“Yes, I am.”
Shaylah heard the note of thinly disguised arrogance in his voice and knew she almost had him. “The slave is a Triotian.”
“A Triotian!” he echoed in astonishment.
“Yes. And he’s agreed to make contact with the rebels and pass information to the Coalition.”
“A spy? A Triotian turning on his own? Hard to believe.”
“They’ve promised him his freedom in return.”
“Ah.” Sarleck’s expression cleared. “And of course, the rebels would never believe him if he were marked as a Coalition slave.”
“Exactly,” Shaylah said, careful to appear suitably impressed with his cleverness.
It worked. Within moments, the man was hurrying along beside her. They reached the shuttle quickly. When the inspector arrived once more, she gave them a rather garbled story about bringing someone aboard for repairs, and when Sarleck looked at her, she smiled conspiratorially at him. He smiled unexpectedly back, and she felt a tiny flare of triumph. It was going to work, she thought.
She pushed aside the fact that success would mean the end of her way of life. Sooner or later, someone was going to put some pieces together, realizing that she had taken a medical officer, not an engineer, aboard. That would lead to Sarleck, who eventually, when he realized she had lied to him, would spill the whole story. Her only hope was that by then Wolf would be safely away, out of their reach.
She breathed a silent sigh of relief when the Sunbird loomed into sight; he had stayed. He must have realized that trying to escape aboard her would be suicide. Or perhaps, somewhere deep inside, he had found a grain of trust.
Fool, she said scathingly to herself. Still looking for a miracle.
She took them carefully around to the far side; she didn’t want to have to explain the damage to the ship to Sarleck. As they neared the shuttle bay, Shaylah sensed Wolf was there. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she could feel him there as surely as she could feel the controls beneath her hands as the small craft settled neatly into its docking bay.
As they exited the shuttle, Shaylah looked out and saw him in the shadows near the hatchway. Wondering, she thought bitterly, whom she had brought to take him back. Well, she would have her vindication soon. Unfortunately, it would come too late to salve her battered heart.
She couldn’t bear to look at him, not when she knew he thought she could betray him. She could barely speak, so merely gestured sharply at Sarleck.
“Go with him,” she said, not caring that it sounded harsh, demanding, and unmistakably an order from master to slave.
Wolf drew himself up, looking at her steadily. Then he slumped, and for the first time in a long time, she saw him assume the docile, submissive posture of the slave.
“As you command,” he said obediently.
Shaylah didn’t stay to see them go. She headed for her quarters, shivering a little as she sat down to wait. A dart of fear shot through her. This was a delicate operation, much more so than the insertion of the collar probes into the brain. Damage could easily be done. Wolf could be left crippled, or that quick, sharp intelligence severely impaired. She’d known this, but hadn’t really thought it through in her anxiousness to free him. Did she have the right to make this decision for him?
Of course not, she thought. She’d done that once before, and it had destroyed what little faith he’d had in her. She leaped to her feet. But before she could get the door open to run to the sick bay, the intercom crackled.
“Captain! You’d better get down here, before this maniac tears your ship apart!”
Chapter 11
SARLECK HAD exaggerated, but not by much, Shaylah thought as she skidded to a stop inside the sick bay. The medical officer was backed up against a wall, pinned by an overturned table. His gaze was glued warily on Wolf, who was holding him there by threat of mayhem administered with a heavy piece of metal apparently broken from the table’s base.
“Wolf?” she said softly.
His head snapped around. He was breathing hard, and she saw nothing less than desperation in his face. The expression changed as he looked at her, and when he spoke, his tone was one she’d never, ever thought to hear from him.
“Please, Shaylah,” he beseeched her, “don’t do this. I know you’re angry with me, but . . .”
She stared at him in bewilderment. “What’s wrong? I thought you would welcome this.”
His eyes widened in shock. “Welcome . . . mutilation?”
“Muti—Wolf, what are you talking about?”
“I know you said a eunuch would be more controllable, but . . . I thought you were just angry.”
“Eos,” Shaylah breathed, then whirled on Sarleck. “What in Hades did you tell him?”
“Nothing!” Sarleck protested, still eyeing Wolf. “I merely said I was here to operate on him.”
“Did you bother to explain?”
“Explain?” Sarleck drew himself up. “I’m not in the habit of explaining myself to slaves!”
“Perhaps if you were,” she said coolly, “you wouldn’t find yourself backed into a corner by one.”
“Really, Captain,” he said indignantly.
“Leave us, Lieutenant. Now. I will send for you.”
Sarleck made an effort at a dignified retreat, but it was marred by his frantic glance at Wolf as he sidled out of the sick bay.
When he was gone, Shaylah turned back to Wolf. Still breathing hard, he was watching her nearly as warily as Sarleck had watched him. When she spoke, she made no effort to hide her pain; she was beyond that now.
“I can’t believe that you really thought—” She broke off, swallowing a sob. “Eos, how you must hate me.”
His chest rose and fell sharply, as if he were struggling to control the burst of adrenaline that had enabled him to rip the metal from the table. When he didn’t deny her words, Shaylah bit her lip and steadied herself.
“I brought him here for just one thing, Wolf. To take that damned collar off.”
Wolf stared at her, clearly stunned. One hand crept up to his neck, to finger the imprisoning band. “Off?”
“Yes. In truth, you’ve been free since we got to the Sunbird, but I can’t seem to convince you any other way. It is a dangerous procedure, since the probes are embedded in the brain. You could be damaged, even die, but . . . I thought you would find it worth the risk. Sarleck is very good with a laser scalpel, despite his . . . attitude.”
“My God,” he whispered.
“It’s your decision, Wolf. Do you wish him to proceed?”
She waited. He continued to stare at her, as if afraid to believe. Shaylah felt the pain she’d been carrying dig deeper, grip tighter. She couldn’t take this much longer.
“I’ve done everything I can to make you believe that I mean what I say,” she said, her voice stiff. “It is up to you now. Shall I call him back?”
Slowly, letting out a long, shaky breath, Wolf nodded.
“Very well.” She turned to go, then stopped to look back over her shoulder at him. “I apologize for once more making a decision I had no right to make. I’m sure you are happy to realize this will be the last time that will ever happen.” She started toward the hatchway.
“Shaylah,” he began, but she kept walking. It was finished. Soon the slave Wolf would be no more, and the free Wolf—or whoever he was—would certainly want nothing to do with her. He’d made that abundantly clear.
When she reached her quarters she curled up on her bunk, positive that she would spend the next few minutes battling not to cry. She was wrong. She felt like crying, her eyes were stinging, but the tears would not come. She just lay there quivering helplessly, unable even to find that small release for the anguish weighing so heavily inside her.
“HE’LL BE OUT for a while,” Sarl
eck reminded her as he climbed out of the shuttle. “But all went well. There should be no damage at all. But I hope they don’t regret this. He seems far too unpredictable and dangerous to be let loose.”
“Fortunately, that’s not our problem, is it?”
Sarleck looked at her sharply, as if searching for some sign of sarcasm. Shaylah just looked back with that flat, weary expression that was all she could muster since she’d realized how completely Wolf distrusted her.
“I suppose. Good-bye, Captain. I imagine I’ll be seeing you when we get our new orders?”
Imagining, she thought grimly, is as close as it will get. “Enjoy the rest of your leave, Lieutenant,” she said, avoiding a direct answer.
“Yes. Good luck on your mission.” He started to go, then issued a caution. “Don’t turn your back on that wild man.”
That, she thought as he walked away, was irony in its purest form. She should have turned her back long ago, the moment she had first found herself captivated by the golden man wearing the golden collar.
After the final inspection, she returned to the Sunbird and docked the shuttle. She closed and secured the shuttle bay doors, then made her way to the sick bay once more.
He was, as Sarleck had said, still unconscious. He was lying on his stomach, the thick mane of his hair covering the signs of the surgery on the back of his neck. He was stable, Sarleck had told her; she could proceed at any time. He would come around before they got to Legion Command, he’d said.
Shaylah had merely shrugged, knowing he was fishing for confirmation of their destination. The man already knew too much; he had looked at her altogether too speculatively after Wolf’s impassioned—and too personal—plea.
She returned to the con, contacted port control, and announced her departure. Holding her breath, at every second expecting disaster, expecting to be found out, she eased the Sunbird out of orbit. She stifled the urge to throw the ship into light speed; that would only get them noticed.
The minutes passed, and Shaylah gradually accepted the incredible fact that she had pulled it off. Instead of triumph, she felt only an odd numbness that made it difficult to function. When she felt safely clear of Alpha 2, she set a course to return to the Boreas shipping lanes, turned on the self-pilot, and sank wearily back in the command chair.
Only when they reached the sector around the winter-deserted crystal mining colony did Shaylah surrender to her body’s clamoring need for rest. She dragged herself to her quarters, peeled off her flight suit and left it heedlessly tumbled on the floor, collapsed on her bunk, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Once again, she awakened to find Wolf there. She sat up with a start, staring at him as he stood towering over her. He still wore the borrowed flight suit and an utterly bemused expression on his face.
She was relieved to see him up and moving; Sarleck had promised there would be no ill effects, but there was always the chance of some unnoticed damage. Her gaze was irresistibly drawn to his throat; nothing now marred the strong, corded strength there. There was a mark where the collar had been, and she supposed there would be a scar at his nape, but it would soon fade. His slavery would be a dim, unpleasant memory. As would she. Misery welled up in her anew, and she spoke hastily in an effort to fend it off.
“Ho—” Her voice broke with the huskiness to deep sleep. She cleared her throat and tried again. “How do you feel?”
One hand went to the back of his neck, the fingers flexing at the novelty of feeling nothing but his own skin. “I . . . Strange.”
“No pain? Numbness? Headache? Dizziness?”
“No.”
She didn’t know what else to say; his steady gaze disconcerted her. At last he lowered his hand, and without a word, sat on the edge of the bunk beside her.
“Why, Shaylah?”
She bit her lip; even now he questioned her motives. Her throat was suddenly far too tight for speech.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You could have saved your career by turning me in. You could have told them I escaped, and you were bringing me back. But you’ve brought someone else into it, another Coalition officer. There’s no way out for you now. Why?”
Misery sharpened once more into pain. “If you don’t know by now,” Shaylah whispered, “I could never explain.”
“Is this . . . to prove something, again? That you mean what you say, about hating the system that allows slavery?”
Shaylah felt something break inside her. It had obviously never occurred to him that her actions stemmed from something on a much more personal level. No doubt because he felt nothing for her on that level.
“Of course,” she said mechanically, dully.
But he had come to her of his own will, here aboard the Sunbird, hadn’t he? He had, if nothing else, wanted her. Or had that just been the novelty of mating out of desire rather than demand? Yet he was Triotian, bound to only the one who was or would be a bonded mate. But he had touched her with such fire, such intensity . . .
She had been so certain, on that last night, before the pirates came, that he truly felt something for her. Now she was sure of nothing, except that this was tearing her apart. She felt her eyes begin to sting. Furious, she blinked rapidly. She would not cry. Perhaps she had nothing left but her pride, but she would keep that, never letting him know just how foolish she had been. She curled one hand into a fist, nails digging into her palm, concentrating on the pain as she fought her tears.
A shiver of tension rippled through her. The movement sent the thermal cover sliding. She grabbed at it, aware that she was naked beneath it. It slipped past her breasts before she could stop it, and Wolf went very, very still. She caught the cover and tugged it back, avoiding looking at him.
“Shaylah.” His voice was soft as he reached out to her. She pulled away, still avoiding his gaze. He drew back his hand, and she could feel him watching her. After a moment he asked quietly, “Are you still angry with me for thinking you meant to have me gelded?”
“No.” It was the truth; she was far beyond anger. She wished she could be angry. It would help to fight the pain. She took in a breath and tried to pull herself together. “For you, it was . . . a logical assumption, after what I said.”
“For me?”
“For . . . a slave.”
“A slave who didn’t know he was about to be freed . . .” He studied her for a moment. “It takes a Coalition order to unband a slave. I doubt you had one. What did you tell him?”
“Sarleck?”
Shaylah tried to gather her wits. She couldn’t tell Wolf what she had told Sarleck without him realizing there was need for a spy on Trios—which would tell him she had been part of the renewed campaign against his home. Somehow, on top of everything else, she couldn’t bear for him to know that.
“I told him that I was under Coalition orders.” She smiled grimly, sardonically. “There are many forms of slavery, it seems.”
Her sarcasm didn’t divert him. “Why didn’t you tell me why you brought him here?”
Shaylah laughed, a short, harsh sound completely without humor. “I have learned that words seem to have little effect on what you believe.”
“Perhaps that is true of all slaves,” Wolf said gently. “We have much experience with people who say what others want to hear, then do as they please.”
She sighed heavily. “I suppose.”
He reached out again, and this time she didn’t move. It seemed beyond her; although she had just slept for hours, she felt as weary as if she had not closed her eyes at all. She felt his hand close gently over hers, warm, strong, and so very tempting.
Despite her emotional exhaustion, his touch had the same effect as always: Heat, radiating in rippling waves, spread through her. His fingers moved, brushing the sensitive back of her hand in feathery strokes. The heat flared into
a blaze, and she shivered despite herself. She looked at him then, too weary to hide, too tormented to deny her anguish.
“Wolf,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering with wetness, “what do you want from me?”
“What do I want . . .”
His tone was odd, more revelation than question, and when she realized it was at the wonder of actually being free to decide what he wanted, Shaylah felt a sudden pang. Such a simple thing, yet lost to him for so long . . . Could she truly blame him for not trusting?
“I want,” Wolf said at last, his eyes glittering green even in the dim light of her cabin, “you.”
Shaylah’s breath caught. Her heart leaped, twisting joyously in her chest.
“I want to remember,” he said slowly, his hand moving to catch her wrist and lift her palm to his lips, “what it’s like to mate freely, honestly, not because of a machine that . . . controls me. I want to know . . .”
His voice trailed off, and Shaylah shivered as he softly pressed a kiss into her palm. Her body was awakening rapidly, recognizing his touch, his mouth. Already she could feel the heat pooling deep inside, gathering, readying her. But his words puzzled her.
“But . . . you do know,” she said, even as her body urged her to quit talking and kiss him back.
“That was in another life,” he murmured, trailing kisses up the softness of her inner arm.
Brielle, Shaylah thought, smothering a sigh. Always Brielle. She could never, ever compete with the precious memory of his dead mate.
As if he’d felt the change in her, Wolf lifted his head. His eyes were cooling rapidly as he looked at her. “I see. You do not want a free man.”
Shaylah stared at him, her hurt suddenly swamped by confusion. “What?”
He sat up straight, stiff, taking his hand from her. “Pardon me. I had not thought you were a woman who had to be in control. You seemed,” he said in a voice laced with mockery, “to surrender it easily enough with me before.”
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