by Tasha Black
But he hadn’t killed her just now, though he had lost himself to the rage.
Either she was a valiant fighter or some part of him recognized her as his mate and could not harm her.
He hoped it was both.
5
Anna
Anna threw open the metal door and dashed into the darkness beyond.
Dim lights flickered to life in the soffit, showing her she was in a sleeping chamber. It was empty, of course. The nightlights operated automatically.
She leaned against the wood paneled wall, gasping for breath, trying to keep her mind clear in the face of the terror she felt.
The drone at her wrist was still silent.
“BFF19?” she whispered, tapping at the dock with her index finger.
Nothing.
“I have to get out of here,” she murmured to herself, striding across the chamber and back. “I would have been better off on the pleasure ships.”
“No.”
The masculine voice came from the shadows just inside the chamber door.
She wasn’t alone.
“H-hello,” Anna said.
The shadows seemed to move and she drew back, remembering the thing she had just escaped.
“I won’t hurt you,” the voice said. It was deeper now, and something about it was almost hypnotic.
“Who are you?” she asked, moving closer.
Anna’s instincts told her to be afraid, but something about that voice cut right to the heart of her and let her know everything would be okay.
Something warm touched her hand, enveloped it. She didn’t pull away.
“I am Leo.”
A man stepped out of the shadows. He was enormous, and naked except for a length of white fabric knotted around his hips like a loincloth.
Anna’s hand felt tiny in his. She pulled it back self-consciously, even as she lost herself in his warm brown eyes.
She’d been so emotional about not seeing a tree for so long. Part of her mind wondered if he seemed gloriously handsome to her only because it had been just as long since she’d seen a man.
“What’s your name?” he asked, his voice caressing her.
“Anna,” she said, unable to think of a single syllable to add to her answer.
“Anna,” he repeated.
Looking at him was like looking into a black hole. She felt inexorably drawn in, dizzy as if the whole room were sliding toward him too. Her heart strained to beat to another rhythm - she wondered if it was his.
“Anna,” he said again, reaching out a hand as if to stroke her cheek.
A high-pitched beep and a whir issued from her wrist and BFF19 shot into the air, humming like a hornet as she folded herself into a shape that reminded Anna of a paper airplane.
“BFF19,” Anna cried, delighted to see her electronic friend was back.
“Apologies,” BFF19 said primly. “I had to reboot.”
“Are you okay?” Anna asked.
“I have not yet run diagnostics,” BFF19 said. “But all systems appear to be active now, except comms.”
“Good,” Anna said, feeling relieved.
There was an awkward moment when she wondered if she was supposed to introduce her new friend to the drone.
Technology had come so far since her own time. There was much to learn about how it worked, but more to learn about how to interact with it. Back on the Stargazer she had embarrassed herself pretty much constantly by thanking the robotic dishwasher, cooks and cleaners.
“Leo, this is BFF19, my drone assistant,” she told Leo hoping it was good enough to have said both their names.
“Assistant?” BFF19 repeated. “I have been promoted.”
“Sure,” Anna agreed wearily, having messed up yet again. “Just in time for you to remove me from this ship.”
“You can’t go out there,” Leo said.
The suddenness of his statement seemed to surprise even him.
“Why not?” Anna asked.
“Something bad happened on this ship,” he said. “We don’t know what’s out there.”
“Well something bad is in here. It almost killed me,” she retorted. “BFF19, how long would it take you to get me back to the Stargazer?”
“We don’t have communications,” BFF19 reminded her. “I could get you out of here but where would I take you?”
“Doesn’t this thing have escape pods?” Anna asked.
“You can’t leave,” Leo repeated.
His voice sent shivers down her spine and she felt her cheeks flush.
Annoyed with herself, Anna spun on him.
“Why not?” she asked. “Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?”
He opened his mouth and closed it again.
“Please don’t go,” he said, his jaw tight.
“The escape pods will not have been maintained or test deployed per the manufacturer’s specifications,” BFF19 said. “The Stargazer dropped you off first, then headed to two other drop points. When it circles back within range for comms to work, I will signal for pick-up.”
“How long will that be?” Anna asked.
“That will be dictated by human pilot choice,” BFF19 said. “I cannot estimate.”
Anna collapsed on the bed.
“With your permission, I will now run diagnostics,” BFF19 said.
“Permission granted,” Anna said.
The little drone promptly folded herself into triangles, clicked back into Anna’s wristband and went silent.
“I will watch over you,” Leo said.
The words settled around her aching heart too perfectly.
“Who are you?” Anna asked again, fighting the feeling.
“I am Leo,” he said.
“No,” she said, sitting up. “I mean, why are you here? Are there any other people?”
He shook his head sadly. “No, we are the only living things on this ship.”
“Besides the forest,” Anna said.
“Besides the forest,” he said, smiling down at her.
“Are you here to salvage?” she asked, worried that he might be a competitor, but also pretty sure he would have salvaged himself some pants by now.
“No,” he laughed.
The sound tickled her ears and made her insides feel warm.
“Then what are you doing here?” she asked.
“I was here to guard the people on board the ship,” he said carefully.
Anna snuck a look around the chamber.
It looked like a hotel bedroom from her own time.
“When?” she asked.
“I’m not actually sure,” Leo said. “I woke up just a few hours ago, but I have a feeling I’ve been out for a long time.”
If this ship had been here as long as Anna suspected, Leo didn’t know the half of it.
“What happened?” she asked, instead of enlightening him. That wasn’t likely to be a fun conversation.
“I don’t remember,” he said, shaking his head.
“You don’t remember what happened?” she asked.
“I don’t remember any of it,” he said. “I don’t even remember getting on the ship.”
“Then how do you know you were supposed to be guarding people?” she asked.
He laughed, but it was a bitter laugh this time.
“That’s the only reason someone like me would be on a ship like this one.”
She studied him, wondering what he meant by someone like me. He was a perfect male specimen - tall, muscular, dark hair, strong masculine jawline and those sparkly brown eyes. She could think of lots of reasons someone might want to have him around.
Just then the lights in the soffit went out, plunging the room into complete darkness.
Anna cried out in surprise.
Then Leo’s hand was wrapped around hers again.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s the ship’s way of telling us it’s time to sleep. There’s no night and day out here. At least not in the way I’m guessing you’re used
to.”
“No,” she agreed, thinking of Tarker’s Hollow and the sun setting over the college woods.
“Were you born on Terran-3?” he asked her.
“Earth,” she said. “I lived in a small town with trees like the ones in the bio-dome.”
“Oh,” Leo said, looking a little surprised. “That sounds nice.”
Anna was getting used to that reaction from everyone who found out where she was from.
“It was nice,” she agreed. It was a pity she hadn’t appreciated how nice it was when she was there.
“Why did you leave?” he asked, echoing her own train of thought.
“I was bored,” she said. “I worked for my family’s cafe. My parents were very strict and they needed my help. I knew it was going to have to be marriage, college or the army if I wanted to get out on my own with their blessing.”
“You did not choose marriage,” Leo said.
“No,” Anna agreed, smiling. “I didn’t want to go from reporting in to one family right into being accountable to another one.”
“So instead you went into space,” Leo said.
“Yes, the cadet program opened up and it was everything I could have wanted. Free training, free room and board, and a chance to explore the universe,” Anna said. “Just four years of service and then I’d have real freedom and real skills.”
“So what are you doing here?” Leo asked.
It was a fair question. The space cadet program would never have dumped her on a scavenging mission like this.
It hit her again that he didn’t know how long he’d been asleep.
“Something went wrong,” she said carefully. “I was recruited out of Philadelphia, a city on Earth, with two other women. They put us in stasis to launch us to the training center.”
“That is common practice,” Leo agreed. “What happened?”
“The wormhole to Earth… closed behind us,” Anna said, wishing her voice hadn’t wavered on that last word. “And the force of it launched us past our landing point. We were lost.”
“How did you end up here?” Leo asked.
“I-I don’t really know,” Anna said. “We were in stasis for a very long time. Then our pods were found and auctioned off.”
“Someone sold you?” Leo sounded horrified at the prospect.
“It could have been worse,” Anna said. “The woman who bought us - the captain of the Stargazer - is committed to saving as many women from being sold to the pleasure ships as she can. That’s why we’re salvaging. Each of us has to earn back what it cost Mama to buy us so she can free more women. But some stay on after that. ”
“She’s your mother?” he asked.
“No, but everyone calls her that.”
Anna pictured Mama, the small woman with the stern posture and the mysterious silver eye patch, and wondered how she could possibly describe her.
“It sounds like indentured servitude to me,” Leo said doubtfully.
“When I woke up she was there waiting for me. She nursed me back to health, and then she had to explain it all,” Anna said. She paused, biting her lip thinking about it.
“That she had purchased you?” Leo asked.
“That the worm hole closed,” Anna said. “That centuries had passed. That everyone I’d ever known was gone.”
In the silence she wondered if he was working it out, putting together what he had missed himself.
“Your family is gone?” he asked softly.
“I said my good-byes when I left Old World,” Anna said. “We knew I might not see them in person again. But I assumed there would be communications.”
“That’s terrible,” he said.
“It was worse for Angel,” Anna said, thinking of her poor friend.
“Who is Angel?”
“She and Raina were the other two cadets that were found with me,” Anna explained. “Raina is like me, she knew she would never go home again. But Angel’s brother was already a cadet. She thought she would find him and they would have a life together.”
She pictured dark-haired Angel screaming in agony on the floor of the Stargazer when Mama finally made her understand that her brother was dead, that he would have been dead for more than a hundred years now.
She wondered if Leo would be doing the same thing in a few minutes, when it all began to sink in.
“So she trained you to salvage,” Leo said. “You don’t look like a privateer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anna asked.
“I meant that most privateers are scrabbling around the wreckage a mile a minute. And they use climbing gear and looting goggles,” Leo said.
“I’ve got that stuff too,” Anna retorted. “I just hadn’t gotten it out yet.”
“I see,” Leo said.
“It’s actually my first mission,” Anna admitted.
“She put you on a ship this size for your first mission?” Leo asked.
“Well, it was kind of weird,” Anna said. “There was a signal as if it were coming from something big like this, so we came to the area, but there were only a couple of smaller vessels. Mama sent out the crew to tag. And then when they were all out we drifted close enough to see what was here. Her comms weren’t working, something about this area seems to mess with long-range communication, so she couldn’t call the others back in. The only choice was to send us.”
“That wasn’t the only choice,” Leo said.
“Our mission is bigger than any one person,” Anna said, vaguely amused to find herself repeating Mama’s words. “There’s enough loot here to free a whole crew of cadets. But if someone else came upon it first, we would get nothing. And there was no guarantee the smaller prey the experienced scavengers were after would yield enough to put fuel in the Stargazer. I volunteered to go on the first ship.”
He was silent for a moment and it occurred to her that they were alone in a sleeping chamber together, and he was kneeling by her bedside. Suddenly she was too aware of his big hand around hers, and the warmth of him, so close to her.
6
Leo
Leo clung to the female’s hand. Emotion flowed through him, playing him like a Targradian minstrel.
He was a barbarian, but her presence made him feel refined and almost human.
Yet the things she had said…
“You are so brave,” he told her.
He swore he could feel her smile in the darkness.
He longed for the words that would bring him from his place on the floor into her arms.
Think of those marks on the wall.
His inner voice reminded him of what he was, and what he had become. He couldn’t claim her, shouldn’t even try.
Yet he hadn’t hurt her. And he didn’t want to hurt her now. He couldn’t imagine doing anything but sacrificing all he had to protect her.
A high-pitched beep broke the silence as a green light illuminated Anna’s wrist.
“Diagnostics are clear,” the little drone announced. “I also took the liberty of scanning my feed thus far.”
“Great,” Anna said, sounding as if she wasn’t sure what that meant.
“All contents of this ship indicate acquisition per the Privateer’s Handbook 2050 to 2099 - Post Collapse,” BFF19 said.
“Okay,” Anna replied. “That’s not so far from my time. I’ll be able to recognize some things maybe.”
“Protocol is to use the Privateer’s Handbook 2050 to 2099 - Post Collapse,” BFF19 said.
“Sure, of course,” Anna said. “I’ll use the handbook.”
Her voice was like music. Leo struggled to pay attention to the conversation between woman and drone. It was an odd exchange, in which the drone seemed to be dictating the terms and the human to be following them.
“The lighting indicates it is time for resting,” BFF19 pointed out.
“Yes, Leo was telling me that,” Anna said. “I’ll go to bed and then in the morning we’ll begin our hunt. Do you think the door will lock?”
&nb
sp; His heart pounded with lust at the sound of his name in her mouth, and he yearned to crawl into bed with her and feel that soft sweet body against his.
No. You don’t know what you’re capable of.
He forced himself to let go of her hand.
“The door locks from the inside,” he told her. “Be sure to lock it behind me.”
“You said you would watch over me,” she reminded him.
The tinge of sadness in her voice nearly broke him. He couldn’t help but wonder if she noticed any fraction of the mystical bond that had formed between them.
“I will,” he told her. “But you need your sleep, and it’s better if I can see the doorway and the approach to the chamber.”
“I suppose so,” she agreed after a moment. “Are you okay?”
He wondered briefly what she could mean. Did she sense the conflict within him?
“I mean, can you find a comfortable place to rest?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he said tightly, forcing himself to the doorway. “Sleep well. And secure this door when I leave.”
He stepped into the hallway, but waited until he heard the hiss of the lock before he moved from the door.
The view over the trees called to him and he went to the glass, placing his palm against it as she had done when he first saw her.
He closed his eyes and saw her again, saw the helmet come off her head, the russet hair flowing, felt the call of his blood to hers.
It was odd to have a human for a blood mate.
Humans were soft and languid. They were also greedy. And most of them held barbarians in contempt.
Though this one was too innocent to know yet that he wasn’t worthy of her.
Claim her now, before she can learn.
The demand in his blood was nearly impossible to ignore, yet he could not answer it. Such a union could only bring misery, whether he killed her in his passion or merely mortified her before her sisters when she learned what he truly was.
Leaves fluttered behind the glass and he felt a chill move into his heart as well. Let it freeze - he didn’t need it now. What use was a heart if he could not bond with his blood mate?
He let his thoughts drift to other aspects of Anna.
She had said the strangest things.
