by Pearl Foxx
“Tane!” Kinyi growled, more a breath of warning than an actual word.
He shifted his hardening cock away from her and gave her a dark look.
She shrugged, raising her brows as if to say it wasn’t her problem he was a horny bastard who couldn’t control his body’s reactions. In his defense, they had been locked in this box for a long time, and like Kinyi, he hadn’t gotten laid in a while either.
He really needed to work on that.
If he ever got out of here.
He inhaled again, searching through the scents of cheap pine, Kinyi, and his fear of anything human. But the ship’s innards reeked of human, and he couldn’t tell whether someone was close enough to see him opening the box.
He would have to risk it.
He reached for the first nail. Maybe their box was in the back of the group and he could sneak off once he knew Kinyi was safe. Their original plan had been to wait until all the boxes were loaded, but he couldn’t wait in here another second.
His fingers closed around the nail’s metal head.
Kinyi grabbed his wrist and shook her head violently, her finger pressed to her lips.
He shook her off and pulled carefully. The nail slid free without a sound. He gave her a long told-you-so look. She gritted her teeth, nostrils flaring. He pulled four more nails free and moved on to the last one.
He pulled a little too quickly. The wood splintered with a deafening crack.
Kinyi hissed, her body stiffening. She shushed him rather loudly.
He froze with the nail half out of the box’s lid.
He strained to hear the approach of soldiers’ feet or the warning shout that there were intruders. What would he do if he got Kinyi caught? Arrested? He couldn’t exactly pay off the military police like he could the local Cyn City cops.
But there were no sounds of approach, nothing out of the normal. His shoulders relaxed, and he pulled the nail free. Ignoring Kinyi’s glare, he lifted the lid and looked out.
Piles of boxes surrounded them like mini skyscrapers. From the ductwork overhead and the exposed structure beams wrapped around the hull of the ship, he assumed they were in a lower cargo bay, which meant they were also along an exterior wall. He shifted and looked behind him, seeing only more crates. They were in a storage bay in the belly of the ship, which was almost the best he could have asked for. But from the smell of fresh air, he knew a ramp was still open somewhere close. An open door meant soldiers moving around. He still had to be careful, but he could get out of here before he was sealed inside.
He pushed the lid back and scanned every inch around him as he unfolded his stiff body. After setting the lid aside, he climbed out and stretched his back.
Behind him, Kinyi straightened, her eyes darting around. He sensed her heart fluttering like a hummingbird. Adrenaline coated her skin in a fine mist. She punched his arm hard enough to make him clench his teeth.
He growled at her.
She flipped him off.
He grabbed her hand and bent her finger, barely straining the joint. He bared his teeth at her.
She swung at his head with her other hand, but he grabbed her hand and jerked her in for a kiss. He slammed her against his cock as he devoured her, pouring all his pent-up frustration into her.
He raked his hands up her sides and stopped just short of her breasts.
She rolled her hips against him. Her hands fisted around his shirt to hold him against her.
A boot crunched over metal behind him. He swung away from Kinyi, spinning her behind his bulk, and whirled around in time to see a soldier round a stack of boxes.
The human froze. He was young, his uniform too baggy on him, but the gun he held across his chest gave him a maturity he hadn’t earned. His eyes stretched wide. His reaction time was too slow, his finger stretching toward the trigger a beat too late.
In that fraction of youthful hesitation from the guard, Tane thought many things.
But he felt so much more.
His Draqon seethed right beneath his skin, ready. It roared to life at the sight of the gun, at the soldier’s trembling finger reaching in slow motion for the trigger. Every instinct he’d been born with on a planet far away screamed to protect Kinyi at any cost. To shift. To rip this soldier to pieces. To shred anyone who would ever think of harming his female.
It was all right there. With every fiber of his being, which was, and had always been, pure Draqon male, he wanted to shift.
But he couldn’t.
Shifting meant killing. Burning. Death. He’d kill Kinyi just as easily as he’d kill the guard.
And his madness whispered in the darkness too. It hummed in the back of his mind that their deaths would be worth it.
Worth it to feel his wings on his back. To feel the air again. To feel the fire again.
Fuck, he missed the fire.
The soldier’s gun swung up, his face lowered to the stock. His mouth opened to shout for backup.
And Tane couldn’t move. If he moved, he might shift. And if he shifted, he’d kill everyone, and he wouldn’t even regret it. Not until he shifted back and had to live with the destruction he’d wreaked.
Kinyi swung around him and launched herself at the soldier, not waiting a second longer for Tane to react. She collided with the soldier and tore his gun from him. It hit the metal floor with a clatter. Her hand went to the soldier’s mouth, her fingers closing over his nose. He thrashed against her, and her muscles strained from the effort, but the struggle was mostly silent.
She waited until the young boy passed out before lowering him to the floor. She cast a quick glance around before turning to Tane, her eyes wide in question.
He’d almost gotten them killed.
He shook as he stepped forward. He knew Kinyi saw his hands tremble just like the soldier’s had. He picked up the young man and stuffed his lanky, unconscious body into the box half filled with space food. He put the lid back on.
Kinyi picked up the gun and slung the strap over her shoulder. She still watched him, her eyes on his back like two suns.
He turned around and met her gaze.
“It’s the madness, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice so quiet he could barely hear her. “When you shift, what does it do? Burn everyone? Or turn you into a killer with no control?”
“I catch fire. I can’t control it.”
“How does it not burn you? A Draqon’s fire is the only thing that can burn him.”
Tane shrugged as if it were that casual, that easy. As if it were nothing. “I burned to death and lived through it. That’s the madness, Kinyi. That’s the curse.”
“But what happened during the battle if you simply caught fire?”
It would be so easy to sink into the memories of that day and float away on them. He held them off. “My fire spread. It spread like it had a life of its own. It used the air as fuel and it just kept growing.”
“It spread?” She made a small sound of understanding as she put it together. She lowered her voice even more. He hadn’t heard her exactly, but he knew the words. “It spread to the other Draqons.”
He nodded. “I didn’t win us the battle that day.”
He met her blue eyes. The color had always reminded him of the ice around the hive. She was home. She was everything he’d never see again.
“What happened, Tane?”
“I killed them all.”
Chapter Eleven
Kinyi
“No,” she whispered, horror blooming in her. “You couldn’t have.”
“Every. Last. One.” Tane’s face stayed blank as he spoke. “We flew close in that unit, and when I lost myself, the fire spread. The males tried to protect their mates. There was fire everywhere. They all burned. The Arakids were next.”
Kinyi’s hands shook. She tried to hide them, but Tane saw her reaction. His jaw tightened, his gaze sliding to the surrounding boxes.
“Do you get it now?” he asked, voice raspy. “Why I can’t help you? Why I can’t go home? I’m dange
rous, Kinyi. I kill anyone near me the moment I shift. I lost control of my Draqon long ago.”
Zayd wanted a bomb, and Tane was the definition of a bomb. The truth of the White Horn’s legend wasn’t what they expected or needed. He’d been right all along. He couldn’t come home.
“We need to get you out of here,” Kinyi said with a sudden rush of realization.
As if the battleship had heard her speak, a deep rumbling grew beneath their feet. A roar built around them, vibrating the metal casing of the storage bay.
“Those are the thrusters. We don’t have much time.” He wove his way toward the front of the ship, staying low, scanning all around him.
Kinyi lifted the gun and followed close behind to watch their backs. They couldn’t afford another soldier coming across them. The rumbling grew as they moved around the boxes. The sheer amount of food needed to feed the human army staggered Kinyi. They planned to remain on Kladuu for a while. There was no other reason they would need so much.
Tane picked up his pace, almost running. Kinyi smelled his mounting fear. She saw signs of it in the hard set of his shoulders and the way he looked around him less and less the closer they got to the scent of fresh air.
Grinding metal shuddered through the storage bay.
Kinyi nearly dropped the gun to cover her ears.
Tane turned and shouted at her.
She waved to her ears and shook her head.
“The ramp is closing!” he yelled. He whirled around and sprinted.
“Wait!” Kinyi shouted after him, but the overpowering sound devoured the word. She took off after him. “The humans! You can’t just run outside!”
But he didn’t hear her, and even if he had, she doubted he would have slowed. A deeper instinct drove him, and it screamed he couldn’t return home, no matter the cost.
They broke free of the rows of boxes, and Kinyi slowed, swinging the gun around in search of any soldiers. But the storage area loomed empty except for the massive, slowly closing ramp Tane was sprinting headlong for.
Kinyi stopped and lowered her gun. Her shoulders fell.
Tane flung himself at the ramp’s top opening as the last few feet closed. His body collided with metal hard enough to bend the ramp’s joints.
The door sealed. An empty silence settled over the storage area.
He slammed his hand against the ramp and yelled.
“Tane,” Kinyi said carefully. “I think—”
“No.” He paced away from the ramp, shaking his head. “There has to be another way out. We haven’t taken off yet. They just closed this door. That’s all.”
If another ramp was open, they would have smelled the fresh air, but she didn’t have the heart to point out that logic in the face of his desperate determination.
As he took off to circle the hold, a part of Kinyi’s brain told her to stay back and hide from any soldiers who might come in to inspect all the noise he was making. If the humans found her, her entire plan would be ruined. Tane was risking everything by running around and yelling.
She readjusted the gun in her hands and followed him to help search for a door—a door they both knew didn’t exist.
By the time they had circled around the entire storage area and returned to the same ramp that had closed Tane in, the scent wafting off the male Draqon had shifted. Kinyi hung farther back, her heart pounding as his anger grew.
At the closed ramp, his shoulders heaved and his fists clenched.
She took a few more steps back. It occurred to her that she was trapped inside a relatively small space with a shifter who had lost complete control of his Draqon mind and who couldn’t control his fire. He could kill her within a fraction of a second.
“Tane,” she said quietly. “You need to calm down. You can’t shift.”
“I have to get out of here.” The words were strained, hardly distinguishable from a growl.
“I don’t think that’s possible anymore.”
He whirled to face her and took a few rapid strides to close the distance between them. “Because of you. I’m stuck in here because of you.”
Kinyi fought the urge to point her gun at his chest. Would she do it? Would she pull the trigger to keep him from shifting and killing her? Or drawing soldiers to them and ruining her mission? She was so close. She was on a ship heading home. How far would she go to ensure she got back?
His eyes fell to the human killing machine in her hands.
Her finger flexed around the trigger.
When his gaze found hers again, she saw a glimmer in there. In her gut, she sensed he might actually want her to pull the trigger. He hated himself for what he’d done. He’d exiled himself from his home for it. For something a thousand other males had gone through before. But Tane was powerful enough that the consequences of his madness had been devastating.
She set the gun aside.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, holding out her hands. His chest heaved with labored breaths, and a few beads of sweat rolled down his dark, glistening skin. “I’m sorry you’re here. I’m sorry you have to go home. I know what that means for you.”
“You don’t! You have no fucking idea!”
“I can’t understand what you’re feeling, but I know Zayd and the new Queen will not hate you for what happened. That battle was a long time ago. Things have changed.”
“Not that much. Those Draqons are dead because of me. Nothing changes that.”
His violet eyes fractured around the words, and Kinyi’s heart twisted. What had she done in coming here? The legend of the White Horn wasn’t the hope they needed to save Kladuu. He was just a broken man fighting his own demons.
Seeing him that way calmed all her fears of him shifting and setting everything ablaze. She stepped into him and wrapped her arms around his waist. She buried her face against his chest. With every fiber of her being, she willed forth a sense of calm and soothing reassurance and everything she didn’t feel in that moment. But he needed it. Where her body touched his, she felt his tattered edges flapping loose in the wind, and she was the only one around to hold him together.
Even more, she wanted to. She wanted to grasp onto his torn seams and be the stitches that bound him back together. She could do that for him.
Her body relaxed into his, and she poured all the comfort she could out of her body and into his.
For a moment, he didn’t move. Then his arms came around her shoulders and his head settled on top of hers. A breath shuddered through him, and his weight settled heavily against her, but she was strong enough to hold them both up.
He pushed her hair out of the way and cupped the back of her neck with his broad, rough hand. She shivered at the contact of skin to skin. He cradled her to him, and a flicker of wonder sparked through her.
Even without shifting, they connected. If she focused hard enough, she could feel his nerves settling. His fear morphed into resolve. She sensed the strength in him picking up his pieces and pushing his fear back into the corner where it belonged.
Beneath their feet, the ship lurched.
Tane went to move away from her, his body instantly tensing, but she held him tightly, her arms like steel barriers around him.
The battleship swayed off the ground. The pressure built in the storage area as the ship picked up speed the higher it rose from the ground. Beneath the metal casing, the thrusters burned and roared, but the noise amounted to nothing more than a dull ache in the back of Kinyi’s teeth.
“Guess I won’t be making the evening’s fights.”
Kinyi lifted her head from his chest to gaze up at him. It was a good sign that he could joke, even if his voice sounded strained. “You can stay on the ship. No one has to know you’re on the planet.”
He frowned, his eyes searching hers. “But you came to Earth to bring me back.”
Her resolve was solid and unyielding. When had the line between Tane and Kladuu grown so hazy? She would have done anything for her home only days ago, but now she was willing to ris
k her entire planet for the man in front of her. “I know.”
“Kinyi,” Tane sighed.
He skimmed his fingers along her cheek to her bandaged face. His touch was cool and soothing, lessening the ever-present sting that plagued her skin around her missing scales. Was he doing that or was she imagining it?
“I won’t stay on the ship,” he murmured.
She nodded into his touch. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault.”
“We’ll figure it out. I just can’t shift.” His gaze burned with intensity. “No matter what, okay? I can’t. My fire … I can’t hurt anyone else.”
She spread her fingers above his heart. She thought she felt it—not just his heartbeat, but his actual heart. The scars on it. The ache in it. The way it couldn’t beat without the echo of pain and guilt and horror. She pressed her fingertips into his flesh.
Slowly, she lifted her eyes back to his. “I won’t ask you to. I promise.”
He dipped his chin. Carefully, like it was their first time, he brought his lips to hers. He kissed her lips slowly, with a tenderness she hadn’t realized he possessed. When she opened her lips to him, he tipped her head back and took her mouth fully.
The ship had risen high enough that the auto-stabilizers kicked in. The only sign that they were moving came from the slight vibrations in the floor. The pressure in Kinyi’s chest had nothing to do with the atmosphere they were flying through as the ship maintained breathable air pressure.
It was just Tane.
She wrapped an arm around his neck to pull herself farther up his body and stood on her tiptoes to reach him better. His hand skimmed down her ribs to her hip and around to her lower back. He pressed her hips against his, his cock hard and ready for her. Her breath hitched in her throat.
She moaned against his mouth. Her core ached with need. She was already dripping wet for him, her body trembling with desire. No other male had made her so desperate with desire before. Not like this. She’d never ached for anyone as much as she ached for Tane.
A powerful scent swept from Tane’s pores, one Kinyi had never smelled before. His kisses turned feverish. He grabbed her waist and lifted her so she could hook her legs around his hips.
