Meg spent the rest of the day in a kind of daze.

The pain returned. So did that skin-crawling sensation, the restlessness, and that deep ache in her heart. But it was somewhat muted; at least enough for her to do her job. Apparently, a little dose of Verkiir had been like a booster shot to ward off completely succumbing to the awful side effects of... whatever this was.

It didn't change the fact that he mind went a million miles a minute, though. She had no idea what to expect from him now. She'd shown him she'd wanted him--that she was down for a little fun. Whether that made her easy, desperate, or just smart, she didn't know. She'd offered him something with no strings--a way for them to both get it out of their systems and get on with their lives--and he'd... walked off.

She had no idea if she would see him again, and that thought made her heart hurt. She tried to avoid that possibility, and instead prepared herself for what would likely be another encounter. Another encounter where she was slick and practically panting from wanting him. Great.

No matter what she told herself, though, she could never have prepared herself for what she'd actually come home to.

The bus to and from the clinic had an erratic schedule, and she was stuck logging more hours until she could actually catch it, well after dusk. Meg hated that her sister was alone for so long, but it was a necessity right now. She'd make it up to Ash later.

Getting off at the bus stop, she walked the last quarter mile with her hands tucked under her arms. There was a chill in the air, and... she was actually feeling it. All day she'd felt overheated, sweat constantly dripping into her eyes. Now she could've used another layer and a nice, warm fire.

It was a good sign, but it made her anxious, too, because the closer she got to her home, the more her symptoms disappeared. Instead, all she could feel was an inexorable draw to something--or someone.

And Meg already had a very good idea of who that someone was.

She was so preoccupied with what she was going to say to him that it took her way too long to realize something wasn't right. There was something different about her house.

"Good on you, putting those things to work!" she heard someone call.

Meg turned and squinted. Across the street, Mr. Harper sat on his porch, a cigarette held between two fingers. She wasn't very fond of him on the best of days, but the smarmy look on his face made her skin crawl.

"Thanks for your input as always, Mr. Harper," she said in the fakest voice she could manage.

And then she saw it. The fucking... fence. A solid wall of death, made up of full wooden panels wrapped in barbed wire. It was probably seven feet tall, and it stretched around the entirety of the small property, replacing the rickety old picket fence. She'd never seen anything like it. And she had no idea how it had gotten there.

Well, she had one idea. But she wasn't sure she liked it.

"Ash..." she called, opening up the gate--the one safe spot in the whole fence--to let herself inside.

Her sister didn't come out, but the light was on in the kitchen. And the living room. And at least one bedroom. Goddammit. Teenagers.

Meg fished out her keys, listening for the sound of people speaking. Sure enough, she heard at least two muffled voices. One was Ash's. The other one was male. From the way her heart pounded and her implant vibrated, it must have been Verkiir.

She should be scared. Ash had been alone with him for God knew how long. But she wasn't. She barely knew anything about Verkiir, and yet she knew he would never hurt her sister. It was a surprisingly comforting thought.

What wasn't comforting was the fact that her keys weren't working.

"What the hell?" She tried again, but came up with the same result. Frustration rose in her, and she banged on the door. "Ashley June Cauthran, open this door right now."

Footsteps approached, and Meg heard the clicking of not one, not two, but three different locks. What in the actual fuck?

"You don't have to break out the middle name. Jesus. I was just teaching your boyfriend how to cook."

There was so much wrong with that statement that Meg didn't even know where to start. Actually, yes she did.

"Why is there a prison fence outside our house? And what the fuck happened to our locks?" She stepped inside and moved to inspect just that, finding three new bolts she definitely hadn't put in herself.

"Ask the crazy alien dude," she said with a shrug. "I'm just here to watch the trainwreck."

And what a trainwreck it was. Her house--her beloved childhood home--was a shambles. There were tools and buildings materials strewn all over. Clumps of sawdust and nails on the floor. A damn hole in the wall. What the hell had happened today?

Meg heard something crash in the kitchen, and she almost dreaded investigating. But she wasn't going to get any answers from Ash, so, time to be brave.

The first thing she saw was that the kitchen, too, was a mess. There was flour everywhere. Some butchered animal--it looked like a boar, maybe--was laid out on her counter. The Pathfinder's son, Drann, was standing off to the side, watching curiously and wearing... her apron. Holy hell. One glance at her sister told her where that idea had come from.

And in the center of the chaos was Verkiir, decidedly not wearing an apron. His back was to her, his tail slashing through the air as he cleaved... something with a huge knife.

"Dude. I told you already. You don't have to hack into the vegetables. Use one of the smaller knives," Ash said.

"This way is faster," he said matter-of-factly, dumping his massacred vegetables onto a pan that Drann held out.

"Don't you ever cook?" Ash asked.

"I do not cook Earth food."

Meg was so, so confused. She knew Verkiir must be able to feel her, as she felt him. But she watched as he finished his task, getting the vegetables into the oven and huge hunks of pork into an oiled pan. Then he finally turned to her, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. He was covered nearly head to toe in flour.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Feeding you," he said, as if that required no explanation. "I thought I would only need to bring you the boar. Karuvar females prefer to dress their own kills and serve themselves the best portions."

"You forgot the part where they eat it raw," Ash muttered.

Verkiir shot her a long-suffering look. "Azh'lee... kindly explained you do not eat beasts that have not been treated with fire. So I have done this. For you."

Meg blinked at that. Somehow, she made her way over to the kitchen table, where she slid into a seat. The world was spinning, and yet inside, she felt more normal than she had in days.

"...And the fence?"

Verkiir scowled. "Your home was unacceptable. You need protection when I cannot be here. Azh'lee suggested you would not like it if I changed things inside the home--"

"No fucking kidding," she said.

"--so I optimized security around the perimeter."

And installed new locks, apparently. Meg just sat there, open-mouthed, listening to grease pop in the too-hot pan. She had no idea how to process this, so she looked to Ash, hoping for some kind of answer. But Ash took that as another kind of request, and gestured to Drann, leaving her alone with Verkiir in the kitchen.

Great. The last time she'd been alone with him she'd been ready to dry hump him in front of her place of work. What next?

"Why are you doing all of this?" she asked.

"To prove I am a good mate," he said simply.

"...Like, a husband? I appreciate the offer, Verkiir. It's... sweet, in an intense sort of way. But I don't need a husband."

Verkiir wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Huz-bind? This word does not translate in Karuvar."

Meg raked a hand through her hair and sighed. Why couldn't she go back to a simpler time, when she wouldn't have felt bad about telling some crazy, possessive alien she didn't want him? When she wouldn't have even known one would want her.

"I'll let you and Drann stay here tonight. You can sleep on the couch and Drann can take the loveseat. But I can't have you coming to my house and just..." She looked around helplessly. "Changing everything."

"You do not like what I have done?" One of his ears flicked. "I will do more."

"No!" she said immediately, and her gut clenched at the stricken look in his eyes.

She shouldn't care about hurting the man who'd tracked her down at work like a fucking stalker and had then invited himself to "improve" her house. But she did, and she tried to think of the least harsh way she could say what she needed to say.

"Look, I'm sure you're going to make some Karuvar lady very happy someday, but..."

Verkiir moved wordlessly, the grace of his form drawing her eye. Even caked in flour and bathed in fluorescent light, he was absolutely gorgeous. He crouched before her and reached out for her arm, his large hand closing gently around it. He turned it, palm up, and then rested his own, much larger arm beside hers.

"The implant is everything to a Karuvar. The lines and shapes it creates identify him as an individual. Dams and sires can tell everything about a kit just from those first lines. What he will be, how he will act, where he will fit in with the Karuvar people, who he will one day mate." His gaze flicked up to hers, and those gold eyes were molten.

"But I'm not Karuvar," she said.

"It does not matter," he said quietly. "These lines mean you were made for me, and I was made for you. There will be no greater honor in my life than serving you, and if I am doing it wrong, I will try again, until I get it right."

Meg swallowed hard as the tips of his fingers traced the lines her implant had made. He was barely touching her, but it felt electric. And his words... if she kept listening to him talk like that, she was going to melt.

He was so close to her that she could feel the heat of his body and the force of him pulling her in. She suddenly found herself fixated on his lips and wanting to pick up where they left off earlier.

It must not have been too much of a shot in the dark, because a low vibration rumbled through Verkiir and he leaned forward, a breath away from claiming her lips.

But that moment never came. Something other than the heady smell of Verkiir reached her, and in that moment, she realized what it was.

Smoke.

She broke apart from him and nearly yelped when she saw a fire blazing on the stove, devouring the boar shanks and threatening to leap to the nearby curtains.

Why? Why did this have to be so. Fucking. Destructive?

* * *

Meg never got an answer to that question, but she did manage to save her kitchen with help from Verkiir and Ashley. The grease fire was contained, the meat was pulled from the stove, and the vegetables were taken out, too, just to prevent some kind of future catastrophe.

She tried to play nice. She had Meg plate meals for everyone and invited Drann and Verkiir to sit at her tiny dining room table where they took up eighty percent of the space on their own. They tore into their charred pig, but Meg watched as Ash cautiously cut into the huge hunk of meat. It wasn't just rare on the inside, it might as well have still been alive. Her stomach lurched and she picked at the barely-roasted vegetables, trying not to think about where the hell Verkiir had found fresh carrots.

Some weak part of her just wanted to burst into tears. This was too much. All of it was too much. Her life felt as utterly savaged as her house right now, and still there was this person who didn't know a thing about her claiming he could make it all better, when so far all he'd done was throw a huge wrench into the works.

She couldn't do it. Tomorrow she'd go see Dr. Monroe again and see if there was some way to just... remove the implant. Or turn it off. It'd been a long time since humans were forced underground. Maybe they'd adapted on their own.

These were the thoughts that tumbled through her mind even as she watched Verkiir clean up the kitchen and then the living room with Drann's help. He was the definition of a brute, but there was something oddly sweet about him. Every time he looked at her, he made her feel like she was the only woman alive. And it didn't hurt that whenever he bent to pick up something from the floor, she got a clear view of the firm, squeezable muscles in his ass. So clear a view she could imagine digging her heels into those muscles as he lifted her onto the first available surface and fucked her.

There was only so much a girl could take.

But Meg was exhausted. After days of not sleeping properly, she felt like she could sleep for days. On some subconscious level, she knew that was because Verkiir was here.

"Where is your bed?"

His deep voice startled her awake, and she blinked up at him, bleary-eyed and momentarily confused. When it occurred to her what he meant, her blood heated in her veins.

Yes. This was what she wanted. What she needed.

But if she invited him into her bed, she wasn't sure she would want him to leave.

"Nice try, but the offer I made earlier has expired," she said, trying to sound even remotely confident.

Verkiir snorted. Then, much to her surprise, he bent and scooped her up in one smooth motion. Meg squeaked as his arms came around her, lifting her like she weighed nothing at all.

"I wish for you to rest. I will protect you."

Her heart hammered in her chest, her skin singing with sensation where they touched. She could see his pupils widening and his nostrils flaring. It wouldn't take much for him to change his mind and overpower her.

She'd probably let him, if she was honest with herself.

But when she pointed out the direction to her room, he didn't throw her down on the bed and immediately launch himself on top of her. He didn't set her on her dresser, rip off as little clothing as he needed to rip off, and bury himself inside of her.

He just lay her down gently in bed, pulled the covers up for her, and then… left.