Faultless

by Kate Rudolph

  “Don’t let the truth upset you,” cautioned Kayde.

  “I thought you might have a little sympathy for me.” Dru didn’t want to whine. Most of his fellow warriors would never be lucky enough to find their mates. The fact that he was suffering a little setback right now when he’d been given a gift that so few would ever have shouldn’t have mattered. He could grow beyond it, fix this mess.

  “My sympathy is functioning just as well as my sense of humor.” This whole conversation was a stark reminder for how much losing his soul could change a man. Dru had forgotten what Kayde was like when they were younger. They hadn’t been particularly close, and the tone of this conversation might have been a hint as to why.

  “You’re no help.”

  Kayde took pity on him and softened his tone. “You cannot force a mating, no matter the cost to you. If she doesn’t want to—”

  “I don’t think that’s the problem,” Dru interrupted before Kayde could make even more assumptions.

  “Oh?” Kayde asked, intrigued.

  Dru didn’t want to reveal all that had happened between him and Laurel, but he would have to give some information if he wanted to hear anything useful in return. “We kissed,” he said simply. He did not need to go into more detail. Did not need to explain how that single touch had seared him deep down into his soul and changed him forever. How it had obliterated all thoughts of past lovers, and proved to him how Laurel was the only woman he’d ever want again. “It was... good. Very good. But before we could go any farther, I thought it was right to tell her about the denya bond. I didn’t want her to... I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.” And he’d been berating himself ever since. Why had he not waited? If she had more time to adjust, more time to grow to care for him, maybe she would not have run so swiftly, denied him so fiercely.

  “And you told her about the denya price?” Kayde prodded when Dru stopped talking.

  “We didn’t get that far.” No, it had all been kissing and connection until he opened his mouth and she ran away.

  Kayde pondered that revelation. “Perhaps you should. So she understands.”

  But Dru couldn’t agree. “I’m not going to extort her into having sex with me.” Many Detyens chose to seal the bond as soon as they recognized it, long before they could feel anything but recognition for one another. When death was the other option, the choice made complete sense. But Dru knew that it wasn’t the same with humans, and he refused to hold Laurel to a Detyen standard she didn’t know or understand. And he didn’t want her to choose him out of pity or to make love to him as some sort of favor. He’d rather let her go completely than make her suffer.

  “That’s rather dramatic.”

  “I want her to choose me. To choose us. Not because I’m going to die if she doesn’t, but because she wants me.” He knew the potential consequences, but the potential gain was so much more. Yes, he could die, but if he didn’t, he’d have a mate who loved him at his side. There was no greater gift in the universe than that. No matter the risk.

  “Or you could give up your soul.” Kayde pointed out the obvious.

  “I’m not going to do that.” Other than Laurel, he’d never revealed that to anyone, and even she didn’t know the complete truth. Maybe he should have hesitated in telling Kayde; after all, until recently the man had been soulless himself, but Dru was done hiding. Asking for his soul was a step too far. He’d given his life to the Detyen Legion, but they couldn’t take any more than that. He wouldn’t allow it.

  “Good choice.” Kayde shocked him by agreeing.

  “I thought you’d say differently.” Kayde had always done his duty. He was the scion of one of the deceased royal houses. They may have lost all of their power when the planet was destroyed, but he’d taken his duty to his people to heart, never hesitating to sacrifice for the greater good.

  “I do not regret the decision. I would have never met Quinn if I had let myself pass on. But I would never suggest that anyone else take that step. It is not an existence I would wish on anyone.” None of the soulless ever revealed their thoughts on their sacrifice. They probably lost the ability to regret along with the rest of their emotions, but hearing Kayde now, Dru felt even more sure of the decision he’d made.

  They could talk about this all day, but Dru had spilled enough of his feelings for the day. “Another round?” he suggested. Everything still hurt, but he needed the training, and if he couldn’t claim his mate, fighting another warrior would have to tire him out for now.

  “I promised my mate that I would meet her for dinner.”

  “Oh, so you don’t want me to beat you again,” Dru taunted.

  Kayde scoffed. “As if you bested me the first time.”

  “Didn’t I?”

  Kayde eyed the ring in front of them before standing up. “Very well, one more round.”

  Chapter Eleven

  LAUREL ALMOST DIDN’T recognize Earth when she climbed off the first of the shuttles. Only a handful of the Detyen fleet was being allowed to enter the atmosphere while the Sol Defense Agency and the joint defense task forces parlayed with the Detyen leadership to work out some sort of deal. Until the last few decades, Earth had been completely ignorant of alien life, and after first contact, which had happened before Laurel was born, aliens had begun to migrate to the planet in small numbers. They were still mostly contained to the cities, and the population of all alien species on Earth was only somewhere in the thousands.

  The arrival of the Detyen Legion blew that all out of the water. Or out of space.

  Humans knew about the Detyens. Quinn had explained that Kayde and his companions had acted as sort of an advance team when they took the survivors from Fenryr 1 and escorted them home. Since then, they’d been working to prepare humans for a potential attack and paving the way for cooperation between the Detyens and humans if Yormas of Wreet showed back up ready to fight.

  What no one had expected was the entire population of the Detyen Legion to show up with nowhere else to go, having fled an Oscavian warship. With all of the new aliens around, Laurel didn’t expect her people to take much interest in her. She was just a human, a nobody, a farm girl from the middle of the country who might have been missed by her family, but no one else. And once her family discovered what she had done, she doubted that they would be too happy for her return. She had betrayed her fellow humans and cost her rescuers dozens of lives.

  She knew her first priority should be getting in contact with her family, but she was almost glad when a woman wearing a Sol Defense Agency uniform ushered her to a waiting vehicle and whisked her away from the crowd of disembarking aliens. She didn’t see Dru, and she tried to tell herself that was a good thing. They were back on Earth now, or rather she was back on Earth and he was there for the first time, and that meant their adventure had come to an end. They never had to see each other again. Why that left her feeling hollow, Laurel wasn’t sure. He wasn’t supposed to be her mate. She hadn’t chosen him, she didn’t want to belong to anybody, and even if she did, he deserved someone way better than her. Someone who wasn’t broken, someone who wasn’t a betrayer.

  Her mind was in such a jumble, she didn’t ask her driver where they were going or what they were going to do when they got there. The journey didn’t take long. The Detyen shuttle had set down at a Sol Defense Agency base just outside Washington DC in Virginia. Laurel was pretty sure they were still on the base by the time she was told to get out of the car and led into a squat concrete building. She ended up in a small conference room where she was offered water and snacks. She could have hugged the agent who placed a plate of fruit and cheeses in front of her. Anything to escape the protein slush that she’d been subsisting on for far too long. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes as the tangy juice of an apple exploded on her tongue. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had fruit. Even though she’d been given decent food during her time with Brakley Varrow, they had still been dried and reconstituted premade meals
that were common on spaceships. Barely a step up from protein slush.

  She gorged herself on the snacks and was only able to stop when two new agents walked through the door and took a seat at the table opposite her. The first was a man, maybe forty or so, with dark golden brown skin and piercing brown eyes. His hair was cropped short, and he wore a Sol Defense Agency uniform that had three stripes on one shoulder, probably meant to show his rank. The woman next to him looked a bit younger, pale, with blonde hair that was tied back in a tight bun that looked like it was giving her a headache. She only had one stripe on her shoulder and Laurel didn’t know whether that meant she was really high ranking or really low ranking. From the way she kept glancing at her companion, Laurel thought she was the lower ranking of the pair.

  “Welcome home, Miss Ormand. We are glad to see you arrived safely. I am Evan Pollick and this is my partner, Rachel Weaver. We have some things we’d like to speak to you about.” Evan sat with his hands clasped loosely in front of him, inviting, nonthreatening, capable.

  Laurel found herself unconsciously leaning forward, as if Evan and Rachel, or Pollick and Weaver, she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to call them by their first names or their last, could protect her, could take all the negativity living inside of her and make it all right. Maybe it was just because they were the first humans with any sort of authority that she’d spoken to since getting back to Earth, or maybe it was some other reason, but some of the anxiety that had been knotted up all deep inside of her started to dissolve as she thought that maybe this time things would be okay.

  Those hopes were dashed almost as soon as Rachel began to talk. “According to the reports we received, you have been subjected to several procedures that have not been studied before on Earth. While we’ve seen the aftermath of control chips, you are one of the few people to ever survive a successful extraction. One of the few humans, I mean. We would like to admit you to the base hospital here for observation to ensure that you are in good health, and further our understanding of what chip implants can do to people.” She pulled out a folder and laid it on the table, flipping it open to reveal several sheets of paper covered in very small type. “You will need to sign here to consent to the procedures and the admittance. This is all very standard, I promise.”

  More tests? More hospitals? Laurel had seen enough for a lifetime and beyond. She stared at the paper in front of her and wondered if they would let her go if she said no. They were between her and the door and she was somewhere deep inside a government facility. They really needed her consent? Or was that something they were asking for to make her compliant? Laurel clenched her jaw and her hands curled into fists under the table. Why did people think she was such a great guinea pig? What was so special about her?

  “I—”

  The door behind Evan and Rachel burst open and an older man, 60-ish with dark hair graying at the temples and a jaw sharp enough to cut, stepped into the room. His gaze punched into Laurel for a moment before he looked at her two SDA interviewers. “This meeting is over, I am taking Laurel Ormand into my custody,” his voice rumbled through the room, definitive, and a little terrifying. Laurel couldn’t tell whether it would be worse to stay here or go with him.

  Rachel whipped around in her seat. “This isn’t under your purview, sir.”

  Evan was nodding beside her, but he said nothing.

  Sir, whoever he was, raised one eyebrow and stared Rachel down. Laurel could hear her gulp before she broke his gaze and glanced down at the table.

  “Of course, if you give us just a few minutes to wrap up here—” Rachel began before the newcomer spoke over her.

  “I don’t have time to wait. We are leaving now.” And from then on Laurel didn’t get a chance to protest. She left with the gray-haired man and he shepherded her out of the building and into the late afternoon sun. They got into a waiting vehicle and this time she sat in the front seat, which seemed like an improvement. The man rocketed down the roads of the base and out onto the highway while Laurel was still trying to catch up with what was going on.

  “We let your family know that you’re alive and unharmed,” said the man. “Your parents are on their way.”

  “Who are you?” she demanded. How did he know about her parents? Then again, if he was with the SDA of course he had access to that information.

  “Remington Alvarez, my daughter Sierra rescued you from Fenryr 1 with her team. We’ve been working to prepare the SDA for the coming threat.” His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly and his jaw clenched as he glanced in the rearview mirror, as if he expected someone to start chasing them. Laurel didn’t know if that was a real threat, or something ingrained from years and years of military service.

  Because she knew exactly who Remington Alvarez was. General Remington Alvarez, he’d left the rank out. He’d saved Mumbai from an alien attack and become something of a celebrity military man. People told stories about him, kids on the playground at school pretended to be him or to work for him. And now she was sitting in a vehicle finding out that his daughter had tried to save her life. Laurel gave up trying to make sense of things. Her life was officially too crazy for that. An international hero was just casually talking to her as if he were a normal person, and she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to deal with that. So she wasn’t going to deal with it all. She pushed it into a box in her mind and buried it under all of the other crazy shit that she had to endure for the past several months.

  “Where are we going?” she asked. Now that she knew who she was with, she was pretty sure that he wasn’t trying to kidnap her. But given her track record, she couldn’t completely rule out the possibility.

  “We’ll see about getting you some permanent housing if you decide not to go home with your parents. But for now I’m taking you somewhere safe, somewhere where the SDA won’t be able to get their hooks into you.”

  “I thought you got them to back off?” Though she realized that might have been a little naïve. Sure he got them to let her go for now, but she couldn’t sit in the shadow of General Remington Alvarez forever.

  He scoffed and shot her an amused glance. “They don’t give up that easily.”

  Laurel sank into her seat and tried not to let her mind spin out with worry at that revelation. They pulled up to an apartment building in DC and Alvarez parked right on the corner, pointedly ignoring a no parking sign. “I’ll walk you up.”

  Up where? Did he just have some sort of apartment in the city that he could lend out to random women in need? No, Laurel didn’t want to think about it like that. She wasn’t about to let herself become the plaything of some old man just because he’d gotten her out of a sticky situation. They took the elevator in silence and Alvarez led her to one of the rooms, where he knocked on the door and it echoed resoundingly down the hallway. Laurel squeezed her eyes shut. She could make it through this, everything was going to be okay. She had to believe that, otherwise she wasn’t sure how she was going to survive.

  DRU MANAGED TO TALK his way onto one of the first shuttles heading down to Earth. He’d never been to the planet, but he’d seen vids of it, had heard humans speak of it, and as he caught sight of that blue marble shining brightly in his window something like awe unfurled within him. Home. It wasn’t Detya, but Detya was nothing but a memory now, and it wasn’t even his memory. There was no hope of ever returning, of ever seeing the place that his people had come from. The place that had been destroyed for no reason that he knew.

  He’d seen hundreds of planets in the time since he became a warrior. He’d been sent on so many missions he could no longer remember them all. Many of those planets had been nice, had been beautiful, but none of them had triggered the soul deep yearning that he felt while looking at his mate’s home. At the place he hoped would become his own home.

  Dru didn’t have much of an idea for what to do once they landed. Find Laurel, of course. But he knew he probably shouldn’t just disappear. Sandon would surely have orders, or one of the other
leaders. But at the moment he was free, and he had to take advantage of that while he could.

  Once they hit the ground, Kayde found him. His fellow warrior stood beside Quinn and tilted his head up to soak in the sun. “This is something they can’t replicate on a ship, no matter how hard they try,” Kayde said.

  The small talk, the emotion, no longer startled Dru when it came from Kayde. Since their training session the other day, they’d met daily to spar even more and get to know each other again. Dru had the feeling that Kayde knew more about Laurel that he was letting on, but Dru had decided not to ask. Now that they were on Earth he hoped that his denya would feel more steady on her feet, more able to deal with all of the changes that had happened to her in the past several months. Maybe now she could deal with him. Because once Dru found her, he wasn’t letting up. Not unless she unequivocally told him to get lost and never see her again. And maybe that was a risk, but it was one he had to take. She was his denya, how could he do anything else?

  “I don’t have much experience with this, but I’m pretty sure everyone’s going to be standing around here all day,” said Quinn. “Want to get out of here before anyone realizes they should stop us?” She offered her mate a playful grin and then shot a glance at Dru to include him in the offer.

  Dru’s first instinct was to say no. Laurel would be getting off one of the shuttles soon, and he should be on the ground waiting for her. But Quinn had a good point. This wasn’t just a friendly visit. There would be questions from the government, plenty of obstacles to overcome as they decided whether or not to accept the Detyen fleet or send them on their way. Kayde and Quinn already knew the planet, and they seemed to know how to get away from this base. “Lead the way,” said Dru.

  It wasn’t difficult with all of the SDA officials preoccupied by the sudden influx of potentially thousands of alien refugees. And before Dru knew it they were in a vehicle and speeding down the road toward a place that Kayde promised was safe. He barely had time to blink before he was in a suite in a nondescript building being reunited with the team that he’d last seen back when he was defending the human women temporarily staying at Detyen HQ. Kayde promised that they had made it to Earth, but seeing them now with his own eyes gave him a relief he hadn’t realized he needed.