Chapter 591 | Eight Minutes

Chapter 591: 591 | Eight Minutes

I had Misato pressed against the steel shelving unit with her hoodie half-unzipped and her mouth swollen from kissing me when the clone at the door cleared her throat.

"Eight minutes," the clone announced without turning around.

"I know how time works," Misato snapped at herself.

"You clearly don’t, because you’re about to start something you can’t finish in eight minutes, and then you’ll be cranky through Cross’s entire lecture, and then you’ll make the squad run laps because you’re frustrated, and then Wayne will complain, and then Fox will document Wayne complaining, and then Davenport will set something on fire because Fox won’t stop typing."

Misato’s forehead dropped against my collarbone. Her breath came hot through my shirt, and her fingers were still tangled in the fabric at my hip, nails scraping against the skin underneath. The lime ring burned steady in the back of my skull, and the graft pulsed with every heartbeat like it was trying to remind me that the woman in my arms had spent six weeks bleeding for me in ways I was only starting to understand.

"I hate when I’m right," she muttered into my chest.

"You’re always right."

"That’s why it’s annoying." She pulled back far enough to look up at me, her green eyes still wet at the corners but clearer now, less raw. Her lip gloss was gone, smeared across both of our mouths, and her ponytail had come completely loose on the left side. She looked wrecked in the best possible way, like someone who had finally stopped holding everything together and let herself fall apart for thirty seconds. "My mother told the entire dining hall that I bite."

"Your mother also gave Jordan a rice ball, and now he’s willing to die for her."

"Wayne would die for a hot shower and a nap."

"Fair point."

The clone sighed again. "Six minutes, Captain."

Misato’s hands slid up my chest, over the leopard scars, across the bite marks from Addison and Naomi, and stopped at my collar. She straightened it with the same careful attention she gave to formation drills, smoothing out the wrinkles I hadn’t noticed, tugging the fabric back into place. Her fingers lingered at my throat, right over the fresh mark she had just left on the left side of my neck.

"You’re going to walk into Cross’s lecture with four visible bite marks," she told me, her voice dropping into captain mode even as her thumb traced the edge of the wound. "Love on the right. Me on the left. Baxter beside me on the left. And the one from the cave that you keep pretending healed."

"It did heal."

"Liar." She zipped her hoodie back up with one sharp tug, all the way to her chin, and her face went blank again. The captain was back. "Fox is going to have questions."

"Fox always has questions. That’s her personality."

"Answer them honestly, or I’ll know." She stepped past me toward the clone, her shoulder brushing mine in a way that felt like a promise. "And Jace, if you’re late to formation because you stopped to make out with someone else in a hallway, I’m adding three miles to your morning run."

"What if I’m late because I stopped to make out with you in a hallway?"

She turned at the door, and for half a second the captain’s mask slipped. Her mouth twitched at the corner, and the green light from her clone caught her eyes and made them glow like jade held up to sunlight. "Then I’ll add six miles," she said, and the clone dissolved into green sparks as Misato pushed through the swinging door and vanished into the dining hall.

I stood in the service corridor surrounded by scattered napkins and fallen plastic wrap, breathing hard, tasting her lip gloss on my tongue, feeling the fresh bite throb against my pulse. The caged bulb buzzed overhead. Somewhere in the kitchen, a pot clanged against a stove, and someone shouted in Spanish about missing butter.

Four minutes until Cross’s lecture.

I grabbed a paper towel from the shelf, wiped my mouth, and walked back through the staff door into the dining hall like I hadn’t just had the captain of my squad pinned against industrial shelving. Naomi spotted me immediately. Her pink eyes dropped to my neck, found the new mark next to Addison’s, and her mouth curved into a smile that made the silver-pink ring in my skull flare bright enough to make me blink.

Belle was already typing.

"Don’t," I warned her as I sat down.

"I’m documenting the timestamp." Her fingers never stopped moving. "You were gone for seven minutes and twelve seconds, and you came back with a new bite on the opposite side of your throat. That’s not gossip, Monroe. That’s data."

"It’s also none of your business."

"Everything is my business. That’s why I’m valuable." She finally looked up from her laptop, amber eyes sharp, and tilted her head at me like a bird examining something shiny. "Ayame-san left you alone in a service corridor with her daughter for seven minutes. That’s either a test or a gift, and I’m not sure which one worries me more."

"Maybe she just wanted to yell at me about formation drills."

"Monroe, you have her daughter’s teeth marks on your neck, and you smell like lavender and industrial dish soap." Belle closed her laptop with a click that sounded like a verdict. "If you’re going to lie to me, at least make it convincing."

Blair had been silent through all of this. She sat at my right with her knee still pressed against mine under the table, her ice-blue eyes fixed on a point somewhere past my shoulder, her jaw set in the way that meant she was thinking very hard about something she didn’t want to say out loud. The housekeeping shoes were still on her feet. The grey cuff of my stolen sweater still peeked from under her blazer sleeve, the bleach spot visible whenever she moved her arm.

"Davenport." I kept my voice low, under the noise of the dining hall, under Belle’s hearing range. "You good?"