“He’s not going to make it,” Sin said, cool and collected, like it was any other day and he wasn’t talking about the death of what was surely a friend. I shook my head, unwilling to believeit, opened my mouth to protest, but a loud explosion rocked us then. Sin lunged, curling his body around me, pressing me down to the earth. My ears rang; I tasted ashes in my mouth, and something else, something sticky and coppery.
There was smoke and dust all around us, stinging my eyes and clinging to my skin. It took Sin several long seconds to allow me to shift, and even then, it was only so I could lift my head and look. He kept me pinned low beneath the protective shield of his body, as if he expected danger to strike again at any moment. Then the call came: “All clear!” It echoed from several directions, and only after the last call sounded did Sin let me rise again. I did not fail to notice how Sin had thrown both of us over Jaxin’s body. If he was doomed to die, as my pessimistic mate seemed to believe, why do that?
The smoke was clearing slowly, dust settling, but in the distance, a low rumble sounded. “Over here!” Sin shouted, rising to his feet and waving a hand. “Medic! Man down.” The words had several of the mercenaries leaping out of various hiding places and rushing to our side. One of them was a male eerily similar to a fox on two legs, down to the sharp snout, wicked grin, and pointed ears. He wore a big pack with a bright symbol emblazoned on the side, which I had to assume marked him as the medic.
Sin pulled me away then, turning me from Jaxin’s prone form and tucking me into his arms. The way he made me press my head against his chest, obscuring my view, made me feel like he was trying to protect me from seeing the worst of it. “Dravion is coming,” he said against my dusty curls. “Maybe he’s not lost yet.” The droning sound was louder now, and I hoped—prayed—that he was right.
Chapter 23
The Sineater
I refused to let go of Frederique, even long after the fight with the Shade Stalkers was over. Asmoded had arrived with backup just in time, but it would have been a hard, deadly fight if not for the way Jaxin had already wounded the larger of the pair. Now that the dust had begun to settle, I gave the whole battle site a hard look over—tracing the tracks in the soft earth, the strikes and scorch marks on the trees, and the two large Shade Stalker corpses. It all told a tale, and I made sure I read it—memorized it—beginning to end.
Dravion had arrived in just as timely a fashion as the captain had. Likely, he’d crawled into the shuttle’s pilot seat the moment Asmoded and the crew had raced into the woods to our location. He’d parked the shuttle badly, and Aramon was circling it and swearing over each scratch and bump, Solear on his heels, a snarl on his face that had more to do with his anxiety for Jaxin than the shuttle’s damaged paint job.
“Don’t look,” I said to Frederique for the third time. As if shielding her from the gruesome sight of the Doc working on Jaxin’s terrible chest wound would shield her from everything. She’d already faced the Shade Stalkers, fought with that water-worldthingthat had taken control of her former, traitorous crewmate. She’d seen plenty, but I could not stop myself from doing this. My hands smoothing over her spine, checking again and again that she was uninjured. Val cradled her body in a protective casing, like she protected mine, but still I feared thatshe was hurt somehow. Like Jaxin. It was too easy to picture her lying there in the dirt, eyes glassy, chest bleeding.
“I’m okay, Sin,” she said, probably had already more times than I’d told her not to look. “We made it. And hey, bonus: you guys killed the Shade Stalkers, so mission complete, right? Now you get to come home?”Home.That brought the whole world abruptly to a grinding, screeching halt.Home.What did that mean, that one simple word?
Once, I would have said that home did not exist for a male like me. Home was something for normal males, kind males, softer males than me. Now? I knew home was found in wide green eyes and springy curls. Home was an unreserved smile of understanding and kindness. Home was having Frederique in my arms, in my bed, part of my world. Maybe home even fit a certain ship and a certain crew, with loud, rough, brave people—and things like loyalty.
My eyes flicked from Frederique to Asmoded, who stood atop the crashed ship my mate had arrived in. His expression was serious but calm as he took in the costly damage to his fleet and the dead pile of shadow, tentacle, and misshapen ex-human that had caused it. He must have sensed my look, because his golden eyes lifted to meet mine. Then he nodded, and that was it.
Yeah, okay. Even a male like me could find home, I had it, and I was going to fight to keep it. But what about Val? She felt calm, smooth, integrated with me, but there had been a lot of chaos, and emotions had been running high not long ago. How was I going to see to her needs while keeping Frederique and my place on theVarakartoom? I’d have to bite the bullet and talk to Dravion.
The male was tentacle-deep in Jaxin’s chest right now, so that had to come later. For now, I’d settle into old patterns and familiar tasks—with a twist, because my mate was not going anywhere. Not ever, now that she had admitted she loved me. Me. I was not going to let her take that back.
“You two, secure that corpse for safe containment and transport. Dravion will want to study it,” I said, pointing at two grunts nearby who were standing around. They were armed and alert, but they might as well make themselves even more useful, and it was definitely going to be useful to study the thing that came off that water world. Asmoded already had others securing the perimeter, but I tagged Mitnick next, to make sure he had a drone grid up around us. “Contact the Xionian contract holder, too, see if they’ll pay extra for two Shade Stalker bodies to dissect.”
It took hours to fully secure the site again, to deal with the fallout of this battle, and the Xionian parties holding our contract. I never let go of Frederique, but once Dravion had flown back with Jaxin (alive but barely) and the corpse, she began to flag. I slung her onto my back then, holding her in place with Val’s aid.
We had to haul the crashed flyer away with a shuttle, back to theVarakartoomfor repairs, secure the fences of the building site, and wait for the Xionians to get their asses into gear to retrieve the Shade Stalker bodies for study. Only then did we all fall back to the building site, and Asmoded finally agreed to let Frederique and me go back up to theVarakartoom.
“Incoming transmission,” Mitnick announced the moment I followed the captain aboard our second shuttle. He was by the helm, leaning in close between the Asrai twins, and Aramon wasmid–elbow strike to the ribs. The stoic Mithrakon warrior barely seemed to notice the sharp blow and fearlessly leaned in closer despite the warning growl Solear emitted.
I ignored the scuffle, quickly silenced, when Asmoded approached. Saisir was watching from the open hatch, the captain’s son protecting the shuttle with his high-powered rifle and his sharp eyes. This should be a safe place, and soon we’d be out of here. I shifted Frederique off my back gently and set her down in the jumpseat to secure her flight harness. She was smiling that smile that twisted my insides up and made me feel that new thing called home. How could she be this calm—and this happy—after what we’d just been through?
“It’s called hope, Sin,” she said, as if she’d read my mind. “Jaxin was alive when Dravion took him up to the ship. That means he has a chance. And you and I, we’re back together, and Davidson is definitely dead this time. So yeah, it’s easy to feel happy and relieved.” Easy? No, I didn’t believe that for a minute. It took strength, bravery, to turn this situation into that, but I could not deny feeling the same way. Hope. What a strange, foreign word. It was as new to me as “home” was. And if we were talking of new things, love. Not that I would admit that one out loud, here inside this damn shuttle, where everyone could overhear.
“Sin, you’ve got a visitor,” Asmoded broke in on the private moment shared between my mate and me. I jerked my head up, looking at him in shock and a bit of confusion. I did not have visitors; the only people I cared to know were part of theVarakartoom’s crew. This had to be a mistake, but the captain insisted there was someone waiting on the ship for me. “Handle it,” he said firmly as he moved to leave the shuttle. “I don’t like strangers on my ship.”
The twins would ferry us up, then fly back down with new supplies and extra crew. While some of the males—injured, though none of them badly, would be coming up with us to seek treatment now that Dravion had been forced to return, nobody was expecting trouble at the construction site. Still, it was better to be prepared. At least with the Shade Stalker pair dead, Xio was ready to send in its construction workers again to continue the work. Now it should be a simple security job facing nothing more serious than unruly bovines, clever thieving birds, and the occasional bold Xionian miscreant hoping to get rich off the expensive building supplies. Nothing this crew couldn’t handle without me, especially with Asmoded staying behind.
Frederique held my hand as the hatch closed and the shuttle lifted off. She didn’t say it, but I could sense her nerves about being on a ship so soon after crashing in one. I said nothing, but Val seemed less interested than normal in siphoning off the fear and feeding on it. She had slid away from our bodies to take on her Gracka shape, and it was definitely taking up more space than she normally did. Black smudged her haunches and shoulders, as if she’d rolled in soot, and I tried not to let the sight of it fill me with disquiet.
A symbiont was supposed to be black. This could just as easily be a sign that she and I had finally integrated and fully bonded—that she was healing and becoming just like her brothers and sisters from the Ragnarok. Except, I could not believe it would happen just like that, and shehadfought the black, sludgy, tentacled thing from the water world. A thing that had possessed and mutated the human body of Davidson could perhaps infect—and do the same to—my symbiont…
“Who do you think it is?” Frederique asked quietly. Her free hand fidgeted with a tear in the form-hugging pants she wore, pulling on a loose thread and making the gap bigger, exposing a stretch of silky thigh and tanned skin. My eyes latched onto that strip of tantalizing flesh, blood rushing through my veins, heat rising. It took me too long to figure out what she’d asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t even care all that much. Whoever it was, I doubted it was important. Likely, this was a mistake. I’d drifted slowly from the Alpha Quadrant to the Zeta Quadrant in my long life, but I hadn’t made friends anywhere until I met Asmoded. I had not considered how empty that made my past sound until now. Val had always been the only companion I needed, the only one that mattered. I swear, it felt like she purred in response to the thought, but she did not make a sound. I’d never truly been able to feel anything positive from her before, so I was certain I was imagining it.
Neither of my ladies said anything further during the quiet shuttle ride up. There were stares, of course, from the guys sharing the ride with us. That included a few smug ones from Aramon and some muttered comments about how he’d “get some” from his own mate once we docked. I did not want to consider what he meant by “get some.” I was simply holding Frederique’s hand. It wasn’t even worth the ribbing, and the rest of the crew was smart enough not to try.
By the time we were docking, I was antsy, my entire body tense. This was very far outside my comfort zone. I was never the one under scrutiny, part of the ship gossip, let alone its main topic. It was very tempting to pull my fingers free from Frederique’s grip, to slide away, just to make it stop. Then I saw how she’d leaned back in her seat, eyes at half-mast, exhausted once again after allthe stress and danger. Her fingers were lax in my grip, but her thumb occasionally feathered across my skin. She drew comfort from that single point of contact, I could see it; stars, I could feel it. I didn’t draw away.
When we left the shuttle, we were met by a crowd waiting beyond the airlock. It had only docked temporarily, as it would return to Xio shortly with supplies for those who had remained behind. That meant there was no large hangar bay to disappear into, only a narrow hallway. To get out, we had to go straight through the crowd.
At the front, in two orderly lines, were the grunts that had been left on theVarakartoomto guard it. They were clad in their armor, armed and ready, with packs of supplies on their shoulders. They parted neatly to let us through, a practiced move they made as a unit. Beyond them, Mandy stood with two more of the ship’s females, though there was no sign of Ysa, the only one I wanted to have a chat with now that I was here.
