She wanted to plead with Tristan not to tell, but he refused to meet her gaze. So she waited, listening to his tale, waiting for the words that would condemn her.
But he didn’t say them. In fact, he made no mention of her being hurt at all.
He’s covering for me?
“Come on,” Tristan said, pulling Mila to her feet. “We’re of no further use here.”
She nodded, speech still beyond her. She stumbled along, Tristan dragging her behind him by their conjoined hands. He pulled her into his office, dumped her in a chair, and leaned over her.
“What are you?”
The coldness in his voice made her face fall. Her mouth moved, but no words escaped.
He grabbed her chin, looking her straight in the eyes. “What… are… you?”
After several breaths, the truth she’d been hiding forever, the one that could get her killed or worse, slipped out. “Shifter.” Nothing more than a breath, he wouldn’t have heard it had he not been inches from her lips. It felt like she’d confessed some great sin. Like she’d just admitted to first degree murder.
Tristan stood back, surprised. He shook his head and stumbled, falling in the chair next to her.
After a few minutes of him staring off into the distance, jaw slack, he spoke. “You’re Mila, aren’t you? Your friend. Dragomirov?”
Mila nodded, numb but also relieved.
I’m not alone anymore.
He sat, contemplating for a moment. “You disappeared because you shifted?”
She nodded again. “Twenty-first birthday. We went out drinking. I got a little too drunk. Drunk enough to do something stupid, not drunk enough to forget.” She looked at Tristan, but he wasn’t looking at her. “I shifted into a tiger, of all things. I couldn’t have picked a dog or something. I can only imagine what the news looked like the next day.
“I managed to get home, shifted back.” She paused. “I just packed a bag and left.”
“But you left the note for your friend. May Trace.” He looked straight at her this time. “If you’re here, where the hell is she?”
Mila sagged her head. How many times would the events of that day torment her before she could move on? “She died. A mugging. Well, maybe it wasn’t a mugging. Maybe it was just supposed to look like one.” She rubbed her eyes until they hurt.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
She put her hands down, feeling like she could fall apart at any moment. Like she’d been put together with glue sticks. “I buried her.” A tear fell down her cheek. She tried to steel her face, keep more tears from joining it. “Tristan, I…”
He put a hand up. “No. Stop.”
“Tristan…”
He looked at her, that same cold expression on his face. “No.” He shook his head. “Just give me time, May… Mila. I need time. Space.”
“Okay.” She stood and headed to the door on shaky legs, too afraid to look back and see that icy visage he’d worn.
When she closed the doors behind her, she ran. She kept running, not knowing if she ran to or away or where her destination would be.
When she arrived, it made perfect sense. The only place on the ship more broken than her… the engine room.
Only a handful of people drifted in and out at the moment. She’d caught it at a lull. Finding a deserted corner, she sat down among the rubble and cried.
Chapter Twenty-One
“You know, you’ve been a real problem for me, Miss Trace.”
Mila jumped. She knew that voice. She spun around to confront him and stood slowly. “And that’s my problem why?” Her face burned from her tears, but she didn’t care. Right that moment, Tristan could be deciding her fate and all because this bastard couldn’t leave well enough alone.
“Because I was contracted.” He stepped down from the chunk of metal he’d been standing on. “Though I was surprised to find you were a shifter like me.”
She shrugged. Would he let it go if she told him she wasn’t May Trace? That she was assuming a role, an identity just the same as he?
Doubt it.
“I found a present for you in the galley today when I heard you’d survived.” He raised a knife to shoulder level. “I’m good with guns, but I’ve always been an artiste with knives. It’s one of the only ways to kill a shifter.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Her stance shifted, balancing her weight, anticipating the strike. She waited, but he just smiled. “Well, are you gonna kill me or what? I mean, you’ve already tried like four… wait. I’ve lost count. Not the best assassin, are you?”
Mila grinned when the anger shaded his face.
Perfect. People fuck up when they’re angry.
“Aw, did I hurt the little shifter’s feelings?”
“Shut up, bitch.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Make me.”
He charged.
She dodged the first strike, only to get sliced by the next. Her limbs moved sluggishly. Should have gotten something to eat. I’m running on empty after the gunshot wound.
Mila pushed his knife hand out of the way and landed a punch to his chin, but he barely responded to it.
Uh oh.
She grabbed his hand, lifting it up, keeping the knife away from her, then slammed his arm into an upright beam. He grunted, but kept his hold. She slammed it again, but her arms were growing weaker, getting cold and tingly from being above her head.
Mila ducked under his arm and ran, knowing the knife wouldn’t be able to keep up. She slid behind some debris, crawled under some more.
“You’re hiding? After all that bravado?”
His voice grew closer.
She waited. The engine room wasn’t deserted, just not packed.
Someone will hear.
Someone will come.
Won’t they?
She could feel exhaustion coming over her, a side effect of healing herself.
Someone will come.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
She scrambled farther back, but kicked something in the dark under the scrap metal.
Shit.
“Gotcha.”
She slid out and jumped to her feet, registering the assassin’s location out of the corner of her eye. She took off at a run again, dodging hurtles, pipes, sharp edges. A piece of piping cut her arm. She bit her lip to keep from crying out as pain lanced across her.
His relentless pursuit seemed in sync with her beating heart.
He grabbed her, whipped her around, and sliced at her throat, but she pulled her head back at the last second, causing the knife to cut shallow. It hurt like hell, but she would survive.
She seized his knife hand with a shaky grip. He yanked out of her grasp with ease, making her stumble, fall. Her head slammed into something hard. Pain. Black. Pressure.
The assassin sat on her chest as the pain dulled. He raised his blade. Her half-insensate brain had her grasping for anything, everything. Cool. Sharp. Grip.
She sent it up, feeling the cool metal dig and cut into her palm. She screamed as he did, the thing going into his chest under the ribcage, slicing into her hand in three places. Shock covered his face. Metal clattered to the ground. He fell on her, causing her to cry out as the sharp debris in her hand dug in further, pressing on her sternum too.
After a while, when she managed to get the strength, she pushed him off and rolled him onto his back. She straddled him, thrust the chunk of metal a little harder for good measure, not stopping until metal met metal.
He wouldn’t recover from that.
Mila stood, staring at her left palm, watching the blood pool in lines. She started to move, but stumbled. Reaching a hand out to steady herself, she screamed when her shredded palm came in contact and collapsed to the floor on her knees.
With a deep breath, she used her other hand to push herself back to her feet. Her eyes felt heavy and she could have fallen asleep right there, but she shook her head and continued.
Mi
la sensed movement around her, but didn’t see. She heard a cacophony, but didn’t understand. She just stumbled, walking steadily onward. A humorless laugh erupted from her. She probably looked like a zombie the way she was shambling along.
She collapsed against a wall next to a door she should have known she would run to and knocked three times.
“Come in,” the welcome voice said.
She turned the knob, opened the door, and dropped through the doorway, landing on her face.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Knock, knock, knock.
“Come in!” Tristan said. Honestly, why did they bother knocking?
The door opened and a body fell through. “May!” He jumped from his chair, skidding it across the room, and dashed to her side, heart in his throat. “May? God, May.”
He turned her over, checking her for wounds. Her throat was slit, her hand was a mess, her arms were cut. People can’t see her like this.
He dragged her through the doorway, stood and closed the door, then looked back at her, not knowing what to do.
Tend her wounds?
Will she heal herself like she did before?
Should I call a doctor?
He rubbed his face, pacing in a small line next to her.
No one can know about her.
Mila woke in bed. A big bed. A nice bed. She rubbed her eyes, noticing her heavily bandaged left hand. So were her throat and a few choice places on her arms. She blinked her eyes open and turned her head.
Tristan sat on a chair by the bed, watching her. “Hi.”
“Hi.” He didn’t seem as cold as he had before. She almost didn’t want to hope as she let the words spill out. “You don’t hate me?”
“No, I don’t hate you. I just needed time. What I said before was true. I don’t blame people for what they are. I blame them for who they are.” He shrugged, looking down into his lap. “I don’t believe you’re a bad person,” he paused, “Mila. Mila.” A small smile curved one side of his lips. “I don’t understand you, but I want to. I know you’re not the assassin, and other than stealing someone’s identity, I have no evidence you’ve ever done anything wrong. I would like to know why you did it though.”
“Take May’s identity, you mean?”
He shook his head, looking down again. “It’s the one part I can’t get past.” He looked up again. “I can’t understand it. I wouldn’t have done it. I can’t imagine anyone good doing it. It doesn’t fit with how I see you.”
“I didn’t exactly have a lot of options, Tristan. I’m a shifter. I couldn’t go to the cops and I couldn’t just abandon her, the last friend I had in the world. That’s why I buried her.” She shook her head. “I didn’t bury her thinking I would take her identity. I did it thinking I was doing the best I could. Paying her respect.
“When I looked in her bag, I found that she had a verified ID. People don’t question verified IDs. I just… wanted a normal life. What I’d been reaching for when my life changed forever.”
“When you shifted for the first time.”
“Yeah. This was the life I had wanted, that me and May had wanted. We’d wanted it together. It just never happened that way. I thought it was something she would have wanted for me, a gift of sorts.”
“What about her family, Mila? When do they get to grieve? Move on?”
Her head sagged. “I didn’t think it through that far.”
He laughed, shaking his head at her. “Now that does sound like how I see you.”
She smirked at him. “So, you still don’t hate me?”
“No, still don’t hate you.”
“And you’re not going to tell.”
“No, I’m not.”
Things were getting interesting now. It seemed like victory was within their grasps, but their enemy was dogging their heels too. People were getting taken in left and right for questioning. Some he knew were his compatriots, others weren’t. Still, even a blind man could hit a bull’s-eye with luck.
He walked the halls still tinged red, rubbing his arms to keep up circulation. Couldn’t they turn the heat up a bit? Honestly!
He stopped and knocked at the door he’d been looking for. The door opened, exposing a man in uniform. “I need to talk to you.”
The man nodded and ushered him into the room. He closed the door and sat on the lower bunk. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“I’m sorry, but things have reached a boiling point, so to speak.” His arms flew out and snapped the man’s neck. “I can’t have anyone knowing my involvement.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The security officer sat at a bench, trying to savor the prepackaged snack while he could. Since they’d discovered an assassin on board, he’d been worked half to death. Little reprieves like this never lasted long, often followed by long hours on his feet searching and investigating.
With the temperature plummeting and the ship dead in the water, few people were hanging around. He watched as people walked in, grabbed food, and collapsed on a bench, many times with an exhausted groan. He could empathize.
People rarely stayed long, though. It was too cold to sit still, not without curling up into something like a sleeping bag.
Someone ran into the room, hyperventilating as he bent at the waist. He straightened, but with his breaths coming in gasps, the security officer couldn’t make out what the guy was saying.
He stood and walked over to him. “Are you all right? Do you need assistance?”
“Yes.” He nodded, the yes more a breath of air than a word. “Found.” Another couple breaths. “Body.”
“Where?”
“Do you mind me asking what happened? How you got cut up?” Tristan relaxed back into the chair as she sat up in his bed.
The words wouldn’t come. Looking back, she felt terrified, relieved, nauseous, traumatized, relieved. Her mind kept rebounding to the relieved part. It chewed at her gut, being glad the man was dead, that she’d killed him.
“Mila?”
She shook her head. “You shouldn’t call me that.”
“But it’s your name. Wouldn’t you rather me call you by your real name?”
A small smile crossed her face, followed by a wave of nausea. God, he knows what I am. No one can know what I am. She struggled to take a deep breath. “Of course, I would, but it’s not safe. You’d only be able to use it when we’re alone. What if you said it in public? How would you explain that? Huh?”
“I could say it was a pet name.”
The smile that crossed his face made her want to smile back, then growl at him.
“What does it mean?”
“I think my parents said it meant ‘dear one’ in Russian,” she said, reluctant to give him the ammunition.
“See? There you go. It’s a perfect pet name.”
She stared him down. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“We’ll agree to disagree.”
“Tristan, this is my life you’re playing with here.”
His face fell. “I’m sorry.”
He barged into the captain’s office, but for once, the captain wasn’t there. “Captain Faulk?”
After a few moments, a door to his left opened and Faulk walked in. “Yes?”
“Another body has been found, sir.”
“Shit,” he said and sagged before turning and poking his head back through the door. “Stay put.”
I wonder who he’s entertaining. A muffled reply came through the doorway, but he caught neither the words nor the tone of the message.
“Get some rest,” the captain said, before closing the door with a gentle click and facing his new guest. “Lead the way.”
Mila’s eyes bulged as he closed the door on her, jaw slack. How dare he! Sure, she’d had a trying day. She was tired and could eat a small bison, but she still couldn’t believe he’d just dismissed her like that.
“Damn it,” she said as she threw the covers aside. She hadn’t gotten around to telling him about the as
sassin. She’d wanted to tell him, meant to tell him. Mila pulled at her hair as she paced the room several sizes larger than her own.
What’ll he think? Will he change his mind about me after knowing what I’ve done?
Her pacing picked up speed, becoming frantic, her muscles no longer able to keep up. She stopped in the middle of the floor. “I’m getting out of here.”
She left Tristan’s chambers in favor of her own and slipped into her own bed.
Maybe everything would make more sense after a good night’s sleep.
Tristan kept pace behind his security officer, but his mind never left Mila. He both damned and praised his job for separating and introducing them. But a ship and its crew comprised more than just one soul and he knew it. He couldn’t let his feelings for her hinder him in performing his duties. Too many lives counted on him, especially now.
Tristan didn’t pay attention to where he led him, only looking up when they stopped. He slipped effortlessly into captain-mode. “Report.”
He hadn’t seen a body yet, but his mind kept drifting to the assassin. Another soul lost to that bastard. Another security officer approached him, standing up straighter as he neared.
“Captain, he was found by his roommate. Broken neck. Very efficient. Clean.”
Tristan nodded, his suspicions confirmed. “The assassin, then?”
“No, sir. We don’t believe so.”
His head whipped up in surprise. “No? Then who?”
“We don’t know, sir.”
“Why don’t you think it was the assassin?”
“The circumstances don’t fit his M.O., sir. For starters, he was left somewhere easily found. Other than once while cornered, the assassin has never left a body in the open.”
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