"Auralyn," Wren barked.
She startled, looking in his direction with a lost expression.
"Not here," he said.
"But—" As if drawn by a magnet, Auralyn's gaze was pulled to Elena again.
"Discipline," Wren ground out.
Auralyn jerked like he'd struck her, but the reminder worked. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, her expression was composed and still, the previous emotion gone as if it had never been.
Graydon couldn't help but admire their control. But then, he hadn't really expected any less of someone of Wren's status and rank.
"I don't suppose I can trust you to stay put," Graydon said.
Elena flashed him a look, nearly identical to the one Kira got when she thought someone had asked a stupid question.
That was what he'd thought.
Graydon snagged her wrist, sliding a bracelet over it. He pressed his thumb to the clasp, satisfied when a spark of warmth slid into his hand.
"What's this?" Elena asked, shaking her wrist.
"Insurance."
Elena raised her eyes to his.
"As long as you're wearing that, one of us will always know where you are," he informed her.
Her face was a picture of indignant insult as she glanced up at Raider. "Are you going to let him do this to me?"
Raider pinched the bridge of his nose. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but yes, I think I am."
*
"What are you doing?" Jin asked as Kira fled past pit crews and dodged around landing racers.
"The contact reached out. We've got a meet."
Baran barreled after her, barely avoiding getting clipped in the head by a returning racer in the process.
"And I suppose they don't want any of our friends butting in."
"You suppose right." Kira ducked under the waveboard of a landing racer. Its heat nearly singed her hair as she rolled away from it.
"Why can't things ever be easy?" Jin asked.
Kira would really like to know that as well.
This wasn't the plan. Graydon wasn't supposed to recognize her. He wasn't supposed to send people to retrieve her. And she wasn't supposed to run from them.
Yet here she was, doing exactly that.
The departure from Ta Sa'Riel could be blamed on Elena and Odin, but this she was doing knowingly and on purpose. You could say she was acting under her own agency.
Jin groaned. "We don't have a choice."
Nope. They didn't.
