Chapter 1
The Sineater
My body shook with a fine tremor as I sat at the large table inside Asmoded’s ready room. Waiting, creating an ambush, patience, those were my virtues, if I had any. Val was sliding restlessly over my body, coiling and writhing across my skin in hunger. She was whining in the back of my head about her empty stomach, not with words but with sharp, hard feelings. Val never spoke, and I wasn’t sure if that was normal for a symbiont or if she was an outlier in that too. It didn’t matter. In the Zeta Quadrant, we were unique, there was no one to judge us and no one to ask for help.
After centuries together, she should have grown, but her size had always stayed the same. Enough to shield my body, enough to heal me, enough to be a fighting familiar at my side, but never more. I tried to soothe her, but it was impossible; she ached, so I ached with her. Hunger gnawed at the pit of my stomach, even though I’d eaten breakfast not long ago. Brace should have been a source for Val too, but now that he had Ruby and his son, Mateo… nothing. Just sickly sweet, vomit-inducing happiness and love.
I didn’t want to think it, because the thought was terrifying, but lately it seemed to me that Val was not just stagnant in her growth, but shrinking. There wasn’t enough food for her; everyone was too stinking happy. My favorite meals—her favorite meals—had all dried up. I didn’twantto leave the ship, but it was beginning to feel like my only option. For twenty years, I’d lived and breathed theVarakartoom, servedAsmoded, who was perhaps the only male in the entire universe I’d call a friend. I didn’twantto leave, but to keep Val alive, I must.
Her feelings turned sharp with regret, a softness that did not often accompany her presence. She felt guilty for doing this to me, for forcing me to leave a place we’d both called home. Yet her drive for survival was stronger. My loyalty to her would always win out; I assured her of this. When I took the oath as a Son of Ragnar and bonded with her, I swore to always keep her safe the same way she would protect me. I might be a nasty, dark-tempered Sineater, but I was no oath-breaker.
“We can’t search every solar system with three suns and a small water planet, there are dozens just like that.” Aramon shrugged and held out his hands as if that made his point stronger. Like me, he was restless. Unlike me, he did not try to hide any of it. He bounced his leg up and down in his seat, his eyes glowing huge in his skullish face. None of his energy was dark, though; it was all excitement that tasted like ash in my mouth.
Next to him, Solear was sitting quietly—and entirely out of character, pre-Lyra—also calmly. No restless energy, no desperate sense of feeling trapped, just attentiveness. He was a changed male, one who, even when he struggled, did not taste good or feed Val enough to see her through the day. Mates, it was better when the captain banned them from the ship entirely.
“Not dozens,” Jaxin huffed with a laugh he shouldn’t be able to feel. That one had been useless to me from day one. Rummicaron repressed all their feelings, but the dark ones most often still surfaced. It was like Jaxin lived to be contrary; everything was opposite with him. Cheerful, outgoing,levelheaded. Useless. “There’s only a handful, and some can be excluded by logic.” Well, at least he resembled a Rummicaron in that way, logicwashis favorite tactic. Unless he was leaping from a ship to save his beloved Laser Cannon Bex.
Asmoded sat at the head of the table, his long tail coiled around the base of his chair, arms crossed over his armor-clad chest. Golden eyes gleamed with sharp intelligence, his expression unreadable. From him, I got nothing at all, and Val whined louder in my head. “We are not searching every planet, but narrowing it down to five means we should be able to figure it out. Pull up the data again, Solear.”
At the center of the table, the holographic display flared to life, and in a row, five different solar systems were displayed. They all looked similar, and though I wanted an answer to this as badly as Asmoded did, I had no clue. A sharpness like needles and pain spiked through the back of my brain. I winced but hid it, cursing under my breath at Val. Everything between us always ached, like we weren’t joined right and each touch was friction. This was the worst brush in quite some time, though, as if we were breaking apart worse now that she couldn’t feed enough.
Then I saw what she’d wanted me to see: the third solar system, twirling merrily at the center of the display. Three suns, like all of them, but each with a distinct hue—green, red, and purple. There were a dozen planets in this system, too, unlike the other options, which only had a handful. One was a water planet, highlighted to make its third position from the purple sun obvious. I recognized that place.
Straightening, I caught the attention of everyone at the table. Flack, the Sune male who’d been forced to take the seat closestto me, actually flinched away. Everyone collectively held their breath, and small hints of unease and fear curled through the room. Val stretched around me, eagerly devouring those little tidbits, but it wasn’t enough, it was never enough. “That one, it’s on the edge of the Zeta Quadrant, but there’s Kertinal and Rummicaron territory bordering it. I passed it three centuries ago when I first arrived.”
There was a long silence as everyone digested what I’d just said, and I felt my gut roil with anger and unease. Most of that was Val, she didn’t trust anyone she hadn’t known for at least fifteen years. She trusted Asmoded, like I did; Jaxin and the twins came close, and that was it. I turned my eyes to the captain and waited, wondering what he’d do. We did not always agree on things, but that didn’t mean we had trouble working together. I still felt a hint of guilt each time I laid eyes on his mate, because I’d made a terribly selfish choice that had seen her harmed once.
“And why does that make you think that’s the right one? Three centuries is a long time. Jalima was not alive then to have built a stronghold there.” Asmoded drawled, his words laced with soft hisses on the sibilant syllables. He flicked his hands over the controls, and the holo display changed, the four other options dropped away, and the one I’d singled out enlarged so we could all get a better look at it.
“Because,” I said, “there’s no better planet for a stronghold than one with a giant ‘keep out’ sign like that one.” I reached out to tap the holo display, my arm not quite long enough, so Val stretched along my fingers like liquid silver to finish the task. We might rub each other the wrong way, but she always instinctively knew what I needed of her.
The one flick of the button was enough to pull up the information on the planet: a giant red cross above it, followed by skull symbols from a dozen different species. There were warnings from the Rummicaron government to stay out, followed by even more dire warnings from the Kertinal Empire. Any species even remotely in the vicinity had taken the time to contribute its own: stay away, death inevitable.
“It’s a water world,” I said, “and whatever lives beneath the waves is so deadly, it puts the Shade Stalkers of Xio’s jungles to shame. If I were Jalima, I’d build a bastion on one of the few stretches of land. It’s perfect.” Honestly, itwasperfect. If I didn’t need to keep Val alive by leeching dark feelings from the living, I would have built a home there and lived happily all alone. Nobody to bother me, no one to annoy me with their sickly happiness and their gushy warm feelings. Jalima had it all figured out.
For a moment, everyone was silent again as eyes roved over the scrolling data. Asmoded didn’t take long to come to some kind of conclusion, but he gave the others a little longer. Predictably, Aramon just got excited reading that many death warnings, as if that promised to be fun rather than dangerous. Jaxin was much more serious, shaking his head like he thought nothing in the quadrant could convince him to go there. That would be the smart thing to do.
“If thisisthe location, and it does seem a likely candidate, we can’t risk going there,” the captain announced. He turned to Mitnick, our communication specialist, and, like me, a very unique character in the quadrant. There were no known living Mithrakon anywhere, though he was not the first I’d met. Not from the Alpha Quadrant either, but more prevalent in its darksectors. “Mitnick, get a hold of any travel data in that solar system. I want to know who came and went despite those warnings.”
The hacker nodded, his feathered mohawk flicking back over his head, the implant on his temple gleaming silver as it engaged. His eyes glazed over as a display projected right in front of his face, and he was lost to the data he was mining. It wouldn’t take long, there was no better hacker than the Mithrakon. No one quite so dedicated to his technology and machines. Except, of course, when it came to his mate. He was another of those always-cheerful, satisfied males with a female to curl up with at night—a female he didn’t have to share with anyone.
“I can go,” I declared, even though Val itched along my skin in objection. She didn’t want to go to some dangerous planet with nothing alive—unless you counted the danger beneath the surface. I reminded her gently that the bad guys living in that stronghold to care for it in Jalima’s absence probably lived in daily fear. A buffet. She settled, then turned eager and that wasn’t much better.
There was a long, drawn-out silence as everyone in the room stared at me. Dravion, the half-Aderian, half-Grolarnx, was an empath, and he was the only one who might have a clue what was going on inside my head. A male to avoid, excepthisfeelings were still deliciously dark and pained. He just kept them in check far better than the others had. Harder to reach, harder to feed on, andstillnot enough.
Sitting at the end of the table, directly across from Asmoded, the male had his arms crossed over his chest. Tentacles gently undulated around his seat, and his armor was starkly blackin contrast to the white lab coat he wore over it. He was a deadly warrior, given his Grolarnx nature, but also a healer and scientist. As long as he didn’t open the third eye at the center of his forehead, all was well. Even I, impervious as I was to nearly anything, would not survive that. At least, I did not think I would.
Maybe everyone had been waiting for the doctor to agree on whether I could do as I claimed. Something eased and settled around the room when he inclined his head. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose you and your symbiont might be the only ones able to take that risk. I shall research just what the danger is. Mitnick, you’ll assist?”
The hacker was the only one who hadn’t been staring at me, his mind still deep in the data streams of the quadrant. Now he jerked up his head, sharp tigerite eye flicking to the doctor, then to the captain, before settling on me. Sharp like a predator, that gaze, he did not seem intimidated the way most were. Perhaps he was too distracted by his data to have time for feelings; that would not surprise me. He nodded, and that was all.
The captain dismissed the crew attending the meeting, and everyone rose to trudge from the ready room. I saw Aramon slap Jaxin on the shoulder, the two bending their heads close together to discuss some kind of weapon polish. Flack quickly scurried around Solear before the male could snap his sharp teeth at him. In that area, some things had not changed. Dravion and Mitnick were already engrossed in a discussion about the planet’s merits and dangers.
Only Asmoded remained seated at the table as he watched his officers leave, and I made no move to get up, either. I knew hewanted answers—he wanted to know where my head was at—and I wasn’t going to tell him. Itwasvery tempting to just get up and stalk out, incite a bit of anger so I could let Val feed on that, but it wouldn’t be enough. I also did not like the idea of using my one good friend that way, much. Honestly, as much as I acted like I couldn’t stand any of these guys, they were like family. They might not like me, but I’d grown to likethem. And now it sucked to be around them, and I hated that most of all.
“You’re sure about this, Sin?” Asmoded asked, his voice turning concerned with each carefully spoken syllable. He had me pinned with his stare, and though he was no match for me, he still made me feel like he was calling me out—asking me to explain why this should be my mission, asking, perhaps, if this was intended to be a one-way trip for me. I was this male’s superior in many ways: older, more jaded, more powerful. I still felt myself wither just a little under that golden-eyed stare.
“I am sure,” I said as my hand slid over the table, silver dripping from my fingers and pooling into a shape Val liked best. A Gracka, a hound-like creature native to Talac, my home world. Not that I’d been home in a long time, or that I even considered that barren ice planet anything worthy of the namehome. Just as Val and I had failed to integrate the way we should, and the Sons of Ragnar had rejected me, so too had my family cast me out.
