Max repositioned himself over the metal stool, adjusting the lens on the microscope. Picking up the sea pen sample from the ethanol bath with the tweezers, Max placed a section of the cluster of polyps under the microscope. Drops of ethanol spotted the table from his wet gloves after removing it from the container. The fern-like species, one of his favorite with its blue-green illuminating light, held a number of cells for the queen’s theory of what the coral fed on. He began logging the information, tapping away on the keyboard with his other ungloved fingers.
From the lobby, music streamed in. A deep ballet triggered his humming. He started, hearing his name. The receptionist called from the doorway tapping her nails along the glass panel in the door.
“Max,” she said, “Francesca…”
He entered the blue reception room. Closing the door on the faces watching from the lab, he crossed the room to take his call in front of the large window. Her’lion’s back covered much of the glass from the outside as he stood guard.
“Yes, Francesca… I promised to stop by for dinner this week…yes, I promise. You have my word. I appreciate you’re worrying about me. Although, I should be concerned for you now... I know you think I spend far too much time in the lab. You are like a mother. I expect nothing less than concern. I love you and I will come by and have dinner with you this week.”
He listened to his appointed guardian, whom he never needed but grew to love, go on about his eating habits. No one came into the clan without a guardian and when King Dagger assigned him Francesca, he wondered if it was more for her than him, being she was elderly.
He moved farther down the back hall past the restrooms, out of earshot of the others. “I am much too old for you to continue to coddle. I am forever in your debt for taking me in when I came here…”
She sighed and cut him off. “You will never be too old for me to coddle, but you are a grown man. Come by for dinner this week. Introduce me to this woman that has you turning down dinner with your Francesca.”
“You should apply for security, Francesca, nothing gets by you,” he said, ending the call. He stepped into the lab and all eyes were on him. “Have I missed something important?” he asked, watching the queen approaching him, head tipped at an angle.
“No, but I think we have,” Drew said, coming over to his side, slipping an arm through his. “You know I try and stay out of your business.”
He gave her raised brows.
“Okay, maybe not stay out per-se, but…” She swallowed and leaned in closer to him. “Max, you are so much more than any one knows.” She seemed to think of something. “Have you decided if you’ll sing for me at the town hall?”
“You threatened to ban me from your kitchen if I did not, My Queen.” He peered down at the gentle woman by his side and smiled. “I will sing for you.”
She squeezed his hand. “Thank you. I wish you’d call me Drew when it’s just us.”
“Cousin Drew.” He smiled, certain he would regret his next words, but he trusted Drew more than any person he’d met. “I’m in a relationship.”
Those disbelieving gray eyes his cousin offered up to him said that that would not be the end of their conversation. Her curiosity, he knew, had been peeked. Perhaps the reason King Dagger assigned Her’lion as her guard. She had little fear for a woman. “Honest?” She frowned.
“I will introduce you.”
She patted his arm. “Then I’ll stop poking you.”
“If my family had survived the tsunami, they would have liked you,” he said and wondered about their strange connection. “One day I would like to hear about living on the surface—as a human.” The idea of not being in the ocean for more than a few hours was not one he could understand. The dry air and the pollution. How did plants grow? He would not want to be a botanist on the surface.
