My kind solved everything without violence, and that was damn frustrating when it came to self-defense. As a result, I’d learned a million ways to break someone’s hold and slip away. I twisted my arm against his wrist, yanking my hair free, then ducked to the side and tucked myself into a roll. When I came to my feet, I was braced to run, to dive again and escape, my heart pounding furiously in my throat.
I blinked, confused, when I discovered that nothing was as it seemed. Thatcher had seemed a threat, the kiss changing from a claim out of passion to something akin to possession. He wasn’t where I thought he’d be; chasing me, fury still riding him in ways that made him dangerous. Instead, he had his back to me and stood in the open doorway of the elevator. Not to block me from leaving, but to stop someone else from entering.
“Are you okay, Ysa?” That was Ivo’s voice, calling out to me from beyond Thatcher. I could not see him, because the stupid human mercenary took up way too much space. I rose slowly from my crouch, my hands nervously smoothing over my braid. My mouth still tasted like Thatcher, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted Ivo to leave so he could kiss me some more, or to never see his stupid face again. Currently, I seemed to feel equal parts anger and desire for the bastard.
“Pretty sure you’re in more danger than I am. Leave,” I said to Ivo. He must have come to investigate when he heard the elevator doors and scented me, but I hadn’t shown up. I was equally sure that my denial of Thatcher having any claim on me was not the only thing that had set him off. It had started when I’d expressed seekingIvo and Grunn’s protection. Some of these mercenaries with mates had gotten extremely possessive and dangerous when they first found their mate. I didn’t kid myself into thinking I was Thatcher’s mate. Humans didn’t do fated mates, and even if that’s what this was, I doubted he’d get less dangerous and possessive over time.
All the red flags were back, and I should hate him for doing this to me, to my family, but my pounding pulse betrayed me. Istillwasn’t scared. I hadn’t even truly feared him when I’d broken his hold. My hand touched the back of my neck, where my braid began. Strands had gotten loose from the braid, and heat scalded my skin. Thatcher was in protective mode because of Ivo in the hallway, not angry because I’d blocked him from touching me further.
“He’s nuts, Ysa. We should call the captain…” Ivo’s voice trailed off when Thatcher lunged forward a step. I wasn’t quite sure what he said, because it was spat out so viciously, but it made my engineer back up with a rapid patter of footsteps. “Blazing stars, call him off if you can.” Ivo’s voice grew softer as he retreated all the way back into the engine room. I heard the soft hum of an energy shield as it engaged.
“Happy now?” I demanded of Thatcher. “I wasn’t in danger. That was just Ivo, damn it. You managed to scare my seasoned engineer away. You got what you wanted, so let me out.” Thatcher did not look back at me, but slowly rose from his protective, slightly crouched position. I thought he tilted his head just a tad, but he did not turn fully to look at me over his shoulder. He was a menacing figure in black, his long hair obscuring his face. I could not even see the edge of his jaw.
He wasn’t going to speak again. Whatever had happened in that elevator, the moment was officially over. He stepped aside slowly but did not move far. When he did look at me, I no longer saw any sign of fury in his eyes. He seemed calm, right down to the half-smirk he seemed so fond of wearing in my presence. He was daring me, with the jut of his chin, to walk past him, forcing me to brush against his body if I wanted to get out.
I was a nervous wreck, my legs trembling and my hands shaking, but he didn’t move, didn’t reach out. He let me walk down the hallway without following me, though his eyes tracked my every move. I ducked into the engine room and abruptly came up against the force field Ivo had erected. Grunn swore at him, his meaty paw a blur as he slapped the back of the Pretorian’s head. “Let her in, you idiot!”
The force field lowered the next moment, and I stepped into the familiar scents and sounds of the engine room with a shudder. Almost immediately, my sense of control was restored, my confidence surging. The bastard had done exactly what I’d feared and anticipated for months. After that brief moment this morning when I thought he might not care about me… I felt like I was back on solid ground.
I couldn’t help it; a smile spread across my face. I could tell both of my boys were confused by my reaction, and worried. Turning, I leaned back out of the doorway. Yup, he was still there. Thatcher had casually taken up a sentinel position in the hallway—a soldier standing at ease, but with his eyes alertly scanning everything around him. He was back in guard mode, like that moment in the elevator hadn’t happened.
Except that it had, and now everything felt different.
Chapter 5
Thatcher
Three days was not a long time, but Ysa made the hours stretch for what seemed like forever. She worked tirelessly, almost frantically, to figure out what was going on with the ship. There had not been a single blackout since I’d clawed out a sample of that thing in the walls. I might be antisocial, but I was not deaf. People were already talking about it like it was over, like we were headed to Strewn only to meet up with the gladiators of theVagabond.
They didn’t see what I did: Ysa slaving away in her workroom or at the many complex consoles in the engine room. Ysa forgoing sleep night after night to find answers. She was not the only one working hard, because Dravion came to consult with her at the oddest hours. They’d cross-reference their findings on the samples of the black sludge,shake their heads when that didn’t bring them any closer to answers, and part ways again.
She was too damn proud for her own good, unwilling to let someone else solve the problem for her. For us. But it was more than that; she was simply too kind-hearted and caring to absolve herself of any responsibility. She’d dismiss her two underlings for rest or food, and though they tried, they could not get her to leave her station. I was pretty sure she had not rebraided her hair or changed her clothes in at least forty-eight hours.
Now, we were approaching Strewn, and she was getting desperate. Desperate and exhausted. I didn’t need sleep all that much, not when the nanobots could sustain me for periods of time. I just needed to eat to keep going, which was why I always packed extra energy bars. Ysa… I didn’t think she’d touched the dinner Ivo had brought her a few hours ago. It was hard to tell because I couldn’t actually see her when I was barred from entering the engine room. It was a hard rule she’d declared when I’d first started guarding her, and since the engine room had only one entrance, I’d kept to it.
Now, though, I was starting to get ready to break that rule. For hours, I’d been waiting for her to come out so I could bodily haul her away from her self-appointed quest. She needed food and sleep, and I was damn well going to make sure she got it. I’d sworn not to have her but to keep her safe, and that meant protecting her from herself if it came down to it, too.
Over the ship-wide comm system, Aramon was announcing that we were coming in to dock at Strewn. We’d done a few stints in FTL to get here, butfor the last few hours we’d been cruising quietly. There was no need for us to strap in for a landing, because Strewn was a massive floating city in space—a shipyard of fabled proportions and skill. Any ship that rolled out of their construction line was bound to be a beautiful piece of work, coveted by governments and shipping magnates from all over the quadrant.
I’d set foot inside it only once and turned on my heel as fast as I could. It was a perfect excuse to escape being dragged along by Aramon on a bar crawl. I might have liked that once, before the Shadow Unit and the torture, but I much preferred avoiding crowds and tight spaces these days. Not because they scared me, but because I knew I couldn’t trust myself. One wrong move and I might start a fight and kill someone. To say I was twitchy these days was an understatement.
I heard Ysathea swear furiously in response to the announcement, and then a sound followed that I hoped I’d never hear again. She sobbed. My bold, clever, and devoted little engineer had burst into tears at the announcement. It was a sound so sad, so heartbroken that it screamed of pain. I was familiar with that kind of soul ache too, and an answering ache flared inside my chest. More than ever, I wished I could fix this for her, that I was clever enough to take away the burden she carried. I wasn’t, though; I was just a dumb grunt, a soldier.
“Enough,” I swore roughly. Her cries had gotten muffled, like she was already trying to pull herself together, and that only made me ache more. “Ysa, get your damn ass out here right now, or I swear I’m coming in, force field or not.” It wasn’t entirely an empty threat either. If she did try to erect a field to keep me out, chances were I could push through. Itwould hurt like a bitch, but there was something about the nanobots in my bloodstream that seemed to help with that, though only briefly—like I could make my body emit something that countered the force field’s energy. I’d managed to slip through a few so far, but it was an ace I liked to keep up my sleeve in case of emergency. This felt like an emergency.
Ysathea didn’t respond at first, and then she fell silent. I could not even hear her breathe, and my body moved of its own accord, stalking through the hallway until I found myself braced inside the wide-open doorway of the engine room. It could be sealed off with bulkheads when needed, but this door was always open, just not to me, per Ysa’s rules. I stood there, my fists balled and my body trembling with tension. Did I go in without her permission, or did I toe that one line I’d created in my head just a little longer?
I did not have to find out the answer, though I was pretty sure I knew it anyway; for Ysa, I’d break any rule. Even my own, or perhaps especially my own. She shuffled out of her workroom on weary feet, head down, braid undone from its normal position around her waist. I swore loudly, because she looked far worse than when I’d last been able to lay eyes on her. Never, not once in the two years I’d been with theVarakartoom’s crew, had I seen her with her braid hanging free. It was so long its beaded tip dragged against the floor, and there were no jaunty, cheerful clacks like normal.
“Ysa,” I said, but to my ears it sounded like I was begging. What had happened in the elevator a few days ago had plagued my mind and my dreams. I should never have kissed her, because now I knew I would never shake her. Humans did not mate for life, but I knew, I knew thatYsa was my one and only. Too bad I was too broken to be any good to her. I feared that what I’d done had also broken something irreparable between us, but her exhausted expression held neither fear nor judgment.
“What, Thatch? What do you want now? I thought you didn’t talk to me?” she snapped, far from her usual upbeat self. That was the sleep deprivation talking; Ulinial couldn’t handle it much better than humans could. My nanobots had no issue negating the side effects, I was fine, but she was not.
She had paused at least ten feet away, too far for me to reach out and snatch her up. My fingers flexed, my body shifting as I contemplated lunging in and doing it anyway. So what if she hated me, feared me? What did it matter if, in the end, she got what she needed? Food, rest, safety. I was not here to seduce her, to make her mine, as badly as I wanted that to be different. I was just here to keep her safe, even if that meant protecting her from herself.
Tilting my head, I forced myself to stay behind the invisible line. Should I answer? Should I speak again and let myself get drawn further into her world? It was too late already, anyway, a voice at the back of my head warned me. A voice of reason, or a voice of desperate hope. My brief moment of indecision solved the problem for me in the end. Ysa stepped across that invisible line with tired, shuffling feet. Her face tilted up, tears still drying on her cheeks. Her expression was a combination of “Solve this, Thatcher,” and “What now? Can’t you see I’m tired?”
I swept her into my arms, feeling not an ounce of guilt when she screamed in fright. I had not crossed the line; she’d come to me. Cradled against my chest, she squirmed anyway, but only weakly because she was so tired. My pace picked upas her struggles faded, and my worry spiked. She was exhausted, and I should have intervened sooner. Where were her males? The pair of engineers she’d adopted into her family should have been here to take care of her. Swearing under my breath, I accessed the processor embedded in my brain.
