Escape (Project Vetus Book 1)

by Emmy Chandler

  “Where is that other lab?”

  Carson shrugs, and his shoulder bobs beneath my head. “Somewhere else in zone X, I guess.”

  After a few minutes, his breathing slows, and for a second, I think he’s falling asleep. But then his hand slides down from my arm and over my stomach, where it settles low over my belly.

  “What happened to him?” His voice is gentle. Cautious. As if he expects me to refuse to talk about it. Or even lash out at him for asking. And it’s not like I want to talk about this. Not like I want to remember. But whatever this is between us, it’s real, and it isn’t going away. And the only way I can make him understand is to tell him.

  So I take a deep breath.

  “Have I told you how I wound up here? On Rhodon?” I ask. Carson shakes his head, jostling the pillow. “I was convicted of felony kidnapping. For taking my own son.”

  21

  CARSON

  “I got pregnant when I was eighteen Earth-standard solar cycles old,” Lilli says, and I shove down the snarl crawling up my throat at just the thought of someone else touching my petal. She’s trusting me with the most painful part of her past. The last thing she needs is to have to deal with my jealousy.

  Instead, I focus on her. On the weight of her words and the sadness permeating her scent as she says them. And while she speaks, curled up next to me, I run one hand up and down her arm, reminding her that I’m here with my touch.

  “I met Dan during my first semester of college, and we were pretty hot and heavy for a while. But we were also young, and…well, college is full of opportunities. We’d already broken up by the time I found out I was pregnant.”

  “The pregnancy was unintentional?” I can hardly wrap my mind around that, considering how many people never manage to earn a parenting license on Tethys.

  “My homeworld is evidently very different from yours. At least based on what Vaughn told me.”

  I stiffen at her mention of his name, but I sense no change in her scent as she says it. No acceleration of her heartbeat. He holds no interest for her, and she no longer smells like him.

  I will let him live.

  “People aren’t routinely sterilized, where I come from,” she continues. “If you don’t want a baby, you have to take precautions, and sometimes those precautions fail.”

  “That’s what happened to you? This baby was a…failure?” I feel like I should rip out my own tongue for uttering such a phrase. Babies are treasured on Tethys. Coveted. Pregnancies are celebrated. Expectant mothers doted on.

  “No!” Lilli pushes herself upright and folds her legs beneath herself. “He was a…surprise. And pregnancy was a very difficult surprise for an eighteen-year-old college student to handle on her own.”

  “On her own? Why didn’t Dan help you?”

  “He didn’t want me to have the baby, and for a while, he was mad that I wouldn’t end the pregnancy.”

  “That is a man with no honor.” I can’t screen disgust from my voice. I don’t even try.

  “But that’s the thing,” Lilli says. “Eighteen isn’t really grown. He was more a boy than a man. We were both just children, really.” And she’s not much more than that now, in age, anyway. Though what she went through at the Resort has no doubt aged her. “And there isn’t much he could have done, at the beginning. It’s not like he could take some of the nausea or heartburn from me.”

  “He could have held your hair and rubbed your back.” My hands itch to do those things, and suddenly I’m overwhelmed with a remote sense of profound joy and pride, accompanied by the phantom cry of an infant and the blossom of a mild scent the beast labels as breastmilk—the beast’s associations with new parenthood.

  “He was scared, just like I was, and he didn’t get a say in my decision.”

  “His ‘say’ was his decision to do the thing which might make a baby.” What a waste of a man. How could Lilli not have realized how unworthy he was of her? Of their child?

  “I know. But that’s hard to wrap your mind around, when the chances of conception seem so remote, at the time.”

  “Why do you defend him?”

  “I…I don’t know.” Her brows furrow. “I guess because I felt the same way, at times. I wasn’t ready for a kid any more than he was. So I understand how he felt.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, men can’t have babies at eighteen on Tethys.”

  “On Tethys, we have to earn that right. Which means every baby conceived is desperately wanted. And its parents are always mature enough to care for it.”

  “Yeah, well, from what I hear, your glittering green space marble has other problems,” she snaps, and the acrid scent of her irritation stings my nostrils.

  “That’s true.” I reach for her hand, and when she lets me take it, I rub the pad of my thumb over her palm, hoping the gentle touch will ease her distress. “Why didn’t your parents help with your pregnancy?”

  “I couldn’t bring myself to tell them until I was more than half-way along. By the time I went home for summer break, my situation was fairly obvious. So I quit school and got a job. And when Dan realized I was really, truly going to have his child, he finally told his parents.”

  “Did they try to get you to terminate?” I ask, assuming that the rotten apple couldn’t have landed very far from the rotten tree.

  “No, they tried to get us marry. But neither of us wanted that. Dan still wasn’t sure he wanted to be a father—until he got a look at Eldon. He fell in love the moment he saw his son.”

  I grunt, begrudgingly acknowledging the fool’s humanity.

  “Unfortunately, so did his parents. They talked him into suing for custody, and because they had money to pay for good lawyers, they won.”

  “They ripped an infant from his mother’s breast?” Rage explodes inside me, and my knuckle spikes burst from my skin. “Unforgivable. This is how you lost your son?”

  “Not quite.” Lilli taps on my largest spike. “Put the weapons away. This is an old wound.”

  Yet still a fresh one.

  I retract the spikes and take her hand again, encouraging her to go on, while a sick feeling begins to churn in my gut. If this is not how she lost the baby…?

  “The court gave me monthly visitation. I spent that first month without Eldon in tears. I tried to keep pumping, but my milk dried up. I felt so empty. Here.” She lays one small, pale hand over her stomach. “And here.” That hand moves up to cover her heart, and her ache echoes deep inside me—a wound I cannot heal. One I can’t even treat.

  “When I went to pick Eldon up for my first visitation, Dan saw what I was going through. He apologized and told me I could have custody. He said he’d talk to his parents and make them stay out of it. Only that didn’t work out very well. When I didn’t bring Eldon back, they called the police and had me arrested for kidnapping. Dan begged them to drop the charges, but they threatened to cut him off, financially, and without their money, neither of us could afford to raise a baby. So, I went to jail, charged with kidnapping my own son.

  “The day after my arrest, Dan’s mother came to see me. She said that if I fought the charge, I’d never see my son again. But that if I pleaded guilty, they’d ask the judge to forgo jail time, and I could still have monthly visitation. I thought that was the only way I’d ever see my son again. So I pleaded guilty. But at my sentencing, Dan’s parents claimed that postpartum depression made me a danger to my own child and asked for the maximum sentence.”

  “That’s how you wound up here?”

  Agony spikes through her scent as she nods. Her story is not over. “Dan was horrified by what his parents did. The day I was sterilized by the justice department, he took Eldon from them and drove to my hometown. I think he was trying to take the baby to my parents.” A sob bursts from her throat, and I pull her close, so that her next tearful words are muttered into my chest. “When I woke up after the procedure, my mother was waiting for me. She told me Dan’s car had been hit by a truck. They both
died instantly.”

  Oh my god. Her son wasn’t just stolen from her. He was taken from her. The very day doctors cut into her body without consent.

  Her pain overwhelms me, and all I can do is pull her into my lap while she cries, engulfing her in my arms, and my scent, and my love.

  I want to kill everyone who ever hurt her. I want to rip them apart with my bare hands and drink their blood by the handful. I want to break their bones and scatter their ashes in some manner that will honor my petal’s loss. That will assure her that those who hurt her suffered terribly up to the very moment they drew their last breaths.

  But that’s beyond me, locked up in this lab. Trapped on this dusty red rock.

  So, as Lilli falls asleep draped over my chest, my arms clasped at her back, I turn my attention to our escape…

  22

  LILLI

  “Hey. Are you okay?” Tirzah asks softly, and I look up to see her standing in the doorway of the break room. “I feel like I should apologize on behalf of the captain. I’ve known him for more than eight years, and he’s never been anything less than a gentleman.”

  I blink up at her from my seat, trying to figure out what she’s talking about as I crunch through a cheese puff from the packet on the table in front of me.

  “Definitely not the kind of guy to rip a woman’s clothes off in front of an audience. Or at all,” she continues, leaning back to glance down the hallway, toward the communal bathroom. Where Carson is showering.

  I wanted a shower too, but I was a little afraid to wash his scent off of me until I’m sure he’s done being unreasonably jealous.

  “Oh. Yeah. That was intense, but I’m fine.” I kick out the chair next to mine, and Tirzah sinks into it, then leans back to grab a packet of cheese crackers from the section of the countertop designated as community property. “Carson wouldn’t hurt me. I was more worried about him hurting Vaughn.”

  Tirzah snorts as she rips open her crackers. “Coleman can take care of himself. We all can.”

  “I’d still hate to see it come to blows.”

  “Well then, in the interest of full disclosure, I feel like I should tell you that Sotelo and I are...somewhat intimately acquainted.”

  I blink at her for a second, trying to absorb an unexpected jolt of jealousy. “You two were together?”

  “No. I gave my heart away years ago, and it died along with Daire. Sotelo and I… It wasn’t like that.” She stretches her right arm out on the table, showing me a series of thick scars in flesh that’s missing the distinctive seams the men on her team have. “Did Sotelo tell you about the breeding room? What it was used for before you got here?”

  “Oh. Yeah. Vaughn said they locked the two of you together in there.”

  She nods slowly. “It wasn’t just him. Brennan rotates the guys out every month.”

  “All of them?” I can’t quite screen horror from my voice. “Including Carson?” They made her sleep with her entire team?

  I had to service many more men than that at the Resort, but I didn’t know them. They weren’t platonic friends and coworkers forced into my bed. Into my body.

  Tirzah nods. “I just thought you should know, in case whatever is making him act like a possessive asshole is doing the same to you. But it wasn’t voluntary.” She runs one finger over the thickest scar. “These are from where I tried to dig the stimulant capsules out, before I realized that was impossible.” She meets my gaze with a frank one of her own, but the tense line of her jaw reveals how nervous she is about my reaction. “So anyway, I hope we can still be friends. But either way, I thought you should know.”

  “I’m not...” I’m not sure how to tell her this. “It’s not affecting me like it is him. He’s...struggling. Evidently the beast has a different idea of what romance should look like than we do. I don’t have a beast.”

  “So, you’re not drawn to him like he’s drawn to you?”

  “Oh, I am. God help me. Just without that bonus shot of possessive rage. But even if I did have that, I wouldn’t be... I mean, I wouldn’t think that what they did to you was your fault. Or any of theirs.” I toss a glance out the door, including all five of our fellow lab rats. “I...um. I have a bit of experience in coerced sex. In being locked in a room with someone you don’t want to sleep with.”

  “At that resort?” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “But Sotelo’s not like that, right? Not even when he gets worked up?” There’s an answer she clearly needs to hear, to preserve her opinion of the man who led her team for years. And I’m happy to be able to give it to her honestly.

  “No. Don’t get me wrong. He’s aggressive. But the beast seems to think he should...earn my affection. If you know what I mean. Not take it. He’s basically a teddy bear with a gigantic…ego.”

  “Unless someone else touches you.”

  I nod. “Unless someone else touches me.”

  Tirzah leans closer over the table and whispers, “Okay, I wasn’t going to ask, but since you brought it up, how big an ‘ego’ are we talking? Because I wouldn’t say he was ever a modest man, but I’m also not sure I’d sure the word ‘gigantic’ is appropriate.”

  “Circumstances have changed.” I glance up at the doorway, to make sure no one else has snuck up on us. Then I give her a visual. With both hands.

  “Holy fuck,” she whispers. And I can’t resist a quiet smile. “That doesn’t seem possible. Is that because of whatever’s happening to him? Hormonally? I mean, is that going to go away if this mating phase ever passes?”

  I can only shrug. “His beast seems to believe it’s a ‘gift’ only available to his mate. But I have no idea what that means for the post-mating period of our relationship. Or how we’re ever going to get there.”

  “No kids, huh?” she whispers.

  “No.” I push back painful memories and cling to the logical side of what is, for me, a largely emotional position. “I understand that the culture of childrearing is different on Tethys than on my homeworld, but I don’t understand how he can even think about kids, while we’re locked up in a place like this.”

  Tirzah gives me a quiet smile. “He’s thinking about it because for Sotelo, captivity in an experimental lab is just a challenge to be overcome. He has never once assumed that this is where he would spend the rest of his life. Or raise a family. He’s thinking about family because he’s looking forward.”

  “What if he’s wrong about us getting out of here?”

  “What if he’s right?” she counters.

  “This is no place to raise a baby.”

  Tirzah nods as she stuffs another cracker into her mouth. “You’re preaching to the choir, hon.”

  “Hey, you ladies up for a game?” Thiago Zamora leans into the break room, and I wonder how long he’s been standing in the hall. But Tirzah’s hearing is great. Surely she’d have known, if he was eavesdropping. “That is, if Sotelo’s ready to let you out of his sight.”

  “He’s not the boss of me.” I push my snack aside and kick out another chair for him.

  “Me neither. Anymore.” Thiago comes in and Vaughn follows him. Five minutes later, we all have snacks and the cards have been dealt.

  “What are we playing?” Carson rounds the doorway and his gaze finds me first, as if to make sure I’m okay before he greets everyone else in the room.

  But the tension is palpable. “Maybe I should—” Vaughn stands. “You can take my place, Sotelo.”

  Carson shakes his head. “Stay. And I owe you an apology.”

  “You really don’t,” Vaughn says as he sinks back into his chair.

  “I do.” Carson rounds the table and pulls the extra chair close to mine. “I’m truly sorry,” he says as he sits. “I don’t know how to explain what’s happening to me, but I had no right to go after you like that.” He turns to me. “Or to…accost you in the hallway.”

  “No big deal,” Vaughn says

  Thiago grins. “Hell, Coleman, accept the man’s apology b
efore he tries to make it up to you like we all heard him make it up to Lilli. In the shower.”

  I throw a cheese puff at him, and Thiago bats it back at me. “So, just how long will we be blessed with Hyde’s presence?”

  Vaughn snorts.

  “What?” Thiago shrugs. “That’s what Lilli calls him. From that old book. Jekyll and Hyde?”

  Carson takes my hand, and with it, my attention. “You nicknamed my beast after a literary brute?”

  I have no idea what to say. I can’t tell whether he’s irritated or amused. But Tirzah takes one look at my face and grins. “No, Captain. That’s what she calls your giant cock.”

  For a second, no one moves. Then Carson bursts into gregarious laughter, and suddenly the whole room echoes with it. Thiago nearly falls out of his chair.

  “What’s going on?” Burke asks from the doorway, with Everett peering over his shoulder.

  “Not a damn thing,” Carson says, still grinning as he drops a kiss on my forehead. “Somebody deal the fucking cards!”

  Light shines through my eyelids, casting the world in a bright red glow. I groan at the throbbing in my head, and dimly I’m aware that it was already throbbing before I woke up. That maybe it’s been throbbing my entire life.

  That’s certainly what it feels like right now.

  I open my eyes, and the world seems to tilt around me. Walls aren’t where they should be. Somehow, I’m staring at the floor.

  I blink, and finally I understand. I’m not in my bed at the Sorority. Or on my cot in zone X. Or even in the bed in the breeding room. I’m sitting slumped over in a chair, my wrists bound to the arms. My ankles bound to the legs.

  Lab A. Fuck.

  At least I’m not on the table.

  “She’s waking up,” a male voice says, and Justin, the assistant director, kneels in front of me. He pulls my head up with a handful of my hair and shines a bright light into my eyes.