The Sineater
After the disaster leaving Frederique had been back on that nasty water world, it was almost impossible to make my feet carry me away from my quarters. Val was with her, I told myself, but the majority of my symbiont coated my armor. It felt like I was about to stride into battle. Not far off, considering how annoyed Asmoded must be at this point. As my friend, he was the only one I owed an explanation. Likely, he was most angry about how I’d brushed off his mate, Mandy. Well, too bad. Frederique didn’t need prying questions and curious eyes right now. She needed sleep, and Val would make sure she got it.
I encountered absolutely no one as I strode through theVarakartoomon my way to the bridge. It was no coincidence: someone was clearing my path and making sure I didn’t run into a hapless temporary recruit or other staff member. Probably Mitnick, manning his cameras and his comms, very wise. I would enjoy it far too much to snap at someone getting in my way right now, to take out this anxious energy coursing through me on someone that wasn’t me. For the first time in possibly centuries, I wondered what someone would think of that kind of coping mechanism. Frederique would probably tell me it wasn’t healthy. I knew that, damn it.
The bridge was also nearly empty, though Solear and Aramon were at the helm, and Mitnick, as predicted, was by the comm station. Sounds came from the ready room, which meant that Asmoded was already in it, waiting for me to show up. I did not expect to face a whole crowd, and it briefly caught me offguard: all the senior staff—minus the three on the bridge—and several of the females that these males had taken as mates.
Mandy was right next to her male, and Asmoded sat draped in his chair at the head of the table. I caught sight of Harper and Evie, and Ruby was there with Brace hovering protectively behind her. What had the ship come to? The most notorious mercenary crew in the Zeta Quadrant, and we were holding debriefings with females cradling babies… My mouth twisted into a scowl I simply couldn’t contain.
I crossed the room, aware of all eyes on me, and threw myself into the chair across from Asmoded. Leaning back, I kicked my feet up onto the table and wove my fingers together across my stomach. “So?” I drawled. “We have a new mission yet?”
Asmoded’s expression grew tighter, but then it loosened, and rather than giving me a nice dose of anger to feed on, I felt his amusement—light, happy, a little surprised. Nothing useful. It raked like sharp claws across my skin, crawled like bugs over the back of my neck. Val would have mewled and cried if she’d had a voice right now; instead, she tightened around me in a painful manner.
“That’s funny, Sin. We do have a mission, but we’ll talk about thatafteryou tell me how yours went. How did you come to find a human, and your mate, no less? Congratulations on that, of course.” I was leaning across the table with a hiss, fists balled,Val rising in spikes across my back. An impulse I could not curb. Any mention of Frederique set me on edge, and the wordmatewas a double-edged sword. It implied love and tenderness, warmth and home, all things that made Val ache. It also implied Talacan things like sharing, like other males touching my female’s skin, and it filled me with a rage so white-hot, it blinded me.
“Fine,” I snarled, all too aware that everyone had leaned back in their seats. Humans had quickly been pulled behind broad backs, Ruby completely obscured by Brace’s hulking Hoxiam frame. The fear that filled the room fed Val, but it tasted sour on my tongue.
“Jalima was not in his stronghold, I destroyed it, leveled it to the ground. Frederique was the only survivor aboard a human ship that had crashed into the planet’s ocean, a ship predating the formation of the UAR. She’s mine now, and I’m not sharing.” The last part I spat out roughly and, unintentionally, betrayed my innermost thoughts in a way I never would have before meeting my tempting human.
Asmoded raised both hands in the air in a placating gesture. “Good, and I told you you didn’t have to, Sin. This is the Zeta Quadrant, remember? You’re not on Talac anymore.” He didn’t have to, and it made me feel exposed to be seen that way, but he turned his eyes on his crew and made each single male agree: no sharing. I said Frederique was mine, and Asmoded made them vow to stay away. Thatcher was the only one who laughed, like it was a joke, when he said it, but I knewthatone had other interests, so it didn’t matter.
“Fine, satisfied now?” I asked, once even Flack had made the statement, his skin-form oddly bare when I was used to seeing him strut around in his furred hybrid-form. Sinking back into my seat, I tried once again to adopt a relaxed, irreverent pose. I was certain I was not fooling anyone.
Asmoded began explaining the next mission then, as if the water world and our offense against Jalima did not matter. This mission wasn’t even related to the crimelord the captain had vowed to bring down. I barely listened, my mind spinning and focused on the female sleeping in my bed right now. I didn’t pay attention when the women slipped away with their young, and I didn’t think anything of it either, though perhaps I should have.
I’d sat through a thousand—perhaps more—such mission briefings, listened as the males analyzed the plan and suggested tactics, contributed. This time, I barely heard any of it. Words filtered through, Xio and jungle, Shade Stalkers and power plants. I got the impression we were getting paid the big bucks to defeat creatures that had the quadrant in fear, but it held no appeal.
Was Frederique still sleeping? How would she feel when she woke? I would have to tell her I was sorry for how I’d reacted when she’d demanded the truth about the mate bond. She deserved an explanation, but I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough to give it to her. It would be hard to admit I was wrong, I rarely was, and it was even rarer that I had to admit it. To make it right with her, I should, though.
Once the mission brief was finished, I felt stiff and anxious. I rose in a hurry but was halted by Asmoded before I could leave. His hand clasped my shoulder, a brave male to dare do so, giventhe mood I was in. He pierced me with his sharp, golden eyes, the look as predatory as his nature. There was a reason he and I were friends, a reason I’d stuck by his side for over a dozen years. That time should have felt like a drop in the ocean, given how long I’d been alive, but in some ways, it felt like I’d always been on this ship, fighting for his mission, his vengeance.
“You need to forget everything you know about relationships, Sin. Humans… they are nothing like what we’re used to, remember that.” Asmoded slipped away then, his long tail silently propelling him from the ready room and onto the bridge. As much as I desired to race through the ship and check in on Frederique, I remained frozen in place for several seconds. Val was calm, so it was all me, the tempest of emotions and thoughts inside my head.
Forget what I knew? Hadn’t I been trying to do that for centuries by now? Everything about Talac had repelled me, fit me like broken glass, and I’d vowed I’d never succumb to that kind of bond. I knew humans didn’t commonly have more than a single partner, but mine had matched with a Talacan male for a reason, hadn’t she?
Walking from the ready room onto the bridge felt like walking through a gauntlet. Everyone there, and it was pretty much everyone from the meeting, raised their eyes to stare. It made my skin crawl, and Val rose in spikes along my shoulders and back, warning them to stay out of my way. Once I hit the hallway, my pace picked up: walking, then jogging, then flat-out running.
I skidded to a halt in front of my chambers, hand slamming against the sensor to unlock it. My heart pounded in my chest, not from the exercise, but from anticipation. She would still besleeping, curled up in my sheets, rosy and sweet. There was something about her dark curls and wide green eyes that was too innocent, too sweet. I wanted that look all for myself, wanted to see her blink to wakefulness and know that I was the first thing she saw.
The first room was empty, and I brushed through it with barely a glance at all the things I’d collected throughout my life. Things that had held meaning, that tied into a memory, but now all seemed pointless and ridiculous: evidence of a long life spent in empty loneliness.
I burst into my bedroom and abruptly halted in my tracks. The sheets were tossed about and in disarray, a disconcertingly small dent at the center of the mattress the only evidence she’d been there. I inhaled, and her scent filled my lungs, along with the dampness of the shower run hot. The bathroom was as empty as the rest of my chambers. Here, a damp towel hung neatly on a hook on the wall, and clothing had been folded neatly on the edge of the sink—her clothes, the uniform she’d worn from her ship after she’d risen from stasis. I fingered the fabric as rising panic clawed at my throat.
She was gone. This was all that remained of her. How could that be? I had locked her in for her protection, locked her in to make sure she’d be where I left her when I returned. Fury replaced fear when I realized there was only one way she could have slipped from my grasp: Mitnick. He’d unlocked the door for her, and he’d probably done it at the behest of his mate. The humans… With a growl, I turned and stormed from my chambers.
Chapter 15
Frederique
I didn’t think I could slip from that room unless Sin unlocked the door. I was wrong. I’d tightened the robe around me, pulled on my socks and boots as a compromise, and then—swish—the door had just opened. For a moment, I thought perhaps I’d been wrong, that it hadn’t been locked at all. Those thoughts were almost immediately dashed by the visitor on the other side of the door.
“Hi,” a pretty Asian woman said, the same one I’d briefly met before, though I struggled to come up with her name. I’d been pretty out of it then, exhausted, in shock, though apparently in good health. She was holding a small child in her arms, cradling the sleeping infant against her shoulder. He was wearing a little blue jumper, and the sky-blue color made the fine black scales that covered him stand out all the more.
“We thought we’d spring you from Sin’s grasp now that you’re up,” the woman added. “I’m Mandy, remember? My mate is the captain of theVarakartoom, that’s the ship you’re on.” Mandy, right, that was her name. Captain of the ship? I glanced at the sleeping child and his alien features, realizing she must be talking about that huge, snake-like guy, the stern one that had followed us to the med bay. There were hints of green in the black tuft of hair atop the baby’s head and gold freckles on soft, cherubic cheeks.
“Right, Mandy. Uh…” I didn’t know where to start; I had so many questions. I guessed I was grateful to find myself on a shipwith other humans. Not just Mandy, but several others standing in the hallway behind her, all of them women. No, that wasn’t quite right. My keen eyes picked out a lady to the left who had a pair of daintily pointed ears poking up through her blonde hair. Elfin in features, she could pass for human, barely, but she clearly wasn’t.
“Why don’t you come have some tea with us? I know this is probably a lot for you. Sin said you were the only survivor and that your ship predates the official formation of the UAR. Do you know how long you’ve been in stasis?” She had one hand free and reached for my arm to gently squeeze, while also firmly pulling me from Sin’s rooms. It was funny, one moment I’d been pretty furious he’d dared to lock me in, but now I was reluctant to leave. Where was that boldness that had made me accept a mission that might be a one-way trip?
