by Kate Rudolph
Her eyebrows drew down as she thought. “And you’re the only one who got your soul back? Or grew it back? However that works.”
“As far as I know, yes.” He knew it was possible that there had been others before him, but he’d never even heard the hint of a rumor, and gossip spread fast in a group as small as the legion. Someone would have whispered something if it had ever happened before.
She traced his cheek and kissed him again. They couldn’t seem to stop touching one another. “I could talk to you about this stuff all day,” she said. “But if we don’t get up soon, everyone will be up before us. And even though you didn’t quite say it, I’m taking from everything that you said, that telling Toran and Kayde is off the table until we figure all this out.” She didn’t sound resentful and Raze kissed her in thanks.
“This will work out between us.”
Hope and skepticism warred on Sierra’s face, and Raze was amazed at how easy emotions were to read now. A week ago, he could barely discern if someone was happy when they smiled from ear to ear.
She ran her fingers through his hair before pulling back and rolling off the bed. “Get dressed. I’ll leave first and if the coast is clear, I’ll knock once on the door. More than one knock and there are people in the hallway.”
They dressed in silence, but it wasn’t awkward. Neither he nor Sierra were self-conscious about their nakedness, and they kept stealing looks at one another and grinning when they caught each other. It took the utmost discipline to keep his hands off, but he knew if he touched her, they’d both end up back in the bed, or against the wall, or on the floor, and for the moment, they didn’t have time.
She gave him a final kiss and pulled away reluctantly before walking out the door. A moment later, a single knock echoed through the room. Raze slid out behind her and brushed his hand down her arm before heading back towards the kitchen and away from his mate. With every step he took away, the bond tethered him back to her, and he knew that he’d never be alone again.
But the feelings of connectedness and contentment were doused when he walked into the kitchen and found Toran standing there with a curious look on his face. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “And where did you sleep last night?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Fewer than half of the women were asleep, but most of them were hanging out in the bunks they’d been assigned to. The ones who’d been talking quietly clammed up when Sierra walked in and she tried not to take it personally, reminding herself just how bad of a situation each of them had been in. She’d shut up around strangers too.
Quinn, the ringleader, was sitting on the floor beside one bunk, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “Come to check out the merchandise?” she asked, the edge in her voice undercut by the yawn that escaped as she was talking.
“You’re not merchandise,” Sierra reminded her. “We’re headed back to Earth where you’ll be safe.”
The sound of disdain Quinn let out wasn’t quite a laugh or a snort, but it let Sierra know exactly how much the young woman believed her. She wanted to get defensive, wanted to ask Quinn why no one believed that three human women who all spoke English and claimed to be from Earth would be lying about rescuing them. But she was almost afraid to hear just how bad the things that had happened to the women were.
“There’s rations in the kitchen for anyone who’s hungry,” Sierra said after a moment. “And plenty of water. It’s easy to get dehydrated on board, so I hope you’re all drinking enough.”
“We’re not children.”
“Clearly.”
Two women, one Asian with short brown hair and the other with light brown skin and tangled brown hair, walked up from the back of the hall, talking to each other in serious hushed tones. One of the other survivors cleared her throat and the Asian woman looked up and placed her hand on her companion’s arm. They both quieted and watched her, full of distrust. Davy and Monica, Sierra was pretty sure were the names of these two, but she wasn’t positive. She smiled and nodded, but Monica glared and Davy turned away without a word.
Clearly the campaign to win the hearts and minds of the survivors was going well.
Another woman, short with unevenly cut, chin length blonde hair came up from the same direction as Monica and Davy, but she didn’t look at either of the women or at Sierra when she climbed into one of the bottom bunks and pulled a blanket up over herself. What were the girls doing back there? The bathroom they had access to was in the other direction, so was the kitchen. There was nothing behind them but the cargo hold and the engine room.
Sierra looked down at Quinn, but Quinn had burrowed into her covers and seemed to have fallen asleep, or she’d closed her eyes to more easily ignore Sierra. Whatever. Sierra stepped past the young woman and tried to keep her expression neutral as she walked further into the depths of the ship. She didn’t want to accuse the women of hatching some scheme to take over the ship or something like that. But Quinn, as the representative of the survivors, had made their distrust perfectly clear. Twelve determined women could do a lot of damage if they put their minds to it.
But the tension that had gathered between Sierra’s shoulders released when she got to the engine room door and saw that it was locked and it didn’t look like it had been tampered with. She didn’t try to go in. Mindy and Jo might kill her if she touched the innards of their precious ship.
Sierra went a little deeper, back towards the cargo hold, where she found a pile of protein bar wrappers. Had they snuck back there to eat? Maybe they had issues about eating in front of the crew, or maybe they didn’t trust that Sierra wouldn’t take the food back if they did something she didn’t like. If they needed this little rebellion, she’d let them have it. She bent down to scoop up the wrappers, but thought better of it at the last moment. She didn’t need to announce that she’d found their little safe corner. Instead, she left the litter there and headed back out.
None of the women said anything to her as she walked through their territory once more, and the short blonde whose name she couldn’t remember was still curled up in her bunk, now quietly whimpering, possibly in the throes of a nightmare. Sierra’s heart broke and she wanted to help, but there was nothing she could do for them right now except keep them fed and get them home safely. She just hoped that it would be enough.
***
Panic was a new and unwelcome emotion that flashed through him for a second before Raze got it under control. He hadn’t realized that it would take effort to put on the mask of the old Raze, and he knew that he didn’t school his expression before Toran caught a flash of emotion. But he had endured and survived much more harrowing situations than this one, and today would be no different.
“I didn’t realize that you wanted me confined to the room for the night,” he said instead of directly answering Toran’s question. His soul yelled at him to declare his claim to one and all, to make them know that Sierra was his, but until he had the situation under control, his mind knew that it was safer for the both of them to remain quiet. For now.
“This isn’t our ship,” Toran hissed, voice barely audible above the sound of the air circulators. “Why would you think you can go wandering around like you own it? You aren’t acting like yourself.”
He was in dangerous territory. One word to their superiors once they were back home and Raze’s life would be forfeit. And if he was too out of character before then, Toran might just finish the job.
Before Raze could formulate a response, the door behind them slid open and Sierra came through. Their eyes connected and the spark of their bond flared to life deep within him. He caught himself just in time to keep from smiling, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from trailing her as she passed them with a polite nod and continued on to the cockpit. He might have been the one to live without emotions for the last three years, but it seemed that Sierra had a better handle on the concept of discretion.
What exactly did she and her team do? They’d never quite gotten around to talking
about that.
“Are you fixating?” Toran asked, the words freezing the air around them with their frigidity.
“No.” It was a nasty habit that a few of the soulless fell into, obsessing about a single person or place to the point of destruction. The concern had occurred to him when he first met Sierra, but now he knew that it had nothing to do with harm; he’d never hurt her and would do anything to make sure no one else did either.
“Are you sure?” It was obvious Toran didn’t believe him. Raze hadn’t realized just how difficult conversation had become; now interpreting emotions felt like a superpower, something only a select few—of whom he was one—could do.
“Yes.” The soulless didn’t bother with long explanations to yes or no questions. And, lucky for him, the habit was so ingrained that he had no trouble keeping it up in this conversation.
Toran leaned back and crossed his arms, not bothering to keep the naked look of worry off his face. Why would he? Raze shouldn’t have been able to know what it meant. “I thought Kayde was going to be my problem on this mission,” his leader admitted.
Raze didn’t respond, though his new emotions had him biting back a question there. The soulless didn’t have curiosity.
Either Toran sensed that Raze wanted to know, or he just wanted to talk. “He’s been on edge for months, and there’s a flag in his file. Seems he’s been collecting rocks from every planet he’s sent to.”
How that was a cause for worry, Raze didn’t know, but he still said nothing.
Toran continued. “You gave spot on answers during my evaluation. He’s ready to shoot anything that moves. He doesn’t have the faintest echo of empathy left, but he was an utter bastard before, so I don’t know if that’s anything new. I fully expected to need to turn him over for review the moment we got back, but he’s executed this mission perfectly. You, though…” Toran shook his head.
When he didn’t say anything else, Raze couldn’t hold himself back. “What about me?”
“That!” Toran pointed at him. “That’s what I’m talking about. You’ve deviated from parameters. You’ve asked questions you’ve never asked before. Your eyes—” he cut himself off before completing the accusation, but Raze knew exactly what he planned to say. His eyes had glowed red, something the soulless lost the capability of. “Do you have any reason that I shouldn’t recommend your actions for review when we get home?”
It could be months before they made it back. For security reasons, they hadn’t mentioned the coordinates of their home base, and finding a ride would take a good deal of time. And with everything Toran was saying, he didn’t think going home would be an option for much longer. Not that he’d ever planned to leave Sierra once they were mated, but he’d wanted the option to take her with him.
Toran looked desperate, like he’d been holding onto a single thread of hope that Raze wasn’t too far gone to save. They’d been friends once, many years ago, even though Toran had been an asshole and Raze too nice to tell him to get lost. And in the memory of that friendship, Raze put his faith in hope, for him and for their people.
“Do you remember what you told me about the human denyai?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Would you believe me if I told you that I met mine?” It was supposed to be a joyous confession, but Raze had to keep everything out of his voice. The second he slipped, Toran would do something that couldn’t be undone.
“That’s impossible,” he said. “Whatever it is, you’re confusing it with fixation.” He didn’t glance at the cockpit, but they both knew exactly which of the humans that Raze was talking about.
“I can feel, Toran. My soul isn’t dead anymore. And it’s all because of her.” What if some of those cases of fixation had been the discovery of the bond too late? What if past soldiers had been put down, rather than freed through mating? He hoped he was wrong, but feared the likelihood.
“You—”
The ship jolted around them and Toran fell forward, straight into Raze, who reached out to brace his teammate from crashing to the ground. They glanced at each other and moved towards the cockpit without needing to say anything. The door was still open and they could hear the humans talking.
“What the fuck was that?” Mindy, the navigator, demanded.
The pilot, Jo, sounded equally confused. “We just fell out of FTL, one of the engines went down.”
“Went down?” That was Sierra. “You did maintenance before we left, how is that possible?”
“Who went in my engine room?” Mindy asked, her chair squeaking under her. “Log shows one entrance two hours ago.”
“I checked it a few minutes ago, the door was locked,” said Sierra.
Jo hissed and he could hear her scramble. She cursed. “The auto lock was set on a twelve hour delay. I forgot to switch it over. That door was unlocked until an hour ago.”
There was more jostling and a moment later a blur of colorful hair ran past them, presumably headed for the engine room. Sierra came out a moment later and spotted them. She took a step towards Raze before she realized that Toran was still there and paused. She took a deep breath and gave them a bright, utterly false smile. “Hello, gentlemen. Please take your seats. We just have a momentary issue, everything will be fine in just a minute.”
From where they were standing, it was obvious that they’d heard everything said in the cockpit, but neither he nor Toran contradicted her. This was the humans’ ship, the humans could fix it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Everything was not fine.
The only bright side, if it could be called that, was that neither Mindy nor Jo had enough time to question whether or not Sierra had been able to snag any alone time with Raze last night. Judging from the expression on Toran’s face when she’d burst through the kitchen earlier, Raze hadn’t been so lucky. She wanted to find him and make sure he was okay, but at the moment, they were practically stranded in space with limited food supply and a dozen angry, traumatized women who already didn’t trust them. She and Raze would need to wait.
Two hours after the initial drop from FTL, they were still stalled. The regular engines worked, but the consultation with their star maps put them too far from any jump gates to get home before their food supply ran out. The only jump gate within range was poorly documented in all of their data, and they had no idea whether it led to a populated system, a barren wasteland, or to the edge of a black hole. Humans hadn’t managed to map all of the jump gates, and it was times like these that Sierra really regretted that.
But they hadn’t given up hope yet. And her main focus right now was keeping the women calm. Quinn and a few others had caught on that something was wrong, but in a surprising turn of events, she was working with Sierra to keep panic from setting in.
“Can you ask them if anyone went into the engine room? It could have easily happened by accident.” Sierra knew the question would go over better coming from Quinn, though Quinn scowled as soon as she made the request.
“What? You think they’re too dumb to read the sign on the door? Or do you think someone went in and sabotaged shit?” She crossed her arms, but kept her voice down, shooting a harsh look at the women a little further down the hall, as if a glare would keep them from hearing.
Sierra wanted to throw her hands up in frustration, but that wouldn’t get them on the way home any faster. “I said it could have been an accident. And—” she cut herself off and jerked her head to the side, urging Quinn further away from the huddled survivors. “It’s not like any of you trust us. So, yeah, maybe someone did something stupid. If we know what they did, we might be able to fix it.”
Quinn tapped a finger against her arm and didn’t meet Sierra’s eyes. After a moment she let out a heavy breath. “There were a couple of girls eying the door, and they got weird when I mentioned that the bathroom was the other way. Let me do the talking, okay? They won’t tell you shit.”
That startled a laugh out of Sierra. “I got that already.”
Thoughts of control chips and panicked women danced through Sierra’s mind, but she kept them to herself. Quinn was barely an ally right now, and she wasn’t about to make this any worse. “Let me know if anything comes up.”
“And when they ask when we’re going to be moving again?” Quinn demanded.
“We are moving,” Sierra responded. “Just not fast enough.” She didn’t give the survivor’s leader a time frame; there was no way she could do that without causing more worry or false hope. Instead, she headed back to the cockpit.
“What’s the situation?” Jo asked, her monitors made up of different star maps and projected routes. Mindy sat next to her with a tablet in hand and a stylus in the other.
“As expected,” Sierra reported. “They’re on the edge of freaking out, but a couple of the women are keeping order. Quinn said a few shifty characters might have eyed the engine room for some reason. She’s going to ask around.”
“So no one fessed up to sabotage?” Mindy asked, not bothering to look up.
“Shockingly, no,” Sierra replied. “How’s the path home looking?” And she asked it that way because they would get home somehow, even if it took months and they had to stop at twenty space stations and planets along the way.
Mindy cursed and Jo reached out and put a hand on her shoulder in comfort. Sierra’s eyes bugged out and her jaw dropped open, but she didn’t make a sound and had schooled her expression into something less shocked by the time Jo looked at her. It looked like stress really was bringing out the best in these two. “It’s not good,” Jo said, her thumb still tracing circles on Mindy’s shoulder. “The shortest path I’ve found would take us seven months and has three stretches that will almost completely exhaust our fuel reserves. Any little problem and we’d be stranded.”
