Chapter 1
The medical bay was fuller than I'd ever seen it, but not in a bad way. Since we'd sent Voss running back to corporate space, the Starbreaker had expanded our humanitarian mission. It took some convincing, but Torvyn had agreed: the time was right to help as many people as we could.
The soft hum of diagnostic equipment filled the air, punctuated by the quiet beeps of vitals monitors. Someone had dimmed the overhead lights to something gentler, a small kindness I'd suggested weeks ago. The faint antiseptic smell couldn't quite mask the recycled ship air, but I'd stopped noticing that months ago.
I picked up a chart from the bed closest to me and scanned it. A young woman who had been trapped on a corporate colony. Corporate jargon for a planet where kidnapped women were trafficked, then rented to the highest bidder. I shuddered.
The Knights had done incredible work helping people long before they picked me up, but I'd wanted to do something with a little more intention. A little more care. So this was our new focus.
"How are you feeling, Alicia?" I asked.
The young woman glanced up at me. She couldn't have been more than nineteen, with close-cropped hair that was just starting to grow back, probably shaved for "hygiene compliance" at whatever facility had held her. Her eyes darted around the bay as if she were waiting for something to leap from the shadows and drag her back. I leaned down and gently took her hand.
"Hey. Look at me," I said, locking eyes with her. "You're safe here. Nobody is going to take you. All you need to focus on is healing, okay?"
Her gaze flicked around once more before her shoulders finally sagged. She gave a slight nod.
I squeezed her hand. "Good. Your vitals look better than they did a few days ago." I raised my hand to her chin and gently angled it to the right. "That eye is healing nicely. The bruising is almost gone."
Alicia offered me a tentative smile. "You should see the other guy," she said softly.
I laughed and cupped her face. "You've got a lion in you. If you need anything, just let one of the nurses know, okay?"
I remembered what it felt like to be where she was. Not the same circumstances, but the same fear, the bone-deep certainty that safety was temporary, that someone would come to collect what they owned. The difference was that I'd found four men willing to burn the galaxy to prove that fear wrong.
She nodded.
A communications alert pinged in my ear.
"Kira, we need you on the bridge," Torvyn said. His tone was clipped.
That wasn't a good sign.
Torvyn was always wound tight, but calm under pressure. A lifetime of fighting enemies ten times your size would do that. He didn't give in to anxiety, the kind that would have crippled me in a previous life. So the fact that I could feel urgency in his voice, and through the Tether, set my nerves on edge.
I stood, rehung Alicia's chart at the foot of her bed, and exited the medical bay.
The bridge doors whooshed open, and I stepped inside.
Torvyn stood rigid at the central console, jaw tight, knuckles white against the edge of the display. Lyrin ran probability algorithms, his usual commentary notably absent. Kaedren checked weapons systems even though we weren't under immediate attack; his movements were efficient but tense. Vaelix muttered about code structures and tracking protocols, his analytical mind already dissecting whatever they were looking at.
Two months of rescues, disrupted convoys, and small victories had almost made me believe we could keep winning.
I'd gone from having no one to having four dangerous, brilliant men who treated me like I mattered. I'd sent the corporate bastard who owned my life running for cover and made him pay me what I was worth in the process.
Life was good.
I should have known better.
Their voices were low and sharp, clipped exchanges cutting through the bridge's usual ambient hum.
I felt it before I fully understood it, the edges of their emotions through the Tether. Dread. Anger. Something that felt like guilt. But the full weight of it was muted, carefully contained.
They were shielding themselves from me.
A prickle of unease crawled down my spine.
"Hey, boys," I said lightly. "What's going on?"
