by Kate Rudolph
Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, but she wrapped up the interview with a few more easy questions before the media units turned off. “So what’s the real story about those ships?” she asked, her posture sagging slightly and the tight smile dropping off her face.
Dryce just looked at her. Another part of his training had told him that reporters could be more effective than spies at ferreting out information. Even if they were no longer being recorded, it didn’t mean she wouldn’t use everything he told her. “I hope the drive here was pleasant. I know it’s a bit out of the way.”
Holly sighed, but gave up her pursuit. They chatted for a few minutes while her people cleaned up before leaving Dryce alone. Only once she was gone did he realize that he hadn’t flirted with her beyond what was needed to get the job done. It had come naturally before, and more than one reporter and crewmember were among his conquests. But not even for a second had he looked at Holly as anything but an adversarial emissary. She wanted information he couldn’t give, but he needed to use her to calm the populace. Whether she’d make a good bed partner hadn’t flitted across his mind.
Of course, even at his most promiscuous, Dryce hadn’t flirted with everybody. And before seeing Peyton, it was completely possible that he would not have tried to make a move on Holly. She was too sharp eyed to let his guard down around, even if only in joining their bodies together.
He’d heard that the denya bond was powerful. But even when he contemplated it, he’d wondered if it was powerful enough to override his normally voracious appetite. And he’d wondered if he would miss it. Though it hadn’t even been a full day yet, he couldn’t say that he did. He only wanted to find a way to meet with Peyton and woo her to his side and his bed.
He grabbed his comm since he had a few minutes between meetings and frowned at the message she sent.
Peyton: I don’t think I trust that pretty boy.
DF: Pretty boy?
A lick of jealousy lashed him, something so unfamiliar to Dryce that it took him a moment to figure out what it actually was. Who was she looking at? Why was he pretty? But then as he realized what she was actually saying, a sense of satisfaction suffused him. Whoever this guy was, she didn’t respect him or want to be near him. He wasn’t competition for Dryce.
Peyton: That alien that they keep interviewing. He’s so slick and charming that you just know he’s hiding something.
Dryce stared at his comm for a full minute as the words sank in. He was the pretty boy she didn’t respect. At least she thought he was charming? Not even that could soften the blow. A cold chasm threatened to open up in his chest at his mate’s rejection. A better man than him might have admitted who he was in that moment. He’d known that Peyton couldn’t know him, but hadn’t realized she might have seen him before, might have formed an opinion about him. And a poor one at that. There was only one solution.
He had to show her that he was more than a pretty face, more than slick charm. And he couldn’t let her know who he was just yet, not until she started to think better of him. He wondered if he should ask his fellow warriors for advice. They’d successfully claimed their mates in the last months, and some of them had endured contentious relationships before that. But he could already imagine Raze telling him that his only option was to be honest and show his mate just how faithful and true he could be.
But Dryce had no plans to lie. Not completely. They just weren’t going to talk about who he was until it was a bit more... convenient.
DF: I didn’t see the interview. We didn’t have media like that where I’m from. It was very isolated.
Peyton: Where’s that?
DF: An icy planet a long way from here.
Peyton: So you’re an alien? I didn’t realize that.
DF: Alien is a bit generic. I’m Detyen. You might have heard of us.
Peyton: Really?! Please don’t tell me that you know that guy, that I insulted your brother or something!
Along with her message she sent an animation of a small fluffy animal with huge eyes trying to hide itself behind its paws.
DF: Haha! My brother would have laughed at your message. He’s said much worse.
Peyton: Older or younger?
DF: He’s older by five years. We haven’t been close for a long time, but things have recently changed.
Peyton: I’m the older one. Ella is six years younger than me, but sometimes it feels like a century. She’s why I was at that bar.
Was her Ella the same one he’d been introduced to? Though the bond had sparked, he hadn’t managed a very close look at Peyton, but even from a distance they had the same dark hair and similar skin tone. But so many humans looked alike that it was often hard for Dryce to tell the ones he didn’t know apart. Then again, he was sure that many would say the same about the Detyens.
Peyton: I get worried. You hear all these stories about bad things happening, people getting abducted. Sometimes I think that if she’s out of my sight, she has no protection.
A beat passed while Dryce tried to formulate a response, but Peyton wasn’t done.
Peyton: I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Maybe it’s easier because I don’t know who you are.
DF: I will keep your secrets. Speak as much as you like.
But the next interviewer was already setting up and Peyton seemed to have work of her own. Despite the hiccup of her initial distrust, Dryce’s soul was light. He’d had a real conversation with his mate, and he knew more about her than he could have hoped to learn from a single glance. And soon enough he’d find a way to meet her in person. Even on the brink of battle, even with the Oscavians and Wreetans threatening their very existence, he felt happy, hopeful. He’d find a way to claim Peyton, and they’d beat the bad guys. But first he had to face the media.
PEYTON SPENT THE NEXT two days sending messages back and forth with her mystery alien. She still didn’t know his real name, and after more than a hundred messages exchanged it felt a little late to ask. And a part of her didn’t want to. The more anonymous he remained, the easier it was to tell him anything. And a part of her thrilled when she saw the Detyens coming through the building now. Could one of them be her DF? She still blushed to think that she’d accidentally insulted his associate in one of their earlier messages, but they didn’t discuss him much further than that.
And maybe Peyton had shied away from that topic. She hadn’t been lying when she called Dryce NaFeen, or Star Hottie as Jessa called him, a pretty boy, though if she were being honest, she knew he was all man. The media lights made his teal skin glow greener than she thought possible, and his dark eyes might have held the depths of the universe in them. The first time she’d caught him on an interview, she hadn’t heard a word he’d said, so enthralled by the look of him. He was made of muscle and self-assurance, a man who knew just how attractive he was and wasn’t afraid to use his charms to get what he wanted.
Yes, he was hot. But Peyton knew plenty of hot human guys, and any of them as hot as Dryce NaFeen were way too conceited for any normal person to deal with. And her own correspondent hadn’t exactly leapt to the guy’s defense. She didn’t normally feel so strongly about strangers, but there was just something about that guy that roused something in her. Something dark and old, something she didn’t want to look at too closely for fear that it might be far deeper than she could understand.
She put thoughts of DF and NaFeen out of her mind. The Detyens and the SDA leadership had finally finished with her lab and she was back with hundreds of new goodies to look at. They’d scavenged them all from a speeder from an Oscavian who had tried to abduct a human woman. He was somehow involved in the conflict that she wasn’t supposed to know about, and she’d been told that anything she discovered among his things could be necessary for the continued defense of Earth. And she’d been given three days. Three days, four assistants, and hundreds of parts to pore over. A robot couldn’t have done it, and she didn’t know how she and her team were going to manage a third of the project. Bu
t General Remington Alvarez himself had given her the task, and she wouldn’t fail.
She gathered Gordon, Fiona, Lilah, and Betty at the main table and took a deep breath. “You’ve all heard the rumors, right?” News traveled fast, especially among the assistants. Whatever she didn’t know, she was sure her minions did.
They all nodded and Peyton didn’t bother to ask what exactly those rumors entailed. Her kids understood that this was dire. “We don’t know exactly what’s coming, but it’s going to be bad. Things don’t move this fast around here unless the threat is on our doorstep. And given how hard they’ve been denying that anything’s wrong, I think we know that things could go belly up at any moment. Each of you needs to take one of the tables. I want you cataloging thoroughly and quickly. If you think something is unimportant, put it aside. The General thinks his team missed things, which is why it’s our turn now. We’re going to be here for a few days. If you’re not sleeping or eating, you’re here. Any objections?”
Her team shook their heads, all of them looking determined to do the job they’d been given. In two days they’d look exhausted, but right now they were ready to dive in.
“Let’s get to it.”
Her comm beeped and Peyton almost reached for it. She realized she hadn’t told DF that she’d be busy for so long, but she didn’t owe him the communication, no matter how much she liked it, and she couldn’t set a bad example by getting distracted before things had already begun. If anyone official needed to get ahold of her, they’d use the SDA comms that were built into the building. She turned off her personal comm without checking the message and stowed it in her desk. Then she got to work.
The hours melted away as she examined all of the tiny pieces of tech that had been stripped from the Oscavian ship. Though the designs weren’t common on Earth, the Oscavian Empire was so influential that she’d easily been able to study their schematics from records available. Everything she studied in front of her lined up with what she’d expected to see. There were a few obvious modifications, but most of the devices and tech they encountered had been mass produced by Oscavians and were available for sale from most shipyards and tech shops.
An official Oscavian military vessel would have had much more advanced tech. Instead of military grade security, she encountered only the barest encryption when she looked at the nav and records systems. It didn’t appear that the SDA had ripped through the system, though she was sure they’d grabbed as much information as possible. The man who had commissioned the ship had to have been incredibly ignorant of standard security practices, or he was so arrogant that he didn’t believe his ship could fall into enemy hands.
His loss was her gain.
She pulled the logs and fed them into the system, but didn’t try to decipher them; that was for the computer techs, not her. She dealt with the physical. And when her physical body started to protest the hunch she’d been sporting for several hours she straightened and couldn’t quite suppress a groan. It hurt to stand up and stretch, which was a sure sign that she’d been in one position for far too long.
Peyton looked down the table and almost slumped in defeat. She’d been sure that she’d cataloged enough to make a dent in the daunting number of items she had to work with, but after hours she’d barely passed two dozen. A glance at her fellow scientists showed that none of them were faring much better. Still, she reassured herself, they weren’t even through the first day of work. If they just kept going they would get it done.
Something beeped and Lilah jumped up as if she’d been bitten, the movement enough to draw the attention of everyone in the room. Her eyes scrunched together as she held up a small cylinder and examined it closely. She reached for a sensor and started to scan it and when the device continued to beep and blink madly, the look of determination on Lilah’s face could have turned a man to stone. Several minutes passed and Peyton wanted to offer assistance, but she feared that breaking Lilah’s concentration might set her even farther back. Finally the beeping and blinking subsided and Lilah slumped back, smiling. She looked over at Peyton and raised up the cylinder in her hand. “I think I’ve found something.”
Chapter Four
Sweat dripped from pores that Dryce hadn’t known could sweat as his breath heaved and he swung wildly, trying to land a hit against one of his attackers. He was half pinned and flailing to stop his closest opponent from getting a good hold, but that meant he couldn’t do much to ward off his other attacker. He’d started in a bad position, not as ready for the fight as he should have been, and he’d fallen to the ground in an embarrassingly short amount of time. But he wasn’t about to give up. Detyen warriors didn’t surrender, not even in the face of death. They’d have to knock him out or break him before he slumped down in defeat.
An opening showed itself and Dryce moved for it before he consciously thought to do so. One slip of his arm and a wrench of his shoulder sent the man on top of him flying onto his back with a dull thud and a groan of pain. But then the broad side of a forearm caught him in the face, stunning him for a moment, but not enough to take him back down. They exchanged blows, punching and kicking and parrying, neither strong enough to take the advantage.
A sweep at his legs from his second opponent made him jump towards the first, and they both crashed down, this time with Dryce on top. An arm wrapped around his neck from behind before he could pound the first man into the ground, but before Dryce could reach for it and do anything, a bell sounded and the man behind him let him go.
“Not too bad for a celebrity,” his brother, Raze, said from his position beneath him.
Toran clamped his hand on Dryce’s shoulder before stepping back to let him up. “Good showing,” he said.
The three of them backed up to the bench on the side of the small training room and grabbed towels and water. They were all covered in sweat and the room around them reeked of it. “You’re too much in your element, rolling on the ground like that,” Toran smirked as he took a deep drink.
Dryce shuddered. “Not when it’s my brother under me!”
Even Raze laughed at that, the sound no longer rusty after so many months of having his emotions back. It still filled Dryce with happiness to have his brother returned to him. As a soulless warrior, little remained of the man he’d once been, and it had pained Dryce every time they encountered one another. He’d made a point to pull back, to keep his distance. At the time he’d told himself that it would be easier for Raze if he acted like that, but he’d long since realized that he’d done it to protect himself. He knew Raze didn’t hold it against him, and at the time he hadn’t been able to feel the rejection, but now Dryce was making up for lost time, stealing moments with his brother during and after training when Raze wasn’t ensconced with his own mate.
“Is the coming battle weighing on you?” Raze asked quietly, the unexpected question enough to confuse Dryce.
He scrunched his face up in question. “No more than it weighs on any warrior. This is what we’ve all waited for.” Finally they had a chance to get justice for their ancestors, to end the threat that Yormas of Wreet and his allies posed to Earth and punish him for all the harms he’d done. Yes, a part of Dryce feared what could happen if things went wrong, but it was small and far outclassed by the battle hunger within him. He’d been made for this, had trained for it since he was old enough to hold a blaster. “Why do you ask?” They spoke quietly even though the training room was closed off from the rest of the gym. No one could overhear them, but still, speaking of doubts on the eve of battle was not something to be done in more than a whisper.
“Kayde said that you haven’t gone out for the last week. He asked me if you’d said anything about that.” The concern on Raze’s face was almost enough to make Dryce laugh.
Was he really such a scoundrel that a week without taking a stranger to bed was enough to have his friends worried for his wellbeing? He supposed it was better than having them judge him for his promiscuity, but he hadn’t realized that no one tho
ught that he was capable of sleeping alone.
Truly, he had suffered his restlessness over a few of the last nights, but it seemed that his Peyton liked to stay up late as well. They’d exchanged silly messages until well past midnight and while sleep still hadn’t come easy, he hadn’t felt any need to venture out to find a companion.
“It has nothing to do with the ships on the horizon,” Dryce promised. “A little more than a week ago I went out one night and I saw my denya.”
The two men beside him froze. “Your denya?” Toran asked. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because when I said that I saw her, that’s what I meant. We still haven’t met, haven’t bonded. I glimpsed her from across the room and... that was it.” He wished that he had a better image of her in his mind. She was mostly a silhouette of dark hair and soft skin. He would have asked for her to send him a picture, but if she asked the same in return she’d know who he was and he might ruin everything.
“So what are you doing about it?” Toran pressed. “You saw her once and that’s it? Have you made an effort to find her?”
“Things have been a bit busy lately, wouldn’t you say?” Dryce pointed out. “And we’ve been sending messages to one another. She dropped her communicator that night and I found it.”
“Then why don’t you meet?” Raze asked. “You can’t claim your denya over messages on a communicator.”
“Really? I hadn’t realized.” Dryce shook his head. He didn’t want to admit what she’d said about him, didn’t want to hear if his brother and his friend agreed that he was charming and slick with no substance. Dryce pushed himself off the bench and stretched. He was about to offer the men another round on the mat to keep from answering more questions before the wall comm activated. “NaLosen, NaFeen, and NaFeen, report to the third floor immediately.”
