She walked past him and down the corridor without giving in to the overwhelming urge to run back and fling her arms around him.
She had a future to plan, and it didn’t include Dathan Phoenix.
Tears slid down her cheeks.
“Breaking orbit.One minute to interstellar speed.”
Dathan sat slumped in the copilot’s seat. He kept his gaze averted from the windows. He didn’t want to watch Beta7 or theOdysseydisappear from view.
Zayn engaged the singularity engine and they shot away. Dathan unstrapped and shoved his boots on top of the command console.
“Watch it,” Zayn snapped.
Dathan ignored him and plucked an object from his pocket.
A small cloth-wrapped item.
With a churning stomach, he opened it.
He sucked in a breath. The Terran timepiece.
He rubbed a thumb over the cracked face. The little thing wouldn’t get as much as theMona Lisa, but he knew a private collector who had a fetish for old Terran technology, and he’d pay a huge sum for it.
Dathan shoved the timepiece back into his pocket. Then he rose and headed for the galley. He returned with a bottle of kila, dropped back into his seat, and put his boots back on the console. He took a long swig. The clear liquid burned all the way down to his belly.
“You know what? I don’t want to look at your brooding face.” Zayn nudged Dathan’s boots so they thunked onto the floor. “Get out of my cockpit and take your stomach-burning booze with you.”
“Shut up.” Dathan took another swig, even though it hurt.
Zayn rolled his eyes. “You’re like a lovesick puppy that got tossed out in the yard. If you didn’t want Eos to leave, you shouldn’t have let her.”
“I said, shut up.” Dathan didn’t want to talk about her. He rubbed the heel of his palm over his aching chest. He didn’t want to think about anything. He wanted to get drunk, maybe let the kila burn a hole in his gut.
Zayn let out an exaggerated sigh. “Fine. Kill yourself, see if I care.”
Blessed silence.Dathan leaned back and closed his eyes. But an image of a smiling Eos, her cheeks flushed, her golden eyes glowing, seared into the back of his eyelids.
He opened them and stared out the windows. The stars were blurry trails smudged on the black of space.
“Why’d you let her go?”
Dathan sighed. “She’s too good for me.”
A snort. “You got that right.” Zayn’s voice lost the joking undertone. “But she’s crazy about you. Seemed to me, she fit our merry little band just fine. She even talked about going on other treasure hunts.”
She had?Dathan shook his head. “She’d hate it eventually. Wish she had that important job at the Institute.”
“Eos isn’t like that.” Niklas came up behind Dathan’s chair. “Do you think I want my Institute job back?”
Dathan glanced over his shoulder. “You hate the Institute. She might be happy for a while, but then she’d leave.” He wouldn’t survive.
“She’s not Mom, Dathan,” Nik said. “And you aren’t Dad.”
Dathan hunched down in the chair and lifted the bottle.
“Hunting gave her something the Institute never can, the freedom to pursue the digs she wants, adventure…you.”
Dathan lifted his head.
