Faultless

by Kate Rudolph

  Kayde took a step forward. “Or what?” He and Dru stared at one another and time seemed to slow around them. Dru’s claws itched to slide out of his knuckles and show Kayde exactly how skilled a warrior he was. But Quinn stepped between the two of them and placed a hand on her mate’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said, kissing his cheek.

  Kayde’s hard stare softened as he looked at his mate, and Dru felt a pang. He didn’t want Quinn, and he certainly didn’t want Kayde, but he wanted what they had. And he wanted it with Laurel. No matter how things turned out between them, he knew that it would be some time before she could accept him like that, before she would let him touch her so casually, before she would kiss his cheek or his lips, or anywhere else.

  But it would happen. Laurel came first, and he would show her just how good of a mate he could be. He would give her everything she deserved, because she deserved the best. Because she was his. And no one would come between them, not his friends, not their enemies, no one. He would destroy the Oscavian Empire before he let that happen.

  LAUREL DIDN’T APPRECIATE the medic, Hanra, drugging her in the middle of her conversation with Dru. She had planned to make it clear to him that he needed to stay away from her for his own good. That had all seemed to make sense, but when she woke up hours later, alone in her room, her first thought was to wonder where her mat—no, not her mate, her man—no, not that either. Where Dru was. That question was answered in a matter of minutes when he walked in with a tray of food that looked a lot like the protein bars they’d suffered through on the escape shuttle from Varrow’s ship.

  “Please tell me that’s some sort of building block game to help with my recovery or something. Seriously, I could kill for a piece of chicken right about now,” she joked, but Hanra had already been in to explain just what Laurel’s recovery should look like now that the infection had cleared up. There didn’t seem to be any lasting damage except for a few memory issues which were normal with tracking or control chip extractions. Laurel had some memory exercises to do daily, but her motor function hadn’t been affected. She was lucky.

  “I’m afraid most of our meals for the next week and a half will look a lot like this.”

  Laurel would be happy never to see protein slime again. If that was a necessary part of space travel, she’d rather stay on Earth, not that she’d ever had a say in it before. “My mother would call this a crime against humanity,” she paused on the last word, realizing she was one of the few humans aboard the ship. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  Dru eyed the food in front of them and offered her a weak smile. “It doesn’t look great, but it’s nutritious.”

  They’d gone over this before. That didn’t mean she wanted to stop talking. “It’s tasteless with a gross texture. You haven’t eaten until you’ve had fresh chicken from the farm with vegetables we’ve grown ourselves. My father’s garden is a thing of legend in our county. He wins all of the ‘best tasting vegetable’ categories at the county fair every year.” She could almost imagine digging into her father’s corn or enjoying the plump red tomatoes that were so juicy no matter how she ate them her hands ended up a mess. A sudden pang of homesickness almost bowled her over. She hadn’t thought of that garden in so long. She hoped that her disappearance hadn’t stopped her father from growing anything. That food was one of the few things that had pulled her away from the city, that had made her want to go home rather than carve out a life for herself.

  “What’s a county fair?” Dru asked.

  The differences between the two of them hit her at moments like this. He’d grown up with space travel available in the blink of an eye, but his home had consisted of ice and snow and sterile buildings. Laurel had been firmly planted on Earth, but the community had been much more expansive than Dru had ever known. The population of her county rivaled the entire Detyen species.

  “It’s where local people gather. There are competitions, games, rides. It’s about all the excitement my hometown gets for the year.” The only thing that could rival it was when one of the bigger animals got free from a local farm and sent everyone on a merry chase. There were no threats from distant galactic empires, no warriors trained to right ancient wrongs, just a bunch of people living simple lives and eking out an existence from the earth and relying on stars for decoration. Laurel realized she and Dru were sustaining a nice conversation and she wanted to veer away from it. The more she talked to him, the more she wanted to give in to what he wanted from her, and he deserved so much better that she couldn’t let herself weaken. Not with something this important. “So we’re a week out?” she asked.

  Dru shrugged, accepting that she was done talking about home. “If we don’t run into any more issues. As far as our scouts can tell, it’s smooth sailing ahead of us and the Oscavians haven’t caught our tail yet.”

  With that, a new worry popped up in Laurel’s mind. At least her worries didn’t need to fret about having company, it was getting crowded. “Are we leading them to Earth? Bringing danger there?” It had been a concern when they escaped Varrow, but he’d already had his eye on Detyen HQ, so even if she and Dru had accelerated Varrow’s plans, warning Dru’s people had been too important to delay. But she hadn’t heard Varrow say a word about Earth.

  Dru immediately put her at ease about their responsibility, even as they made her fear for her planet even worse. “Yormas of Wreet already has Earth in his sights.” At Laurel’s blank expression Dru explained, “We think he’s Varrow’s partner, and that he destroyed Detya.”

  Her eyes widened and she didn’t know how to respond to that.

  “At worst we’re moving up his timeline,” Dru continued. “But with the warriors and intel we’re bringing, I should think Earth will be happy for the company.”

  Laurel didn’t want to think of why Earth would be happy for warriors, and she certainly didn’t want to think about Dru running into battle. They’d just escaped from danger, couldn’t he take a vacation? She couldn’t be his mate, but she didn’t want to see him hurt. But she couldn’t let any of that out. “Hanra says she’ll let me out of bed tomorrow.”

  Dru’s face broke out into a grin. “You look better.”

  “My brain isn’t nearly as fuzzy. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I woke up here.” Now even her clearest moments back on Varrow’s ship seemed clouded in a haze of confusion. She couldn’t believe that she’d ever trusted her captor for even a moment, he was so clearly malignant. It seemed like a miracle that she and Dru had managed to escape, given her mental state at the time. But thinking of the past only took her further back, and she remembered everything Quinn said that she’d done, everything she remembered that she’d done. Her face fell and she looked away from Dru.

  But her mate—not her mate—wasn’t about to let her get away with that. “Are you alright?”

  Laurel picked at the thin sheet covering her mattress. “Why?”

  “You look sad.” He reached out and covered her hand with his.

  Laurel pulled away. She wasn’t worthy of comfort. “I’ve been held in captivity for months. I betrayed the women who should have been my friends, and then... then there’s you. Why wouldn’t I look sad?” Dru was such a solid presence that he ended up being a reminder of her biggest failing. He wouldn’t have been manipulated by a control chip.

  Dru’s hand curled into a fist where it was laying on the bed. “I—”

  Hanra chose that moment to become Laurel’s best friend. She opened the door and popped her head in. “Druath, Sandon is looking for you. He made it sound urgent.”

  Dru stared at Laurel for several more moments, his gaze a heavy weight on her heart. But finally he stood. “We’re not done here,” he warned.

  Laurel let him go, saying nothing. She had to blink back her tears as the door shut behind him. Only one more week until she was home. She just had to be strong, to resist him, until then. She might not have resisted the control chip, but she would do this, no matter the cost.

  Chapte
r Ten

  IT DIDN’T ESCAPE DRU’S notice that Laurel was avoiding him. She’d been released from her room in medical quarters and placed somewhere else. Where, Dru didn’t know. No one would tell him. He suspected that she was staying with one of the groups of unmated Detyen females. There wasn’t enough room on the ship to give her private quarters. He was bunking down with seven other warriors in a room meant to accommodate four people. The ship was crowded, and tempers were running high. The man in charge, Sandon, seemed to be riding at the edge of his patience. He had no sympathy for Dru’s plight, and after the second time Dru asked where Laurel was staying, Sandon threatened to throw him in the brig if he didn’t let it go.

  Dru had been tempted for about a minute. At least in the brig he might have room to stretch out while he slept. But that would get him no closer to his mate, and no closer to mending the rift between them. A part of him was impressed by Laurel’s skills at hiding. After all, the ship wasn’t that big. But in the three days since he’d last seen her, he hadn’t heard a hint about her whereabouts. Whether that meant she was holed up somewhere, or she was making friends, he didn’t know.

  The story of her rejection had spread to every corner of the ship, and plenty of his fellow warriors shot him pitying looks when they thought he wasn’t paying attention. They couldn’t imagine being rejected by a potential mate, he was sure. Detyen women knew the score, knew the stakes. But Dru didn’t just want Laurel because he would die without her, he wanted to know her thoughts, her hopes and fears, every detail that made her her. They still had time, or they would, if he could find her and they could speak.

  It wasn’t just the lack of information that kept Dru from Laurel. Sandon had kept him busy, first assigning a medical team to check up on him and make sure that Varrow and his team of torturers hadn’t done any permanent damage. Dru didn’t need medical tests to tell him that, but he subjected himself to the Detyen medical team without a fight. The fact that he almost broke out in a cold sweat when he was left alone with one of the doctors was something he kept to himself. His people weren’t there to hurt him, he consciously knew that. But after two months of near constant torture in a facility that looked a lot like one of the Detyen examination rooms, he couldn’t help but be nervous.

  When Dru was cleared by the team, he tried not to let his abject relief show. If they had subjected him to more tests, he wasn’t sure that he could have concealed his fear, no, his apprehension, for much longer. Instead of medical tests, he was subjected to hours and hours of interviews. The Detyen intelligence officer whose name Dru did not know asked him hundreds of questions, trying to determine what he knew about Brakley Varrow’s operation. Dru had thought that there wasn’t much to tell, but his interviewer seemed to believe otherwise. They went round after round, with her throwing the same question at him dozens of times, only worded slightly differently, until finally the interviewer would seem satisfied and move on to a different topic. If this was how they handled interviews with respected Detyen warriors, he hated to imagine what hostiles were subjected to. Then again, he had little sympathy for their enemies.

  After his first day back doing drills with his fellow warriors, Dru realized just how far behind he was lagging in terms of fitness. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He’d spent the better part of two months tied down to a bed, his only exercise coming from the agonized screams he couldn’t keep in. And while those screams had been a surprisingly effective way of keeping his core engaged, his endurance was shot to shit and he knew that he would need to spend many extra hours training to get back up to optimal condition.

  He resisted the urge to spend every free moment in the gym. Not only because he might challenge one of his fellow warriors who wouldn’t stop looking at him like he was a walking dead man who’d been rejected by his mate, but because he didn’t want to overexert himself and set his progress back. He’d learned the cost of over exuberance at a young age, and didn’t plan to pay the price again.

  Those hours not spent in the gym were spent searching out Laurel, and she still remained unfound. Dru wished there was someone he could talk to about what he was going through, someone who would understand what it meant to find a denya wasn’t Detyen. The phenomena was still new; as far as he knew, less than a dozen Detyens, some of whom weren’t even in the Detyen Legion, had claimed human mates. Until very recently it hadn’t been known that humans and Detyens were compatible. When the threat and history of Yormas of Wreet had been revealed to him, Dru had wondered if the connection the Detyens had to humans through the denya bond was somehow connected to why Yormas was now targeting humans. But no one knew that for certain.

  Rather than drive himself crazy looking for Laurel or someone else to talk to, Dru entered one of the private training areas to get in a little more mat time. He didn’t expect to find Kayde sitting inside and stretching. These rooms were smaller than the main gym area, and they couldn’t be reserved, but generally only one or two warriors used them at a time. Dru had been hoping to use the space alone, but Kayde’s presence shone like a gift from the gods. There was no one else on the ship who understood what it was to have a human mate, even if his had never rejected him. Perhaps he could give Dru some guidance, tell him things he would have never considered before.

  “Are you up for a match?” Kayde asked, tilting his head towards the sparring floor.

  Thoughts of advice flew out of his head, and his claws itched to shoot out from his knuckles. They would remain sheathed during the course of the session, but the need for battle pounded in his blood. Many of the other warriors had held back from sparring Dru, concerned that he wasn’t yet recovered from all that he had endured. But Dru knew that Kayde didn’t have it in him to hold back. If they sparred, they would both leave the floor bruised and bloody.

  Excellent.

  But Dru wasn’t stupid; like Kayde, he took a few minutes to stretch, not rushing through the process even as the prospect of proving himself lay right in front of him. He needed this, maybe even more than he needed advice. He’d spent the last months forced to be a victim, or forced to run, and that went against all of his warrior’s instincts. He needed to claim that part of himself again, to wake up from this long nightmare so that he could finally be himself again.

  Dru and Kayde met in the center of the ring. Their eyes met and with a nod, it was on. Legs and arms flashed, kicking out almost too fast to see. Kayde got the upper hand, swiping Dru’s legs out from under him and sending him crashing to the ground. Before Dru could scramble up, Kayde was on him, pummeling him with unforgiving fists. But in his haste to pound Dru into the ground, he left an opening that Dru didn’t dare resist.

  A punch to Kayde’s side gave Dru the space he needed to maneuver, and he was able to buck his opponent off, switching their positions and trading more blows.

  Sweat poured off of Dru, and Kayde was no different. It made the area around them especially hazardous when slipping became as much of a reason to fall to the floor as another man’s fists. Neither Kayde nor Dru was willing to tap out, not when they both kept escaping each other’s holds. Finally, after Dru was sure that he couldn’t take anymore, but was completely unwilling to give up, the sparring timer sounded, putting an end to their round.

  Kayde and Dru rolled away from one another, both of them lying on the ground and breathing hard. Dru wondered how long he could get away with laying there before someone rolled him off to the side or yelled at him to get up. Kayde answered that question by springing to his feet and offering Dru a hand. He was reluctant to take it, only because he wanted to lay there longer and possibly sleep until they made it to Earth. But Kayde waggled his fingers and Dru gripped his wrist, letting himself be pulled up.

  They both settled on the bench near one wall, toweling off and taking drinks from the water station. They sat in silence for a long time, long enough for Dru to remember why he had initially wanted to talk to Kayde.

  “Can I ask you something?” Dru asked, just as it looked like
Kayde was getting ready to get up.

  His fellow warrior settled back on the bench and shot him a look. “Can I stop you?”

  “I think your sense of humor grew back wrong.” It was still strange for Kayde to say things like that. The soulless lost the ability to engage in banter. They barely spoke, and only answered direct questions. Holding a conversation with one was less interesting than speaking to an android, and that was saying something. But Dru didn’t let his sentimentality show, he was sure that Kayde would not appreciate it.

  “My mate doesn’t complain,” Kayde shot back.

  Dru tried not to wince; he didn’t want anyone to realize just how much Laurel’s rejection was affecting him.

  But Kayde must have regained his ability to read what other people were feeling right along with his emotions and sarcasm. “This is about Laurel?”

  Dru tilted his head back until it was resting against the wall. “That obvious?”

  Kayde gave a serious nod, all humor gone. “She is your denya, of course she occupies your thoughts.”

  With that one sentence, Kayde proved that he knew exactly what Dru was feeling. Maybe he could help. Hopefully. “She’s avoiding me,” he confessed. While he had spent the last few days looking for her, he hadn’t said that out loud to anyone, no matter how obvious it must’ve been. He might have expected to feel better now that he had admitted the problem to someone, but the weight of his failure was too much to be so easily excised. “You heard her back at HQ. I’m trying to give her space,” not that he had much of a choice considering her expert stealth skills, “but this can’t go on forever. I could lose her.”

  “You would need to have her in the first place to lose her,” Kayde said, giving voice to one of the thoughts that Dru was trying to ignore.

  He growled and really wished that flashing his claws wouldn’t be considered a very serious challenge.