Forged in Shadow

by Anna Carven

  Rykal’s golden eyes flashed as the light reached him, reminding her of a wolf in the night. Slowly, the rest of him came into focus. He was leaning casually against an empty cargo container with his arms crossed, wearing an infuriating devil-may-care expression

  “You bastard!” Dekker lunged forward, but Arin pinned him with a hard stare.

  “I told you not to engage,” she snapped. “What do you think you’re going to achieve, Dekker?”

  “He killed Harris!”

  “That Human shot a missile at me. Be thankful I didn’t kill all of you,” Rykal said mildly. “I could have.”

  “Oh, yeah? Picking us off one by one in the dark is one thing, but taking all of us on at once?” Dekker raised his bolt-rifle.

  “Go ahead, Human,” Rykal taunted. “I thought you Humans were supposed to be intelligent life-forms, but apparently, some of you don’t learn.”

  Arin rolled her eyes. Men. “Can I interrupt this testosterone-fest and remind you that this freighter’s been taken over by Xargek?” She glared at Rykal. “Rykal, stop teasing my squad.” She turned to her men. “Stop trying to pick fights you can’t win and get your asses to the loading dock, now!”

  Rykal was grinning like a fool. The men in her squad had faces like thunder, but they reluctantly obeyed as their training kicked in.

  Okello glanced over his shoulder. “You coming, Sarge?”

  “In a moment.”

  “You can’t be alone with…”

  “That’s none of your business,” Arin barked, losing patience. “Get the hell out of here, Private!”

  She turned to Rykal, moving closer until he was fully bathed in her blue light. He wore a stripped-down version of his armor that left most of his torso bare.

  His skin gleamed in the blue light, and Arin could make out every delicious contour and ridge of his perfectly honed torso.

  “I like it when you’re bossy like that,” Rykal murmured. He was so close. She was acutely aware of him. He watched her every move like a hawk, his smile widening as he took a deep breath. His scent surrounded her, crisp and masculine and like nothing she’d encountered on Earth.

  Arin lowered the plasma gun as Rykal moved in on her. She wasn’t really sure what he was doing, but she found herself unable to stop him. In this huge, cold, dark cargo hold, it was just the two of them.

  The sounds of footsteps and voices grew fainter as her squad departed the hold, leaving her well and truly alone with her cocky, infuriating, insistent, beautiful alien.

  “You shouldn’t have come down here alone,” he chided. The harsh edge to his voice was gone, replaced with tenderness. “I was worried about you.”

  His words made Arin feel strange. A warm, pleasant shiver coursed through her. It had been a long time since anybody had been worried about her.

  “I can take care of myself,” she grumbled half-heartedly, because that was what she was expected to say. But the truth was that Rykal’s presence at her side made her feel ridiculously invincible.

  And he was supposed to be the enemy.

  But deep down, Arin already knew her battle was lost.

  Sometimes, surrender could be a good thing.

  “Something strange happens when I worry about you,” he said, moving ever closer. “I can’t really explain it. I can’t think straight. Anger fills me. If I think of you being with another, or being harmed by another, I risk losing all self-control.”

  Persistent Rykal was becoming possessive Rykal.

  “I’ve created a monster,” Arin whispered half-jokingly, but her eyes were drawn to him, drinking in his sincere expression. There was a strange innocence about him, even though he was as dangerous as the devil himself.

  “No.” Rykal grasped her wrists, his bare hands large and warm, his gentle fingers caressing her skin, tracing down to the rough surfaces of her palms and the pads of her fingers. Arin shuddered. “The monster was already there. He won’t ever go away. But perhaps you have leashed him.”

  He pulled her close, and something appeared in his hands, as if he were a magician. “You forgot this.”

  “My jacket,” Arin gasped. She loved this old leather flight jacket. It was rare and vintage and very expensive. Such garments weren’t made anymore, not since the Federation had outlawed the production and sale of real leather. “You picked this up from the comm room?”

  “I like how it looks on you. Put it on.” He held it out for her. “Turn around.”

  Arin lay the plasma gun on the floor and held her arms out, allowing Rykal to slide the jacket up her arms. He ran his hands up her arms, and although they were separated by layers of fabric, his touch was electrifying. He treated her with reverence, even going to the point of adjusting her collar as he spun her around.

  “Thank you.” She rubbed her upper arms, caressing the reassuringly familiar worn leather of her jacket.

  Rykal beamed at her, looking both adorable and deadly in the surreal blue glow of her guide-light.

  “We should get out of here,” Arin said half-heartedly. She didn’t know what had happened to the transport in the airlock, but she assumed the scary faceless Kordolian she’d encountered back there had killed the Xargek.

  “We should,” Rykal agreed, his expression turning wistful as he pulled her back against him. “I just wish we had more time.”

  Arin closed her eyes, trying to forget for a moment that they were being attacked by Xargek. She tried to forget that Rykal was supposed to be her enemy. The Powers That Be expected her to spy on him, not get seduced by him.

  “Is this even possible?” Arin sighed, opening her eyes again. “You, me. Human, Kordolian.” She pointed at her chest, then stabbed her fingers against Rykal’s hard pectorals. “Federation, Empire. Are we even, uh, compatible?”

  “You tell me,” Rykal said, a half-smirk curving his lips. “You’ve seen what I have to offer. Do you find me wanting?”

  “Not at all,” Arin blurted, unable to help herself. She’d seen Rykal in all of his unashamed Kordolian glory, and ‘wanting’ was the last adjective she could think of to describe him.

  Other words sprang to mind.

  “I’m beyond tempted.” Rykal leaned in, dipping his head so that his lips grazed her forehead, sending a spine-tingling sensation through her. It was as if all of her nerve endings had been dipped in liquid anticipation. She was ready to be touched. Her body craved the feeling of his bare skin on hers, and she cursed the thin barrier of fabric that separated them. Arin’s Syntech utility suit wasn’t doing such a good job at regulating her temperature anymore. She was heating up. Warmth was spreading between her legs, and her body cried out to be stripped, caressed, and pleasured.

  In that instant, Arin knew that Rykal was right for her. Their brains didn’t have to figure it out. Their bodies were telling them what they already knew.

  “I like that jacket on you,” he murmured. “I like that garment you wear underneath it. But most of all, I like that expression on your face very, very much.”

  “Rykal…” Arin’s voice cracked. She was longing to be touched by him, and yet she feared that if he took it further now, she’d lose every ounce of her self-control.

  And then they might never get off this freighter.

  “I know, my ashika, I know.” His voice turned into a raw growl, his teeth clenching as he pressed himself against her, trembling. “I feel it too. You have no fucking idea.” His hand slid around to the nape of her neck, caressing her bare skin. His fingers threaded upwards into her short hair, and he dipped his nose into her cropped locks, taking a deep breath. “As much as I hate to say it, we have to go. But I promise, we will pick up where we left off, and then I will take my time with you, my cute peacekeeper.”

  Nobody had ever called her cute before, but this Kordolian could get away with it.

  Only him.

  Nobody else.

  With sweet, heady desire thrumming through her veins, Arin threw caution to the wind and pulled him into a fervent kiss. As
their lips met, she tasted sweetness and bitterness, darkness and light. His lips were bold and insistent; he kissed her back with a savageness that bordered on violence, running his fingers frantically through her hair as he tipped her head back.

  He probed beyond her lips with his tongue, consuming her.

  Arin went with him, leaning into him, swept away by his ferocious hunger. Who would have thought that beneath that cocky, impertinent exterior, there existed such a wild, sensual creature?

  Something sharp brushed against her lower lip. It was the twin points of his fangs, gently grazing the inner surface of her lip, never once breaking her soft, sensitive skin.

  His gesture reminded her of the way a lion might play with its mate. There was something territorial about the way he kissed her, as if he were marking her.

  Arin closed her eyes, drowning in his kiss. She was a step away from losing herself completely.

  It took all of her restraint to hang on to some semblance of sanity and remind herself where she was.

  As Arin was the one to initiate the kiss, so was she the one to break it, pulling away, then coming back, then pulling away again as Rykal chased her lips with his own.

  “We have to go,” she gasped, fighting her body’s response to him. That one impulsive kiss had opened the floodgates, and now, in the middle of a crisis, she was full of pent-up, seething desire.

  “You just had to go and do that, didn’t you?” Rykal’s voice was laced with tension, as if his longing was actually physically painful. “You’re going to be the death of me, Human.”

  “We might be the death of each other if we don’t get out of here soon.” Arin reluctantly disengaged and bent to pick up the plasma gun. She handed it to Rykal. “Now that I’ve got you, I guess I won’t be needing this anymore.”

  “Keep it. I have my blades.” He gestured towards the darkness. “Now, shall we?”

  Arin had her guide-light, but she wouldn’t hesitate to walk blindly into the darkness if Rykal was by her side.

  She started to run, Rykal loping beside her like a wolf. He easily kept pace as they headed towards the docking bay. She prayed that at least one of the military transports would still be functioning.

  “Don’t worry, my ashika.” Rykal must have sensed her tension. “I’ll get you out of here, no matter what.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  As they ran, Arin started to become breathless. Rykal glanced at her with growing concern, noting her increasing respiratory rate. She was fit and well-conditioned; he could tell that much from his brief explorations of her magnificent body, so this pace shouldn’t be an issue for her.

  Something was wrong.

  As they neared the docking bay, she activated her comm and engaged in a back-and-forth conversation with the Humans who were supposedly responsible for managing operations on this dilapidated behemoth of a freighter.

  “Your brother-in-arms just saved the lives of hundreds of people by killing that Xargek,” she gasped, her chest heaving. “One of the transports is out of action, but the other has made it safely to the Marcia. They just need to make one final retrieval and-” She broke off, coughing.

  But even though she was struggling, she never once slowed her pace.

  “Just one more retrieval and all personnel will be-” Arin coughed again. Impatience flashed across her face and she tried to take a deep breath, but that only triggered another coughing fit.

  Still, she ran, even though her breathing was becoming more and more labored. Hers was the behavior of one who had trained their body to push through all kinds of discomfort, no matter what kind of pain they were in.

  Rykal wrinkled his nose as a strange chemical smell reached him.

  Humans were much more sensitive to fluctuations in the environment, but now the bad air was getting to him as well. They weren’t far from the third docking bay, but Arin had been forced to slow her pace.

  A fine grey vapor had appeared. It clouded their path, spewing out from the ceiling above, where a network of pipes, cables, and lights ran along its length. The gas smelled harsh and chemical, stinging Rykal’s eyes and making them water.

  He said some very choice words in guttural Kordolian, grateful for once that Arin didn’t understand his native tongue.

  “What now?” he snarled in exasperation. If he didn’t know better, he might almost think there were second-stage Xargek swarming around the pipes and vents, trying to sabotage their escape.

  With their strange hive-mind intelligence, he wouldn’t put it past them.

  He cursed the Humans for building such a flimsy vessel as he stared into the thickening smoke, his eyes burning.

  Arin was in a bad way. The skin on her face and hands had turned red, and clear liquid streamed from her nose.

  “Enough,” he barked, grabbing her by the wrist. He turned back the way they’d come, not wanting to risk running through the smoke, or vapor, or whatever it was. “There’s bad air here. We’ll have to find another route.” He started to drag her in the opposite direction. There must have been some sort of gas leak, or oxygen leak, or both.

  Rykal cursed Humans for navigating the galaxies on such flimsy, primitive, unstable vessels. Such problems would never have occurred on a Kordolian ship.

  “But…” She began to protest, but she was silenced by her own distress. Her eyes started to take on a glazed look, sending a ripple of cold fear through Rykal. “O-okay,” she gasped, as Rykal dragged her away from the suffocating area.

  She was growing weaker with every passing siv, and Rykal couldn’t tolerate that. He watched her face carefully and saw pain. She was trying to conceal it beneath a stoic expression, but Rykal had inflicted enough suffering on others during his bloody lifetime to understand what he was seeing.

  He could not tolerate to see her in such a state. He couldn’t stand it. Seeing her hurt tugged at something deep within him. Wretched fragments of memories threatened to surface.

  Vivid images entered his mind, unbidden.

  He saw the abyss again, saw his mother’s hand slip from his, and froze.

  He knew who she was now.

  He knew that soft, loving hand. He was falling, and then he wasn’t. Because she’d let go of him.

  Because she’d wanted him to…

  Live.

  Please live, my son.

  “Rykal?” Her voice was weak, but her grip was firm as her warm fingers entwined with his. “Rykal, you need to be here with me.”

  The sound of her voice was potent, even though her words came out as a hoarse whisper. Her hand tightened around his. “Rykal, I need you.” Those simple words dragged his flailing consciousness kicking and screaming back into the present.

  She was still struggling to breathe. She was hurting, and yet she’d managed to pull him out of the abyss.

  He took one look at her gasping and wheezing, scooped her up into his arms, and ran, because no matter how fast she could run, he was infinitely faster, and that’s why he would always be there to protect her from the dark things in the Universe. Beyond the stars there existed terrible things well beyond Human ken; things like himself.

  But even as he saved her from the monsters in the Universe, she alone held the ability to save him from becoming one, and therefore, she was a hundred times more powerful than he could ever be.

  She didn’t protest as he held her, understanding the situation perfectly. The injury in Rykal’s side had healed now, leaving him with nothing more than a dull ache. The pain in his temples was worse; a throbbing, insistent ache that grew more intense with every step.

  But that couldn’t be helped right now.

  “Ry, where the fuck are you?” His comm buzzed to life. It was Torin, one of his brothers-in-arms who’d disappeared to fight Xargek on the upper decks. “We’re waiting. The Humans in navigation have set the airlock on a timer, because they’ve all left. We’ve got a small window to get out of here, then that’s it. We need you here now, pretty-boy.”

  “Coming,”
he growled. He had no idea how the Humans in navigation had agreed to co-operate and set the airlock, but he suspected Arin had something to do with it.

  “You always have to get caught up in something at the last siv, huh?”

  Rykal grunted in irritation as he ran in the opposite direction, even though Torin was partly correct. He was trying to reach the place the Humans called “Docking Bay Three,” where the vessel named Arawen was waiting to transport them off the freighter. But now, for Arin’s sake, he had to run in the opposite direction as he tried to avoid the toxic gas.

  Rykal had pegged that ship as a useful asset from the start. Anything that was capable of atmospheric re-entry would work for them right now, even if it was a clunky Human ship.

  He sped down the corridor, returning back the way they’d come, moving away from the familiar markings that reassured him he was heading in the right direction. He wasn’t really sure where they were going, but he had to get Arin away from the bad air. Arin curled her arms around his neck, her breath still coming in great gasps. The air was a little better here, because Rykal was certainly finding it easier to breathe, but then again, he was a freak. He could go for longer periods without oxygen than most other species, and he seemed more resistant to toxins, even though his kind ultimately needed oxygen to survive.

  “Do you people not keep respirators onboard?” Frustration bled into his voice. He could fight and kill everything in sight, but he couldn’t give Arin what she needed most right now.

  Rykal wasn’t used to feeling powerless like this.

  “This isn’t my territory,” Arin said weakly, “so I can’t say for sure, although most docking bays will carry an emergency kit.”

  “Ah.” Rykal filed that useful information away as his long strides ate up the distance, bringing them ever closer to safety. The freighter was a large vessel, even by Kordolian standards, and from the cargo hold to here, they’d covered some serious ground.

  “Hold on,” Rykal whispered, as Arin let out a weak cough. Not once did she complain. She nodded, her crystalline blue gaze never wavering.