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“It’s also bullshit.” I leaned forward. “If the ship were a family embarrassment, you’d have scrapped her. But you’re paying me to stop fixing her. Why?”

“Because fixing her isn’t possible. This way saves everyone time and my nephew unnecessary heartache when the ship refuses him. Which she will continue to do. The vessel is too damaged to be patched up.”

“We’ve made progress. The ship is cooperating. And we don’t patch anything. She’ll be better than new once we’re done with her.”

He inched his chin up, that assessing gaze running over me again. “She’s cooperating because she’s bonding to you, isn’t she?”

I stayed still. “How do you know that?”

“Something Rennick said. You’ve been interfacing with the ship’s neural matrix without a bonded captain anchor in place,” he said. “The Hollow Chorus has been without a captain for years and is desperate. You walked in, put your hands on her systems, and now she’s writing your signature into the matrix. That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?”

I shifted in my seat. “Have you got a tracker on the ship? Because I know no one’s feeding you intel from inside my team.”

He brushed away my words. “Give up. She’s claiming you. That’s a death sentence for a human. You can’t bond to our ships. It’s impossible.”

“I don’t believe in that word. And I love a challenge.” I gently tilted my head to see if it helped the throbbing ache. “Or do you have an issue with a human hooking up with your old ship?”

“Foolish creature! Kelvane bonding architecture isn’t built for human physiology. If the ship completes a bond cycle with your signature embedded, the process will overwhelm your nervous system. Your species doesn’t have the neural density to survive such complexity.”

“You’re calling me primitive?”

He smirked. “There’s no shame in it. Your kind has barely been in space for fifty years. Your biology evolved in caves.”

“Oh! I get it. This is a concern for my health?” I hit him with my own smirk, real sassy.

“Keep going, and you’ll die. I don’t want that stain on the ship or on Rennick.”

I held his gaze. This was bullshit. The Hollow Chorus wasn’t hurting me. She was asking for help the only way she could. I’d felt the pull. Every time I touched her, something alive pressed back. And I wasn’t stupid. I knew a bond was forming. I also knew what a machine trying to kill me looked like, and the Hollow Chorus wasn’t it. If she was writing my signature, she was learning my limits too, and she’d pulled back every time the neural contact got too intense.

Navarre was selling me fear because the truth didn’t serve him. Whatever dirty secret he hid, he didn’t want the primitive little human to find out. Well, fuck him.

“Your nephew hired us to fix his ship,” I said. “We’ll finish the job.”

“Even knowing the risk to your life?” His eyes narrowed.

“I’ve been elbow-deep in live ordnance with worse odds than a fancy alien ship that likes me. I’ll manage.”

His expression shifted to shrewd calculation. “Rennick is attached to you.”

The pivot was smooth, but I caught the edge of implication in his words. “He’s protective of all of us. Given the amount he paid us to do this job, he needs to keep us alive until we’re done.”

Navarre inspected his perfectly tailored cuffs. “I offered my nephew a new ship. Top-line, unburdened, ready for bonding. He refused. I offered him the full weight of the family’s resources and connections. He walked out. He’s remarkably stubborn.”

“It’s one of his better qualities.”

“But he’s not just stubborn about the ship, Miss Myers. He’s stubborn about you.”

I didn’t move, as the weight of what this douchebag said settled over me.

“I couldn’t convince him to let the Hollow Chorus go with logic or leverage. But if I tell him what the ship is doing to you, that every interface brings you closer to a bond that will kill you, he’ll pull you off the job and crush the ship, won’t he?”

My pulse fired up. “Rennick wants that ship.”

“As much as he wants you?” Navarre chuckled to himself as I glowered at him. “I thought so. Whatever you’ve built with him, whatever this is, he’ll choose your safety over the ship. Interesting. I’ve never seen the appeal in humans for pleasure, but you must offer him something that quenches his thirst.”

My chest went tight. Not from fear. From fury. “You’ll use me to control him?”

“I’ll tell him what he needs to know to move past this pointless mission and you.” Navarre straightened his jacket. He pulled his comm from his pocket. “My nephew deserves to know what’s happening to the woman he’s involved with. Even if she is a human.”