Utto laughed angrily. “See. Such a liar. She lies with her smiles. With her eyes. Go ahead. Look at Rennie, Feola. Look at him while he gropes your tits, and smile for us.”
She widened her smile even as Rennie’s pinches hardened and his gropes grew more aggressive.
Someday, I will not be so weak. We’ll see about retribution then.
But for now, she only smiled up at Rennie’s odious, handsome, leering face.
“Fuck. I love tits,” Rennie breathed.
They went back to their joking, with Feola seated beside them, ears buzzing like sirens had taken up residence within her skull, her breasts bare for their gaze. They talked of women, septusine, and Rennie’s father, a senator on Argentus. And all the while, she grinned like a vapid, brainless fool and tried to escape to some other place in her mind.
She was ashamed to admit a certain sickening gratitude that Utto didn’t push it further. But it was only a matter of time before he decided to share more of her with his cousin. The clock was spinning.
He and Rennie prepared to leave to get drunker at one of Romeo-Two’s bars.
Soon, she promised herself. Soon, I will be gone from here, and he will never touch me again.
The next time Rennie touched her was after breakfast, while Utto was in the bathroom.
Rennie followed her to the sink again, where she was washing their dishes from breakfast. His breath was hot behind her ear. “He’ll let me do anything I want to you. He’s afraid of me.” He licked her ear, pressing his erection against her bottom, letting her feel its threat.
When his teeth closed over the skin of her neck, her hands shook so badly she had to set down the plate lest it break.
She hadn’t even noticed when the water grew so hot it steamed and scalded her hands, turning them raw and red.
He backed away slowly.
When Utto returned from the bathroom, Rennie was already seated nonchalantly on the sofa, staring at the news, and she had the tap on cool, soaking her burning hands.
“Ready to head to practice?” Utto asked.
She didn’t turn around as they rustled and clinked behind her, gathering up their knives.
Utto kissed her cheek in passing.
“Goodbye, Utto,” she whispered, and it was another lie.
She would see him again. Someday. She swore it.
The doors hissed shut behind them.
With shaking hands, she slid open the drawer that held the comm. She’d charged it yesterday when he’d left.
Just holding the comm—a link to the rest of the universe, a promise of escape—steadied her nerves. She wanted to contact Ajax with a physical pull that set her heart pounding.
Clutching a white pillowcase, she dropped the comm into it with the canteen and rations she’d amassed in the last twenty-two days, and the towel-wrapped slicing knife she’d taken. Just in case.
The comm rattled against one of the ten small vials containing the viscous white fluid that made her stomach twist with revulsion, but would likely provide the only hope her ridiculous plan had of success.
She took a deep breath and headed to the back of Utto’s chambers, to the bathroom. She stepped atop the small raised dais that held the toilet. Reaching over her head, she slid back the grated black hatch that led to the base’s air ducts.
The access panel wasn’t large, not at all. Utto would barely be able to get his fat head through the rectangular opening, but it was just large enough for her to wiggle her shoulders through.
She’d practiced. Done hundreds of pullups over the toilet every day, until her arms were strong enough to drag the rest of her body into the duct.
It would be so simple to check that nothing was out of place, replace the panel behind her, and drag herself down the ducts and away from the biggest mistake of her life. But first, she had to lift herself inside.
A soft thud sounded in the main room. She froze. Didn’t even breathe.
A footstep. A boot hitting the hard grates of the main living area.
There wasn’t enough time. No one could know where she was hiding. Her whole plan relied on this one element. She could not be found.
Heart thundering, she dropped the panel into place, easing off the toilet to turn on the water in the sink.
Rennie popped his head around the doorway, grinning broadly.
4
Call me back, baby.
It took Ajax five days to get to R-2. Way too long. Five days of silence and nothingness surrounded by great stygian space. He’d been bored, frustrated, confused, and most of all worried.
She hadn’t called. Not once, though she’d said she would.
Every second of the journey, he willed his comm to buzz. Sometimes it did. But it was never her. His father called to discuss his election back on Argentus. His brother, Spiro, called to discuss investments. Healers called to discuss cases. But never Feola.
He’d slept with his comm at his side, lurching awake to check the device. A hundred times, he’d considered return-contacting the device, but on the chance that something was off with her mate, he didn’t want to risk it.
He’d worked out in his ship’s gym, listening to the recording of their conversation over and over and over until he knew her words by memory, and the sound of her breathing etched across his heart.
The healing bay at R-2 was larger than the one at S-6, despite a population that was less than a quarter of the size. An entire wing was devoted to pediatrics, and another to the female population aboard. Women were rare. Their lives represented the future of the Argenti species. Their lives were to be protected at all costs. Always.
He winced. Why did Feola need his help? Utto was a dick, sure, but—Ajax shook his head. He couldn’t wrap his brain around the man hurting a woman. Any man hurting any woman.
He hesitated at the entrance to the healing bay.
An infant cried from somewhere down one of the long, gray halls. When was the last time he’d heard a baby’s voice? Probably during his training. There were too few babies in the Argenti population.
A healer rounded a corner and greeted him with the same suspicion with which he would have greeted a stranger standing in his own healing bay back at S-6. He schooled his face to neutrality as he nodded at her.
He’d never seen a female healer. Hadn’t known there was a single female healer in the entire Argenti world.
There were no laws or customs to prevent women from working in any profession, but after their society had been thrown into disarray by the Plague of Days twenty years ago, there were so few women that it was strange to see them at all, let alone professionally.
He had to resist the inclination to stare.
He’d become acquainted with Feola’s pale, Trianni looks when the Trianni women had been aboard S-6 months ago, but he’d spent little time around women. It was hard not to study this healer. She was pretty, with deep purple skin, shimmery black hair, and wide topaz eyes.
She raised an impatient brow at him.
He cleared his throat, extending his arm, ready to clasp her forearm in greeting. “Ajax Willo, former Head of Healing at Sierra-Six.”
“Healer Irees Rillard. Head of Healing right here.” She angled hard eyes his way, but didn’t clasp his offered forearm. “What are you doing in my bay?”
She must be relatively new, or he’d surely have heard that R-2 had taken on a female healer, especially as head. “I wanted to check on a patient.”
“A female?” She snapped the digi she carried into the pocket of her lab coat. “Let me guess. You think you can help her?”
He frowned, unsure how to answer that. “If she’s fine, then she doesn’t need my help. I just want to make sure.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Ever worked on a base with Bonded pairs?”
“Not since I was in training.”
“Ever spent much time on Argentus with Bonded pairs?”
The thought sliced deeper than it should have after two decades. The sympathy in the woma
n’s eyes implied she knew the question was loaded. Understood, but had to ask. Everyone had lost someone in the Plague of Days. Mothers. Sisters. Daughters. He and Spiro had lost their mother and their baby sister, Clari. Father had never been the same.
“Not for a while.”
“We get a fair number of males looking to ‘check’ on women they once knew. Just to make sure they are okay.” Suspicion laced her last word, making it clear she thought he was encroaching.
It made sense. With a female population of less than twelve percent, men could no doubt get pretty determined.
“It’s not like that,” he said, but maybe it was a lie. “She called me. She asked for my help. There’s something weird about her visits here. I’m not trying to cause trouble for her, or for her mate. I’ll leave once I know she’s not in any trouble. I just….” He trailed off, scrubbing a hand through his hair, sucking in his cheeks.
Healer Rillard sighed. “What’s her name?”
“Feola Upranimus.”
Her eyes widened, and she stalked past him into the body of the bay.
He followed. It was empty, unlike the halls with the occasional passersby. Private.
She rounded on him, hissing, “Is this a trick?”
He frowned, studying the set of her shoulders, defensive now. And her jaw jutted forward, stubborn. He shook his head slowly.
“Hand over your credentials.”
After a long pause, he pulled out his comm and removed the small ID chip that held all his information.
She shook her head as she plugged the chip into her digi. “Hand.” She gestured at the scanner.
He pressed his hand over it so it could read his DNA and confirm that the chip was his.
“Do you have any idea who he is?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. It doesn’t matter.”
“Have you deactivated the recording settings on this?”
He was starting to get annoyed. “That’s illegal.”
She scoffed again, a sharp, rude sound, as she tapped her screen.
“I need your help,” Feola’s voice said from the speakers.
Healer Rillard glared at him. “Is this for real?”
“She asked for my help. I’m not leaving until I see her.”
Healer Rillard tapped her digi. She raised her brows and glanced up at him, and his heart hardened.
Something was off. He may not have known anything about Healer Rillard, but that look was universal. She didn’t like whatever she saw.
“What?”
She tilted her head. “It may be nothing. It’s just—” She chewed her lips. “I wasn’t here back then. It was a couple of months ago. She came in for fertility drugs. Then for a break. They happen. Occasionally. It’s not inherent evidence of spousal abuse. I’d disregard it, but she came back for contraceptives at a later date. Solo.”
“I saw that in the system. Right after she called me.”
“You think he’s hurting her?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
Healer Rillard tapped her fingers against the digi. “If he’s convicted of hurting her, he’d be sentenced to life.”
How likely was it that Utto would be convicted, though? He came from old money. His uncle was a high-level politician, a senator back on Argentus, far more influential and connected than Ajax’s father. The legalities and the nature of the proceedings were complicated, but a dangerous man, cornered, at risk of losing his mate, became deadly.
The legal system made him uncomfortable, too prone to back-room deals. Especially when there was a rich senator involved. There was no telling what would happen.
“Do you know him?” Healer Rillard asked.
“Not well.” He swallowed. “I won’t lie. I didn’t like him before I met Feola.” He cleared his throat. “But I’m hardly impartial.”
“I can tell.” She made a weird face, as if she’d just had an idea and wasn’t sure if she liked it.
“What?”
“They’re a fairly new couple, right? Only a few months?”
Ajax nodded. Three months and twenty-six days, but who was counting?
“So she still needs serum frequently. If you were a woman who needed regular doses of serum, what would you do?”
That was easy. “I’d stockpile serum so I wouldn’t have to rely on him.”
“My thoughts exactly. I’ve seen a woman do it, once.”
“Me too. So has Feola. Back at Sierra-Six. We used vials to break a Bond.”
“Let’s check the inventory for the days after her visits. See if anything went missing. She’d have a hard time coming up with storage vessels any other place.”
About an hour later, they discovered that, sure enough, a box of vials had gone missing.
She must be terrified.
Feola hadn’t told the healing staff, nor had she gone to the Guarda. Probably because she didn’t fully trust that they’d believe her. Or help her. And then where would she be? Alone. On a strange base, full of strangers, with a dangerous man.
She had trusted him. He needed to find her, and find her in a way that wouldn’t alert anyone that she’d called him.
His comm buzzed.
He looked down at the screen. The same contact displayed on the screen as before, serendipity playing her hand.
It was her.
Thank fuck.
He nodded an apology at Healer Rillard and ducked into the hallway outside of the healing bay, a long gray corridor.
His heart throbbed in his throat. “Ajax speaking.”
“Ay-shocks?”
His knees trembled. Literally. That had never, ever happened before. He leaned against the wall. “Feola?” His voice didn’t work. It came out as little more than an adolescent squeak. He tried again. “Feola?”
“It’s me.”
He spoke quietly, just in case anyone might overhear. “Are you okay? I’m here—at Romeo-Two.”
“You came?” Her voice was breathless. “I knew you’d come.”
“What happened? Did he hurt you?”
A pause. “It doesn’t matter, Ay-shocks. Can you take me away from here?”
“Yes.” He had no idea how he’d manage that. The base’s sensors would register the presence of not one, but two lives aboard. It didn’t matter. He would figure out a way. He’d find her. Get off the base and away from Utto forever. They’d find another universe if they had to.
“Thank you—” She broke off with a sharp gasp. “I—”
“What are you doing here?” a loud voice shouted over his left shoulder.
He turned. Feola’s blue-haired, massively muscled mate barreled down the hall toward him. Thick neck. Beady eyes. Utto. Bold and blunt as ever—only he seemed weirdly nervous, sweating and jittery. His eyes darted in every direction. Two Guarda marched behind him.
Ajax slid the comm down his right side and dropped it along with his hands into his pockets, careful to keep it out of sight. Feola’s musical voice trilled from the microscopic speaker.
He faced the approaching male. Ajax may have been a healer, but he’d been trained as a warrior, just like Utto. He didn’t always wear his full arsenal of weapons. In fact, he rarely did, but he’d been dressed for a solo flight between S-6 and R-2. He’d been in keeping with Tribe protocol for all solo in-space flights, fully armed.
He didn’t match Utto for sheer muscle mass, but Ajax was a good three inches taller and trained hard. Utto didn’t scare him.
He shook his head, imagining Feola. She couldn’t weigh more than a third of what Utto did. Head and shoulders shorter.
Utto stormed up close, stopping a few inches away. “It’s no accident that you’re here. You took her, didn’t you? That lying bitch.”
For a second, Ajax’s vision darkened until he only saw a single image at the back of a long, dark tunnel—Utto, mouth flapping.
“If she didn’t do it, then he did.” Utto’s voice raised to a holler. “It’s no coincidence that he showed up today.”
Utto snarled, shook, his dark hair gleaming blue under the recessed lights over their heads. “You came for her, didn’t you?”
Ajax narrowed his eyes, glancing over at the Guarda, who shifted uncomfortably. He checked their rank.
Utto outranked both of them. Ajax outranked them all. None of which should matter. The Guarda functioned outside of their normal chain of command. Still, the instinct to respect one’s superiors frequently lingered.
Utto’s face darkened, ugly and enraged. All doubt fled. This man had hurt her.
Utto stepped closer, breath bursting, nostrils flaring, chest heaving. “Where did you hide her?” He plunged a sharp finger into the air toward Ajax’s chest.
A hothead. Utto was a hothead. Hotheads, in Ajax’s experience, hated their own nature. They lacked self-control—and they knew it. It made them angrier. Anger made them dumber.
Utto inhaled sharply, marshaling a semblance of control, but still vibrated with irrepressible rage.
“I assume you mean your mate. I have no idea where she is.” He let a deliberate, mocking smile curl his lips, leaning closer. “What happened, Utto? Did you lose her?”
Utto glared at him, sucking in a breath.
Ajax lowered his voice to barely a whisper so he could speak into Utto’s ear, so the Guarda wouldn’t be able to hear him. “She ran, didn’t she? It’s all over your face.”
Utto stiffened. “She killed my cousin. She’s a fucking murderer.”
What? Ajax pulled back.
Wide eyes, pale skin, but no deceit. Utto believed Feola had killed his cousin. Either that or he was a far better liar than he appeared.
What the hell happened? He wouldn’t get any answers out of Utto.
There were so many things he’d have liked to do in that moment. He did none of them. He turned on his heel, giving Utto his back, and walked away.
The Breaking Page 3
