuge.
Ruth kept that thought to herself.
“It could be a trick from my uncle, to see if I would respond,” Nox said. This scene had happened before. He examined the letter without opening it, internally debating if it was real or not.
“Or it could be from Harmony,” she said.
He handed the envelope to Ruth. “Open it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, the suspense is untenable.”
Ruth tore open the envelope and out fell a slip of paper. She held it up to the light, not that there was a lot of that to begin with. It was a string of numbers. “Is it a code?”
Nox examined it. “A one-time use secure comm channel. Harmony left me a message.”
“Or your uncle to see if you take the bait.”
“Yes, that is a possibility,” he agreed before tucking the letter back into his jacket pocket. “That is tomorrow’s worry. Right now, I want to dance with my mate.”
“Actually,” Ruth said, dropping her voice to a seductive purr, “I think I’d rather my mate take me home.”
“Home is with you, wherever we are.”
