Page 27 of Old Secrets

It took almost twenty minutes to go through the dance of everyone leaving, and I let out a gusty sigh as soon as we were alone. “Did you tell them my favorite gun, Jake?”

“Karma, it’s written right in your file that you would sell your body and soul for my mother’s gun. Our part of the Inquisition probably told them what your favorite weapon is.” Jake smiled, gave me a kiss, and went to the table burdened with papers. “How is our itinerary looking?”

“Like I get to have a snack of Jake for a few hours before we have steak.” I giggled at my favorite joke for my endless drive to enjoy my mate’s company. I double checked our itinerary. “We seem to have arrived here in time for dinner. There’s some sightseeing and shopping listed after dinner. There’s a note I’ll be dressed in a kimono, and I get to take it home with me along with its accessories.”

Jake joined me, and he laughed, as he was scheduled to be fitted for a suit. “Looks like my suit woes will be solved, too. Let’s stick to their plan. If we are where they think we should be and something does happen, everyone is safer.”

I wondered if either one of us would be able to go to a shopping area again without checking over our shoulders for someone with a grudge and a gun. “Snack before or after we review the intel?”

“Snack first, intel second,” he informed me, gracing me with a smile. “We’ll remember our prey better and be more in a mood to dispatch them that way.”

To my dismay, there was something to Aiko-san’s claim Americans struggled to differentiate Asian features. If in a crowd, I would have no hope of identifying them. That left me with my other senses, the ones that tended to fail me. Between the plane trip and the general excitement, something was off about my sense of smell.

According to my nose, something about Jake’s scent had changed, and I couldn’t tell what. Rather than study our targets, I spent an entire hour on his lap while he worked around me, sniffing every other second in an attempt to identify the source of the change.

“While I love the extra attention and how cuddly you are right now, I’ve never seen you quite this determined to stick your nose in my shirt before. Are you feeling okay? If you’re catching a cold, we’ll get one of those masks the Japanese wear when not feeling well.” Jake pulled out one of the papers from our itinerary. “It says we’re to ask for a mask if we’re feeling unwell, as that’s a local custom.”

“You smell weird,” I complained. “You smell like you, but there’s something weird going on.”

My husband smiled, put the papers down, and wrapped his arms around me. “All right. What’s weird? It could be that we’re just spending more time together and that’s helping you develop your sense of smell. Maybe I can talk you through it.”

“That’s the problem,” I confessed. “I just don’t understand what’s different about your scent. My nose acknowledges there’s something there, but I don’t get it.”

Jake took hold of one of my hands and brought it to my nose. “Can you smell your own scent?”

While I rarely paid my own scent much heed, I took sniffs, and I identified the unique smell signature belonging to me. “I smell it. I smell like a fox but different.”

“Try to separate all those little scent signatures, as your scent is a combination of various markers. When people say they smell you on me, they’re actually smelling one of your underlying scent markers. For Fenerec noses, it’s really strong. I’m guessing fox noses pick up more of the overlying scent markers. So, see if you can smell anything like what you’re smelling on me on you. You might be starting to be able to smell your marker on me—or you’re learning to identify my scent marker. It could go either way.”

As the scent issue had caused us so much grief, I narrowed my eyes, concentrated, and took in short and shallow sniffs to begin with, flooding my nose with my own scent. With the odd undertone I’d smelled in mind, I took deeper breaths to better evaluate my own scent.

Sure enough, I detected the oddity as well, buried deep. “I smell it!”

“Now, does it remind you of a deep and cold winter or the warmth of a cinnamon bun fresh out of the oven?”

I licked my lips at the thought of a cinnamon bun. “It’s been a while since we’ve had those, Jake.”

“If they don’t have cinnamon buns here, I will find you a treat,” he promised.

I settled back into working through identifying the scent, and after a little, I determined it was closer to a deep cold winter. However, it had a vibe, as though someone made a cup of hot chocolate. “It’s mostly like cold and winter, but I could be convinced into thinking there’s someone also making a cup of hot chocolate with a tiny hint of cinnamon and spice.”

“Those are our scent markers. The cold and winter scent is yours, and the hot chocolate with cinnamon and spice is me. You’re just not smelling it over the rest of the scents.”

My eyes widened. “The cold and winter is me?” Grabbing hold of his hand, I brought it to my face and went to work trying to make sense of the complex scent that I associated with him. Underneath the enticing aroma I associated with him as a male of particular use to me, I could detect a crisp, wintery smell partnered with that hot chocolate. “If that hot chocolate is really you, you smell delicious.”

He laughed. “I have the same reaction to your winter scent. It’s more like a crisp, candied apple to me. It’s caramel with a strong, tart apple scent. That’s part of the magic, from what I understand of the situation. The scent is supposed to be appealing to our mate. You’re likely naturally wired to pick up the overlying scents that Fenerec tend to disregard in favor of the underlying scents. You’re smelling your marker on you and my marker on me more than the underlying markers. But I am curious what triggered you being able to identify the underlying scents. You haven’t even gotten a whiff of the markers until now. It also makes me wonder if your species lacks mating markers. Perhaps your species is not monogamous like mine?”

If my species was more polyamorous in nature, I counted as a misfit. “I don’t share well, Jake.”

“This is a good thing to me.” He hugged me and kissed my temple. “Monogamy is a personal choice. If your species is culturally polyamorous, you don’t have to do what your species does solely because that is their culture. I have no idea how much of your decision to be as you are now is from nature or nurture, although I feel there’s a lot of nature playing a part. You really don’t handle anyone encroaching on your turf well. Neither do I. It’s also a possibility that our mating bond is influencing that.”

“I was selfish and jealous long before I met you, Jake.”

“And your family drilled it into your head, from a young age, that you should only have one partner at a time.” Jake sighed, and he shook his head. “Your pa was much more liberal than your ma on that score, though. Your ma wanted you to have one man and one man only your entire life. Your pa didn’t.”

One day, thinking of my adoptive parents would hurt less. Pa had deserved better, and Ma could rot in some hell.

Pa had always done his best for me, even when I’d been blinded to the reality of the situation.