by Pearl Foxx
A swell of happiness surged through Vera.
Gerrit came in through the cockpit’s hatch and started helping the women with their harnesses as the ship’s thrusters growled to life. The noise on the flight deck would draw attention soon.
Rayner turned Vera to face him, and what she saw on his face obliterated any happiness she felt at seeing the women so excited to be going home. “Vera, listen to me.”
“What?” She frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not going with you.”
Sounds of the women and the ship’s engines muffled into a droning buzz in Vera’s ears. She stared at Rayner, waiting for him to correct himself, but he never did. He simply kept his gaze steady on her, unflinching in her growing horror.
“Yes,” she said, “you are. Kaveh will kill you for helping us escape. He’s turned on you, Rayner. You’re not even Beta anymore. This isn’t your home.”
“Listen to me—”
“No.” She jerked her head, tears pricking the back of her eyes. “I’m not listening to anything you say. You’re coming with us. It’s the only option.”
“This is about more than you and me.” He shook her gently, and her tears spilled down her cheeks. “When you get to Earth’s atmosphere, you have to delete the navigational data immediately. An AI on board will help you. But I have to stay here and do my part to help the servants. I have to do what I should have done years ago.”
“But Kaveh—”
“Has slipped into his final nights. Gerrit will be taking over soon. It won’t be a matter of me being punished for helping you and the women escape. The rebellion is keeping everyone too busy to notice what I’m doing.”
“You can’t know that for sure! Kaveh could punish you just for being with me!”
“One minute until take off,” Nestan called over the thrusters. “This baby’s about to fly no matter who’s on board, so you better get off if you aren’t earthbound!”
“Just a second!” Rayner shouted over to him. Nestan nodded before climbing out of cockpit and through the ship’s front hatch. He slammed it shut and locked it. Gerrit started strapping in the last woman, Niva. The young woman was crying, and she didn’t look happy.
Rayner backed Vera toward an empty seat, his grip tight on her arms. She pushed him back. A muscle along his jaw ticked. “You’re leaving, Vera. I won’t see you killed by my clan.”
“So you would send me away without you? That’s your solution?”
With a growl, he picked her up faster than she could protest and had her in the chair within a split second. A numbness, cold and foreign, settled over her. Behind Rayner, Niva watched her, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Vera looked back to Rayner as he strapped down the first harness. “I thought I was your mate.”
Rayner faltered. He didn’t look at her as he resumed strapping her down. “You are. You always will be. I promised I’d keep you safe.”
“Come with me,” she whispered. “Please. I love you.”
“Thirty seconds!” Gerrit shouted. He passed Rayner and Vera at a jog. He nodded at her and disappeared out the ship’s hatch. The thrusters began to burn, the sound deafening.
Rayner clipped in the last buckle.
“If you love me,” Vera said, hating herself for the words but desperate to keep him with her, “you’ll come with me.”
He cupped her face and leaned in close to be heard above the ship. “You know what they will do to me on Earth. No better than what we’ve done to you here. Probably worse because I’ll be a mystery to the humans. To Gideon. I’ll be examined and tortured. You know it’s true.”
A sob tore from her lips. “I can keep you safe! We can hide. It’s a big universe.”
He pressed a kiss to her lips. Against them, he murmured, “Not big enough. I love you, Vera.”
Rayner climbed out of the ship and slammed the hatch right as the thrusters began to pulse, the ship shaking. The other women cheered, victorious in their escape.
Gravity pressed Vera into her seat, crushing her as the ship took off and her heart broke.
22
Rayner
Rayner watched the ship until it disappeared beyond the clouds far above his mountain. He stood in the middle of the deck with his heart at his feet for a long moment after it was gone. She’d hate him or, worse, think he didn’t love her enough to go with her. If hating him made it easier to accept, then he could deal with that.
But he had to stay. For the people fighting below him. For his mother. For the clan that he loved, even though it had tried to rip everything in the world away from him.
He turned and found the deck empty. Gerrit and Nestan must have already been on the other side of the double doors, preparing to help settle the revolt. Rayner strode over, his head bowed, and jaw clenched.
A hollow ache spread out deep in his gut. He had no illusions that it would disappear anytime soon.
He crossed through the double doors and looked up, surprised to find the hall brighter.
He froze in his tracks.
Gerrit and Nestan were on their knees, knives at their throats. Behind them, Vilkas stood, staring at him with dark eyes and unkempt hair. For a second, he thought the guards had caught them. Then the group split, and Savas sauntered through, hauling a stumbling Kaveh by his frail, thin arm.
Gerrit thrashed against his captor. They weren’t guards at all, but Savas’s loyalists. A deep well of blood seeped down Gerrit’s neck where the blade had cut him.
“What the hell is this?” Rayner asked, voice quiet. Steady. Calm. He dragged his eyes back to Savas.
The Omega threw Kaveh to the ground in front of Gerrit and Nestan. Rayner flinched from an ingrained reflex to protect his Alpha. Behind Kaveh, a loyalist ripped Nestan’s head back and stabbed his dagger into Nestan’s shoulder. The young man growled, hissing and half laughing as the loyalist twisted the blade before yanking it out and returning it to Nestan’s neck.
“Better behave,” Savas scolded him, wagging his finger at Rayner like he was an errant child.
“You don’t want to do this, Savas. It’s not worth it.”
Savas laughed darkly. He lifted his chin toward the open doors behind Rayner. “Was that worth it? Sending your little bitch high into the sky?”
“Yes,” Rayner said. “She’s far away from you. That’s all that matters.”
“You present a good point. If she’d been here, I wouldn’t have been able to control myself. Something about that fiery spirit makes me want to,” Savas said and breathed in deep, a smile spreading across his face. “stamp it out. Break her. Tear her apart in all her softest places. No, you were right to save her, Rayner. You always were the smart one.”
Kaveh had pushed his weak body to his knees. He looked around, his tired, weak eyes taking in the scene. Savas put his hand on his brother’s head, stroking his hair even as he drew a knife made from obsidian and Hylan glass filed to the thinnest, sharpest edge Rayner had ever seen.
“You don’t need to do this,” Nestan begged. The loyalist holding him tightened his fist in Nestan’s wild hair, making his head crane farther back.
Savas turned as if surprised to hear his son’s voice. He laughed. “Son, you have never understood the true nature of power. It’s not that which is given to you, but that which you take. I tried to teach you, but you’ve chosen the wrong side this time. I will deal with your disloyalty later.”
Kaveh mumbled something. Savas smacked his half-brother’s cheek with an easy swing of his arm. The Alpha crumbled to the ground.
“Father!” Gerrit screamed, thrashing again and sending more and more blood down his neck. Two more loyalists came over to help hold him down.
The clarity that had been missing from the Alpha came into his face as Savas dragged him back to his knees. The frail man glanced around, his eyes on Rayner before finding Gerrit. “Why are you bleeding?”
“I’m fine,” Gerrit said, voice thick. “I’m fine, Dad. You’re okay. I
t’s going to be okay.”
Kaveh began to tremble. “What’s happening, Gerrit?”
“Only what’s been coming your way for over thirty years, old man,” Savas hissed.
The knife flashed in the air, and Rayner reacted. In the second it took him to shift, to leap out of his skin, Savas dragged his knife across the Alpha’s throat, cutting deep enough that, as Kaveh slumped to the ground, Rayner’s Vilkan eyes saw bone.
He roared. The ripping sound crashed into the screaming and shouting. Bones cracked and Vilkas shifted.
Rayner bore down on Savas. The rest of the action faded into his periphery, but he caught sight of Gerrit and Nestan fighting the loyalists.
Rayner launched himself at Savas. The man’s grin was wild, his skin covered in blood. His time as Omega had left him thinner, but not slower. Knowing exactly how Rayner would react, Savas lunged to the side, rolling and shifting. Before Rayner had even turned around, Savas was bounding through the doors and onto the flight deck.
Rayner followed. His claws dug deep into the rock, his eyes locked on Savas’s haunches. The Omega swung around and swiped razor-sharp claws at Rayner’s snout.
He ducked and bowled into Savas, their bodies rolling paws over tail. Behind them, the loyalists spilled out onto the deck, following their leader, knowing their only escape from the fight would be down the side of the mountain. Gerrit and Nestan raced after them, taking some down and snapping their necks without even shifting.
Rayner flipped Savas over him and spun around, ready to strike.
How many times had Rayner and Savas sparred as young Vilkas? How many times had they fought, wrestling deep in the servant tunnels when Savas’s mother had been chased away from the donjon and relegated to slave status?
Too many times. They knew each other too well.
Where Rayner held back, reluctant to attack an opponent on his back, Savas did not. He moved like a snake, whipping upright, claws slashing.
Rayner had nowhere to go.
He reared back. Savas narrowly missed Rayner’s exposed throat. But his claws sank deep into Rayner’s chest, dragging down to his belly as Rayner fell.
He felt the wrongness instantly.
The cold swept in quick.
A roar filled the air above them. Rayner rolled onto his side just in time to see the flash of scales overhead.
Draqons.
Savas spun, his eyes on the sky. He howled to his clan.
Rayner shifted with the last bit of energy he had left. He didn’t bother looking up. With his hand, he tried to hold in the blood pouring from his belly. He gathered his legs beneath him and tried to stand.
He would have collapsed if not for Gerrit catching him. As arrows pelted the deck, connecting with Savas’s loyalists’ flesh, and acid splashed, the young heir hauled Rayner toward the ebonite doors. He was screaming something at Rayner, something urgent, something important, but Rayner could hear nothing but the ringing in his ears.
Gerrit dumped Rayner onto the ground inside the mountain and whirled around to help Nestan. But he was already running toward them with his father’s fanatics snapping at his heels. He’d shifted into his human form, and even as Rayner’s vision dimmed around the edges, he saw the blood coating Nestan.
“Run!” Gerrit shouted, standing at the doors, his eyes to the sky as a Draqon dove down and bowled over nearly ten loyalists. Its mate twisted on the creature’s great back and shot an arrow straight at Gerrit.
He ducked, the poisoned tip narrowly missing him.
Both he and Rayner looked up in time to see Nestan swerving toward them. He limped, barely running, with too many men behind him. They’d never be able to fight them back, not with the Draqons circling outside.
“Get in!” Gerrit shouted and took position at the doors, ready to close them as soon as Nestan slid inside.
But Nestan didn’t slide inside. He hit the doors at full speed and slammed them inward. Gerrit stumbled back, his shock momentarily paralyzing him as he fell beside Rayner on the ground.
“No!” he roared, but it was too late.
Nestan shut the doors with the impact of his body, locking Rayner and Gerrit inside. They heard the bodies hit the door, hit Nestan. Shouts and howls filled the air. Wind from the Draqons’ wings buffeted the doors against their autolocks.
Gerrit trembled. He stumbled to his feet, an arm stretched toward the door, but he didn’t unlock them or open them. To do so would have been instant death. And Nestan had made his choice.
Gerrit’s arm dropped. He turned back to Rayner, and in his eyes, Rayner saw that the young heir was forever changed. His hopeful innocence was gone. As he listened to his best friend war against his father’s loyalists and the Draqons, a bit of Gerrit died.
Rayner slumped back against the ground and looked up at the crisscrossing light of the ceiling. He closed his eyes and saw Vera’s face, the betrayal in her eyes, the heartbreak.
The blackness swamped him, and he saw nothing else.
23
Vera
Three Months Later
Vera wiped a grease-stained hand across her forehead. She needed something to kick. Simply cursing and throwing her tools wasn’t working anymore.
She glowered at the monstrosity she called a ship in front of her. She had cobbled it together out of scrap metal and stolen machinery from the Space Station Materials Preparation and Construction department here on Earth where she worked four days a week. In her spare time, she’d constructed her ship, hardly sleeping except for when Niva forced her to.
The ship that would take her home. To Kladuu. But right now, it wouldn’t take her two inches off the ground.
“Why won’t you fucking work?” Without anything to kick, she threw the ultrasonic welder at the hunk of metal.
“That language is hardly necessary,” the Kladian AI scolded.
Instead of destroying the entire system, Vera had extracted the AI component from the Vilkan ship in the final moments before human ships had intercepted them in the atmosphere above Earth. After the descent and the following days of questioning, Vera had managed to smuggle the component past security by keeping it between her back teeth and cheek. She’d installed it into both her new ship and her home’s monitoring system. The first time it spoke to her, she’d nearly had a heart attack.
Now, sometimes, she wished it would shut up.
“I really couldn’t care less what a computer program thinks of my language.”
“It’s not me who cares. You aren’t presenting yourself in the manner that a lady of a Vilkan Beta would. I am merely reminding you of the role you will play when you return to Kladuu.”
Vera growled and doubled back over her work on the dampeners. Etiquette lessons from a bodiless robot. Just her luck.
“Okay, if you’re so smart, why can’t I get the gravitational dampeners to engage?”
“The malfunction is in the coupling connection. The material you have used, which you referred to as titanium, does not have the proper conductivity for the energy we are sending through its system. As I’ve mentioned eighty-four times previously, if you would merely obtain some grotium, we could easily solve the current problem.”
“We don’t have grotium on Earth.”
“It’s available in abundance on Kladuu.”
“And when I get there, I’ll get you a damn elephant ton of it, but first, we have to get there!”
Niva snickered from the back door of the small cottage the two women shared. The arrangement hadn’t been discussed—they both just assumed they’d stay together—and when it became clear that Niva wanted to return to Kladuu as well, they became a team in trying to find any way to get there.
“Why do you argue with that thing?”
“I do not argue with Vera. I am simply giving her the information required to complete her task.”
Niva laughed, a throaty sound that Vera rarely heard.
“And now the robot thinks it’s funny. You’re the thing, not me.” Ve
ra grumbled at the AI, kicking at a patch of grass that had actually managed to grow in the desiccated earth beneath her.
They had purchased this land by pooling the money the military had given them as a payoff for not going public about their experience with the Kladians. It was about an hour from Vera’s workstation and offered plenty of privacy. They owned all the land they could see, and they had a dedicated well that tested below average for radon, lead, and parasitic contamination. It was almost impossible to find fresh water that wasn’t teeming with organisms hell-bent on killing humans these days, so the well was what had sold Vera on the land. They didn’t have to get their water from the government, which meant they didn’t have to worry about what the government did to remove contaminants, or what they added.
In the days following her return to Earth, when her heart was broken and she couldn’t stop throwing up, Vera had developed a deep distrust toward the American Corporation’s military government. Especially Commander Gideon, who had seen the truth in Vera’s eyes and known. But no matter how much he hounded her, she maintained her stupidly relieved act of finally being home and safe from the barbarians in space.
There had been no data on board to track their path back to Kladuu, and though the other women had spilled the shape-shifting secret within minutes of being interrogated, none of them actually knew where Kladuu was. But it didn’t stop Commander Gideon from having Vera stalked and watched constantly. The bastard.
“Drink this.” Niva handed Vera a glass of water. No ice cubes, just like she liked it. She hated the feeling of the super-cold water in her stomach when the rest of her was boiling alive. “You have to sleep. It’s not good for you to push so hard.”
“It’s fine.” Vera waved off the old argument.
“What about …”
“The baby. You can say it. It’s hardly a secret anymore.” Vera ran a hand down her front, pulling the loose-fitting shirt tight over her emerging baby bulge.
“Gideon doesn’t know yet,” Niva soothed. “You two are safe.”
