by May Sage
It was the smile a wild feline might have broken into when prey walked into its den.
“In any case, if you want her, you can have her, as a show of goodwill from my lords and masters.” Tano returned his smile, now, watching him with some form of camaraderie. “Between you and me, this one would have fetched a pretty penny on the market. She’s a beauty.”
Hart was stronger than he thought: he didn’t even take a swing at the poor excuse for an Evris sitting in front of him, although he wanted to. How he wanted to. His power was itching to lash out, strike at the disgusting male, break each and every one of his bones.
He got to his feet and extended his hand. Tano shook it.
Hart was going to have to wash it thoroughly.
“Well, glad it’s all sorted. Get everything on paper and send it through. The warlord will be pleased.”
Tano offered to accompany him to his ship, but Hart didn't have that much self-control. The likelihood of the Matlarian making it to there in one piece was rather slim, so Hart politely declined, opting to walk back alone.
He didn’t fail to notice that drones trailed his every step, flashing and beeping when he stopped for an instant and so much as looked at a worker or a window.
Everyone was miserable; everyone but the enforcers and the few well-dressed upper-class individuals surrounded by guards. Females, in particular, avoided his eyes, doing their very best to remain unnoticed.
Hart sighed. The last thing they needed was another war right now, so soon after taking the sector, but it was unavoidable. They needed to take down the Matlarians.
His thoughts were grim and muddled by the time he got back to the Stellar. A trap door collapsed, and an enthusiastic beast ran at full speed, coming to greet Hart like he'd been absent for ten years rather than two hours.
Nura was a snow wolf, blue-white, with a pitch-black line running from the top of her head to her tail along her spine. She was a beauty.
Two of Kai's wild wolves had mated, and while the pups’ parentage was entirely savage, they were somehow a little tamer. Well, almost; Nura glared, growled, and barked at just about everyone, but she was attached to Kai and Hart. She also tolerated Star, most of the time.
“Hello, pretty girl. I have a treat for you.”
He knew better than to return without a piece of dry meat in his pocket. Nura took it from his hand delicately, ensuring that her sharp fangs never grazed his skin, and licked his hand as a thank you.
When Hart lifted his head, Alara was standing at the ship's entry platform. The female eyed him from head to toes and asked, “Alcohol?”
He shook his head regretfully. “I have a report to record. Later.”
Alara guessed, “I take it that things didn’t go well?”
Hart entered the Stellar and let the captain close the doors before he made a reply.
“It’s a pit. Worse than most of the Ratna Belt, even in the old days. We could ignore it, but the owners of this place live in our system. It’s our problem.”
Alara sighed. "And what about your hunch? Are they part of the guild?"
Hart inclined his head. “Most probably. I can't be a hundred percent certain yet, but all evidence seems to point to that verdict. I'll talk to Evi about sending her best spies to do some digging.”
The captain followed Hart as he headed towards the closest cleansing station and had his hands sanitized.
“Talking about problems, what are we supposed to do about the mouthy girl who cheats at poker?” Alara asked somewhat bitterly.
Hart lifted a brow. There was only one person she could be referring to.
Somewhere at the back of his mind, he’d accepted that Dara would have already disappeared by now. Used an escape hatch or managed to run away from the guards.
“She’s still here?”
“Taking Nik and Ora’s money.” Alara grimaced. “I refuse to watch.”
Hart walked inside the transport and followed the laughter and cheers to the sitting area between the cockpit and the engine compartment. There she was, grinning happily, as his engineer and his guard glared at her angrily.
There was something so very natural, so normal, about this picture. Like Dara Rexis belonged here.
She didn't.
She lifted her head the moment Hart entered the common room, watching him in a way he couldn't interpret.
Why wasn't he just checking? He could enter her mind, no doubt. Regulars didn't have the strength to keep any mage out of their brains.
He didn't try.
To his shock, Nura went to her and stood close. Not close enough to pet, and the wolf didn't try to touch her, but she quietly guarded her, nonetheless.
Hart frowned, confused. He couldn't recall one time when the wolf had exhibited that behavior. Not once.
“You can’t possibly win this time,” Ora declared, frowning at Dara, who smirked like a nekodarian. “Nik dealt the cards, you didn't do any of your dodgy shit. I’m staying in.”
“If you must insist that I skin you, please,” Dara drawled leisurely, languorously stretching.
There definitely was something feline about her.
“Yeah, I’m in.” Nik growled almost threateningly, shoving a hundred-mark bill to the center of the table.
“Alright, time to show your hands, lady, gent,” Dara cooed happily, inclining her head to Ora, and then Nik in turn.
Nik had two pairs and Ora, a straight. Dara took her time, pondering her hand, as if making her mind up. Then, she turned her hand of cards, revealing four of a kind.
“Dammit!” Ora yelled.
Hart chuckled with good humor, finding the atmosphere infectious. He didn't think he'd ever heard her shout quite so loud, even in the middle of a battle.
Nik punched the table, while Dara giggled happily, pulling all of the cash to her lap.
“Are you cheating?” Hart asked her.
She shrugged indifferently. “If I am, they can’t prove it.”
She was definitely cheating.
“She said she’d pay us double her winnings if we catch her red-handed,” Alara grumbled. “Can't fucking see anything, but she pulled four of a kind, a straight flush, and two full houses in a row, man.”
Hart lifted a brow. Ora couldn't catch her? Well, that actually probably meant that Dara wasn’t cheating at all. Ora was a proficient psychic, a skill she used often in her capacity as Hart’s bodyguard.
“I’m just the luckiest person I know,” Dara lied innocently, batting her long lashes.
The female was downright dangerous, and she knew it.
“Yeah, right, I’ll buy that.”
Hart dropped on the closest armchair, before asking Alara, “Are we prepared to launch?”
“Yep, all set up. Just say the word.”
He turned to Dara. “Where’s your ride? We’ll drop you off.”
“My ship was in the Vaurin circle. My crew's heading back as we speak, they shouldn’t be more than a day away.”
“We’re not staying a day,” he replied, his voice tight.
Dara shrugged. “No one asked you to. I can just wait for them here—”
“Not an option either.”
He could tell that he was getting on her nerves; she flushed a little, and something changed in her aura. Strange. It wasn’t usual that he noticed subtleties in a non-mage Evris.
“Now wait a minute—” she started, so prickly he might have laughed, another time.
After speaking with the likes of Tano, and hearing from the slimy fuck what he'd intended for Dara, Hart found that he couldn’t.
“You know what they’d planned to do? Make you choose between execution or slavery. But fear not. Because I’m such a great client, they gave you to me.”
Her eyes opened in astonishment, and then she was all fury. Her amber eyes were fire and ice.
Hart couldn’t help but notice that she was so very beautiful when she was pissed. He remembered observing that when they'd first met. Hadn't he pushed her j
ust to see her flush like this?
He was an ass.
“What the fuck?” she growled, fire in her eyes.
It was nice when her ire was directed toward someone else.
“I honestly doubt that there was any murder at all. Let me guess, a dodgy local called you here after seeing you, and they caught you as soon as you arrived? They targeted you, because you’re beautiful and, therefore, valuable as a slave.”
There was silence in the ship; his crew was silently fuming along with Dara.
“You’re not staying here alone for a day,” he repeated.
Dara glared, but remained silent at first.
After a time, she told him, “You know, you’d be considerably less infuriating if you actually explained shit rather than ordering people around all the time like you're some sort of an overlord we must all obey.”
Hart was entirely taken aback, especially since his team seemed to agree; there were nods all around.
What the fuck?
A relieved “Thank you!” came from Nik, while Ora said, “word,” and Alara held both thumbs up.
“I’m infuriating?” he repeated, dumbstruck.
“Extremely,” said Ora.
“Unbearably,” Alara emphasized.
“What the ladies said,” Nik confirmed.
Well, shit. “Then, why is this the first I’m hearing of it?” Hart asked.
“I don’t complain because you’re good at your job, I respect your ethics, and I figure you need us to do our things fast, so you can do yours,” Alara explained.
Nik had another reason. “I don’t complain because you pay me well.”
“That, plus you’re hot,” Ora said, shrugging. “I figured it was normal for hot people to be annoying.”
Hart shook his head, hardly believing what he was hearing. Everyone thought he was annoying, and no one had bothered to tell him, ever?
“You guys suck.”
“Let’s put it this way: would you tell Kai he’s being bossy?”
“Of course not,” Hart replied immediately.
Bossy was an integral part of Kai's character, one of the things that made him who he was, their leader.
“There you go,” Nik stated, as though it was a suitable explanation.
“I’m not Kai Lor fucking Hora, though.”
“No, just his fucking second.”
Oh.
Well, put that way, it made sense.
Hart was at the top of the food chain. Wrapping his head around it wasn’t easy, but he reluctantly understood his engineer's point.
“All right, I’ll endeavor to make requests, rather than give orders,” he promised.
Why the hell was every member of his crew looking at him like he’d sprouted a second head?
“What, now?”
“I vote for keeping the card cheat onboard.”
“Yep, you can have the best cabin.”
Dara chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t think so, but thanks.”
“Kidnapping it is, then.”
The atmosphere wasn’t often that easygoing onboard the ship.
He might not even have been against kidnapping the source of their lightheartedness, if anyone had asked him.
“Can you contact your crew?” he asked her, and the female nodded. “Good. Ask about their whereabouts. We’ll meet somewhere halfway.”
Dara pointedly looked at him, until he got it. Grimacing, he added, “If it pleases you.”
“Why, certainly sir. With pleasure.”
Infuriating female.
Fourteen
A trap closing in
Dara wasn’t supposed to know that Hart was humble, easygoing, and a little awkward. She wasn’t supposed to realize that he was nice, for a male in such a prominent position of power. She wasn’t supposed to notice that he travelled with just three crew members—less than her own number of companions—and in a simple ship, when politicians at his level generally moved with an entire battalion at their heels.
She wasn’t supposed to think that Hart was a good person. The kind of Evris who saw a stranger in trouble and pulled her out of it without a second of hesitation, and without demanding any reward.
Dammit.
If she was entirely honest, at least with herself, she’d always harbored a little bit of a crush on the mage. It wasn’t her fault: he was too handsome not to notice him. She'd managed to squash it years ago because she’d also told herself that he was a self-centered megalomaniac. Until now. Being proven otherwise was rather upsetting.
“They’re still making their way around the void next to Draknar.”
“Good. They’re close to Vratis, we can hit two birds with one stone; we have to meet up with Star and take her to Haimo.”
Star. The name rang a bell. “Your sister, right?”
Hart sighed. “She’s managing negotiations in Kai Lor’s homeland. It’s a mineral planet, very rich in various precious metals. They had a deal with the imperials; when Kai took over, it fell to pieces. It’s not quite Star’s area of expertise, but she and I come from imperial background, so we figured that it might facilitate the negotiations.”
It had been a year, but Dara remembered the stunning blonde female. Somehow, she’d imagined that she was someone’s wife, or perhaps a famous artist. She blushed, realizing how sexist she'd been. Star had had a polished appearance, a poised demeanor, and perfect features, like one of her sisters, so she'd immediately shoved them all on the same shelf. She, who'd first worked in the army of her own planet and now led a crew, believing that a female wouldn't have an eminent position just because of the way she looked? How hypocritical.
“She’s also a politician?”
Hart’s features lightened and he smiled softly, with obvious affection.
“We all are, in the family. Star and I, our parents, and their parents before them. It’s something in the way we were raised, I suppose. We were fed a spoonful of civic duty along with our daily broth. Our parents explained how the local governments, the sectorial leadership, and even the empire affected the society. Then we grew up to see a system that needed to be improved and our natural inclination was to do something about it.”
Dara got it. It sounded a little too idealistic, perhaps, but she had also been raised to understand what ruling meant. Too bad that her own family had mainly been interested in gaining power, rather than helping their people and fixing their government. Things might have worked out a different way.
Nik pretended to retch behind Hart, silently, but the mage immediately turned his way. “Something to say?”
“You’re so incredibly upstanding and righteous, it’s hard to digest for the rest of us.”
Hart didn’t seem to take it to heart, shrugging at the criticism.
“Whatever. I’ve seen many a son of an engineer become an engineer later.”
“Perhaps, but we lowly technicians don’t make disgustingly sappy speeches about it.”
The fact that Nik could say things like this in front of his superior did say a lot about Hart. Dara knew that her father, or even her uncle, would have exploded if someone under their authority ever addressed them in such a manner.
“Point taken,” was all Hart said, rolling his eyes.
The male straightened in his seat and leaned forward, his gray eyes now concentrating on her.
"Could your crew meet us on Vratis, then?" he asked.
She guessed that he was purposefully phrasing it as a question for her benefit, after she'd called him out on his high-handedness.
"It shouldn't be a problem, let me contact Zee."
She activated her communicator and relayed the information to the robot, who was quick to confirm that the coordinates would be adjusted. Then, Dara asked, “How's Kaur doing?”
She'd seen him less than a day ago, but after the mess on Aremeta, she could use some news.
“Kaur is in adequate health,” Zee informed her.
Zee was a worrywart; if someone had a cold, she was quic
k to assess their condition as “potentially dying” so, adequate health was good news.
“Alright. Catch you in half a day, then.”
“My limbs are short and slow to maneuver. I would suggest that we avoid a situation where it would be necessary for me to catch you, Miss Rex.”
She laughed and closed the connection.
“All arranged,” she told Hart.
Sometime while she'd been conversing with her robot, the common room had been emptied. No doubt, everyone was getting ready for launch. Hart was still there, however, comfortably seated in a large round armchair. His beautiful large beast was lying down at his feet, her head turned toward Dara, observing her.
The wolf had been watching her closely since she'd stepped into the ship. Dara had tried not to mind it, but there was a certain edge in the creature's eyes. Something that told her that if she decided that Dara was a treat, she'd jump at her throat and tear it to pieces.
Dara forced her gaze away from the wolf, and up to the male who seemed to own her. No, own was the wrong word. The beast seemed to be her own person. Hart was her companion, not her master.
"You don't help during launches," she noted, somewhat victoriously.
She was glad to have found another imperfection.
Hart smiled. "I'd only get in the way. I'm what we'd call tech-deficient."
And, of course, he went and ruined her critique, admitting to his faults like that.
“Deficient? It's not hard to learn how to operate a ship, when you put a mind to it.”
He just shrugged. "Certainly. However, I have no inclination and no need to concentrate on that sort of thing. I travel with my crew and the Goddess Light knows Alara would, rightfully, never let me behind the controls. Occasionally, I’m with my sister, who'd chew her arm off rather than let anyone pilot her ship. Or, sometimes, I travel with Kai himself. In short, wherever I go, there's a dozen people perfectly able and willing to take command and sort out the details. I've offered to help a time or two but the crew says I only get in the way."
He didn't even sound a little defensive. The male made no apology for who he was, what he was. The amount of confidence he exuded was incredibly appealing.
