"Not a bad idea," Kian agreed. "But only in theory. The women are not prepared to come up with anything like that, and they haven't been working on building a cover. They can't pull it off by morning. This can only be done with a thrall. The enhanced would need to thrall everyone in that enclosure to think that the women are in quarantine."
Yamanu could thrall and shroud the entire enclosure, but only if he was there to physically maintain it. It would evaporate once he left. Besides, Kian wasn't going to risk him to save a bunch of strangers. The risk-versus-gain ratio didn't compute.
"As I said, the enhanced don't have what it takes." Lokan lifted his empty coffee cup for Ogidu to refill. "The moment the women's absence is noted, it will be assumed that they escaped. The sector officer will order a lockdown, call for reinforcements, and start a search. The question is whether the lockdown will include the ships in the harbor. If it does, they are screwed."
No one said anything, and Kian was aware of his mother sitting very still and very straight in her chair. Amanda and Alena looked worried, and the fact that Amanda wasn't contributing her take on the situation meant that she considered it desperate.
She wasn't wrong.
"They must delay their mission by one more day," Onegus said.
"We can ask," Turner said. "But we can't make them."
Kian crossed his arms over his chest. "It's true that they are not under our command, and it's also true that we can't compel them, but they do need us, and we can threaten to withdraw our offer of support if they don't cooperate."
"Or we can do it a little more diplomatically." Onegus smiled. "We can give them our assessment, tell them we think the timing is undermining both missions, and hope they'll take it under advisement."
Kian snorted. "They will politely agree to do just that and do exactly what they've already decided to do. The chests are our priority, and the women and scientists are theirs. The only way to get them to cooperate is to use leverage."
He was talking a big game, but he wasn't convinced threatening their only allies on the island was the right move.
The eight powerful strangers were helping his people but answering to no one but themselves, and their involvement might propel the clan toward a direct confrontation with the Brotherhood on the Brotherhood's turf.
He could fight it. He could argue with Number One, marshaling every reason the timing was wrong, and at the end of it the Eight would move the women tomorrow morning anyway, and he would have spent his credibility and his goodwill buying nothing.
The alternative was to flow with it, to accept that the decision had been made and put the clan's weight behind making it succeed instead of resisting it. The realization he kept arriving at, no matter which way he turned the problem, was that the clanand the Eight were yoked together whether any of them liked it or not.
They needed each other.
He felt his mother's gaze on him and turned to look at her. He didn't need to explain to her that pushing the women's extraction forward meant the team in the basement was exposed to more risk, which meant a greater chance that the last two chests, one of which might hold Khiann, would be lost to a lockdown or a search or a third collapse brought on by haste.
"Do not weigh Khiann against them," she said, and her voice was strong and confident with none of the anxiety she must be feeling bleeding through. "It is not either or. We get them all out."
He nodded, then tapped his comms. "Yamanu. Tell Number One the clan's assessment stands. We think the morning move is dangerous and risks trapping the women in a locked-down harbor while you're still digging, and we'd strongly prefer they hold until tomorrow night." He drew a breath. "If the Eight move them anyway, which we expect they will, we will back the play with everything we have. We're going to make it work."
"That's what I thought you'd say." Yamanu sounded relieved.
Kian shifted his gaze to Turner. "We might need the contingencies after all. I hope we get lucky, and we don't need to use any of them, but we need to be ready to deploy them."
28
SULLHA
Yaaf's hands were everywhere, and Sullha writhed and moaned in pleasure she had never experienced before. It felt so right, so different from all the wrong she'd been subjected to. She wanted him to touch her everywhere. She wanted to feel the weight of his strong, nude body on top of her, his slick, warm skin sliding over hers, and his clean, masculine scent intoxicating rather than repulsing like all the others who had come before him had been.
She was dreaming, and she knew that because this wasn't her room in the dormitory, and Tomek wasn't sleeping next to her.
It was so strange that she was dreaming about a man and it wasn't a nightmare. It was the first time she'd had an erotic dream, and her body was responding in ways she hadn't known it could.
Yaaf's face was above her, and his expression was unlike any she had seen during coupling. He wasn't looking at her as if she was a vessel, a slave with no agency who had to please him or suffer the consequences. He was looking at her as if she was precious. He was looking at her with love in his eyes.
So much love.
And then the scene changed, and they were no longer alone.
The others were there, appearing suddenly, first as apparitions and then solidifying. Seven big males converging on the bed in the dark, watching, their faces all wearing the same expression, mirroring Yaaf's. The same wanting, hungry look coming at her from seven additional pairs of eyes, fixed on her bare body, her breasts, their gazes not full of love like Yaaf's but full of lust.
The pleasure and warmth curdled to horror, and she opened her mouth to scream…
