by Kate Rudolph
There was just something about Quinn that posed a question he didn’t know how to ask. He saw her strength, her resilience, and knew that she would become a powerful ally to his fellow warriors and their mates. She had shown herself to be a leader from the moment she and her fellow survivors had been rescued, and now she threw herself into helping in the hunt for Yormas with little regard for her own safety.
He respected her, admired her.
And he knew that those instincts were dangerous. A soulless warrior could not respect, could not admire. He only had the memory of what he’d felt before to keep him going—if he said he admired other members of the Legion, it was because he had known them before. He could not develop those feelings anymore, and he couldn’t explain why he felt that way for Quinn.
The safest thing for all of them would be to remove him from the equation. Toran needed to evaluate his stability and decide whether he could continue to function or if he needed to be put down like the rabid animal a soulless warrior could become. Though he was not sure if the leader of their team would be willing to take that action. Before they had come to Earth, he would have had no doubt. But in the time since then, Toran had softened. His mate had brought out a new side of him, one that smiled more, one that laughed, and one that might care too much to kill a man he thought of as his friend.
But Kayde had to trust him to do his duty, and he had to report any concerns that he had about himself. Perhaps there was another way, one that would remove him from dark temptations of fixation and obsession and save his former friend from staining his hands with the blood of a man whose only crime was wanting to save his people for as long as he could.
Yormas of Wreet was not the only lead they had when it came to the destruction of Detya. He had been working with the people who had attacked the Detyen HQ. Now that Kayde and his companions had been cleared to leave the planet, someone could take their ship back home and find out what happened. And if Toran could not kill Kayde for failing as a soulless warrior, as long as the HQ had not been destroyed by the Oscavians, someone back home would. Kayde could save Toran that pain. He just had to convince his leader to let him go.
Chapter Two
KAYDE DIDN’T WAIT FOR Toran to return to the suite. Once morning rolled around, the sun sitting high in the sky and baking the city in a wet heat, he was out the door and headed towards Iris’s house. Dryce’s door was still closed, and he did not expect the younger warrior to be awake for hours yet. They’d fallen out of strict disciplines that they practiced in the legion, and if they ever returned, Dryce was in for a rude awakening. Then again, in a few years he would be forced to make an impossible choice if he didn’t find his denya, so a part of Kayde could understand why the warrior was living his life at warp speed.
When the taxi dropped him off at the small house that Iris called home, Kayde took a deep breath before starting up the path and walking up the short flight of stairs to her door. He wasn’t nervous, he couldn’t be nervous, but he didn’t know how this meeting was going to go, what Toran would ultimately decide, and he didn’t relish the uncertainty.
After his knock, Toran greeted him with a bright smile that was lost on Kayde, who only nodded in response. Toran summoned him inside and Kayde glanced around, not seeing his leader’s mate in the living room or kitchen, which were visible from the front door.
“Iris isn’t home,” Toran told him, watching him look around.
It wasn’t a question, so Kayde wasn’t sure how to respond. He remained silent.
Toran must have been getting out of practice with interacting with the soulless. Now that Raze could feel again, Kayde was the only one of their group left in emotionless limbo, and in the past weeks, Toran had seemed to be avoiding him. “What are you doing here?” Toran asked after a moment, seeming to remember that there was no need for small talk. “Is something wrong? Did something happen to Dryce?”
Was he meant to be Dryce’s keeper? Wouldn’t that job fall to Raze, who was Dryce’s older brother? Kayde didn’t ask these questions. “Everything is fine, as far as I know. When I left our quarters, Dryce appeared to be sleeping. He was in his own room.”
Toran’s eyebrows drew together and he took a deep breath. There was a name for the expression he was giving Kayde but Kayde could not define it. “You didn’t answer the most important question. What are you doing here?”
Of course. This kind of distraction might be another sign of deterioration, Kayde noted dispassionately. “I came because I need you to evaluate me.”
Toran drew up to his full height, as if preparing for a fight, but after a moment he stepped back and motioned Kayde further into the room. “Has there been a development since your last evaluation?” Toran asked.
“I haven’t been thoroughly evaluated since we left Detyen HQ. You have mentioned the need several times, but you seem to be putting it off.”
Toran opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it after a moment and turned his back on Kayde to head into the kitchen. He pressed a few buttons on the food processor and a moment later had a glass of some green drink that smelled like nature. He didn’t offer one to Kayde, trusting Kayde to be closely monitoring his own nutritional needs. “Are you unstable?” Toran finally asked, gripping his glass tightly.
Kayde took a few steps, so he wouldn’t need to raise his voice to be heard. He stood stiffly on the border between the kitchen and the living room, aware that he had ruined Toran’s morning, but unable to think of what else he should’ve done. He didn’t know how to explain what was happening in his mind without talking about Quinn, but something inside of him rebelled at the thought of explaining his fascination to Toran when he couldn’t explain it to himself. So he offered a half-truth, knowing the instinct to lie was another sign of destabilization, of fixation. Perhaps he was further gone than he had previously thought. “This planet is loud, full of disruptions. Humans don’t understand the need for discipline, the need for order. I have found myself growing distracted and need a mission. A warrior like me is meant to be used, and if I cannot be used, I need to be...”
“If you aren’t a danger to these people, I’m not going to kill you,” Toran interrupted before Kayde could make his point.
“This existence of mine, it isn’t living. You are letting your own emotions cloud your judgment. Use me or dispose of me, but make your choice.” He would have never dared to say something like that back home. But they were a long way from home, and the rules were different here.
“Do you have a suggestion? There’s not much we can do until the ambassador makes his next move.” Ah, now Kayde could identify what had been thrumming through Toran since he opened the door. Frustration.
And that frustration gave Kayde the opening he needed to make his proposal. “Let me go back to HQ, let me take the ship. We need to know what happened there since none of our communications have been returned.”
“You and I both know that the channels we were forced to use could mean that it will be months before we hear back, but so long as there are survivors we will hear back.” Toran countered.
“I don’t have months.”
Toran closed his eyes and drank down his green concoction in a single gulp. He set the glass on the counter with a resounding clink. “You want to do this?”
“It’s the only choice if you won’t—”
Toran cut him off. “Very well. Make your goodbyes. You have three months, make sure you file your report then.”
“You have my word. Either way, we’ll know what happened soon enough.” And Kayde would be free of this planet and all its distractions, and maybe he would be able to stop thinking about the one woman who had burrowed herself deep into his mind and thrown his life into chaos.
SNEAKING ONTO A SPACESHIP was not her brightest move, especially since Quinn was determined never to leave the planet again. But as the beer had been replaced by liquor last night and the stories turned maudlin and depressing, the only thing that had staved off Muir’s
tears was a promise that Quinn would find her a keepsake from the ship that had brought them home. And it wasn’t exactly sneaking. After all, there were plenty of security guards at the airstrip where the ship was sitting vacant, and she had had to sign in on the visitor log before they let her anywhere near a piece of equipment as expensive and delicate as the Detyen ship.
She’d been assured that though the ship was space ready and fueled up, no flight plan had been filed and as far as the airstrip knew, no one would be getting on the ship that day. She’d considered slipping a few credits into the hands of the person minding the log to keep her visit a secret, but at the last moment she thought better of it. She didn’t have many credits to spare, and she doubted that the Detyens would mind what she was doing.
But what could she get for Muir? The girl seemed a bit sentimental, which meant that she would most likely want something that triggered a happy—well, not happy, but not unpleasant—memory. Was there anything on the ship like that? Hell, she could probably just take a picture and frame the thing. No need to hack up the inside and strip the thing for parts. Still, Muir had asked for a piece of the ship, not a picture. Quinn was going to deliver. This was an easy mission, one that didn’t need extensive planning or scary looking weapons and high-tech spy equipment. Her folding knife was more than adequate to the task.
She stood in the passageway for several moments before turning away from the cockpit and heading back past a small seating area, through a hatch, down another hall, through the galley, through another hatch that closed behind her with a resounding clank, until she finally got to the open crew quarters. Half a dozen bunks were built into the walls, and the only privacy offered came from brightly colored curtains that could easily be pulled open or closed. For a week, this was where the survivors had called home. It had been crowded, and loud, and the exact opposite of private, but given what they had all been dealing with for the months before that, it had been a little slice of heaven.
Quinn placed her hands on the bunk that she had shared with CJ. There hadn’t been enough for most of the women to sleep alone, and the beds were narrow enough that cuddling had been required. But in those first nights, that was exactly what she had needed. Knowing that there was someone beside her who didn’t want to cause injury, who didn’t want to take her to bed, who didn’t want anything from her except perhaps a little warmth, had kept her from waking up screaming. It hadn’t stopped the nightmares—she didn’t think that anything could stop those—but whimpering was better than screaming. She climbed up into the bunk and pulled the curtain closed while burrowing into the far corner, wedging herself deep inside. It was a tight fit. Her feet brushed the far wall and she wondered how those bulky Detyen warriors could ever hope to squeeze themselves in.
Light leaked around the curtain, highlighting it as if to say that it was the perfect gift. Yes, Quinn thought, that could work. She reached into her pocket for her knife and was caught off guard by a yawn that wracked her whole body. She hadn’t gotten home until late last night and she’d woken early from disturbing dreams. She lay back in the bunk and pulled the blanket up around her shoulders. No one was coming for the ship today, and there was no danger of discovery. She felt safer here than she had anywhere else on Earth in the past month and there would be no harm in closing her eyes for a few minutes and enjoying the cocoon of false safety that this little bunk was giving her.
With a sigh, Quinn’s eyes drifted shut and she fell into a dreamless sleep before she even realized she was going to pass out.
She woke when the ship jolted and rolled towards the curtain. The only thing keeping her from falling to the floor was the death grip she managed on a small handhold built into the wall and the way she shot out her foot to keep herself wedged into her sleeping cubby.
Her ears popped and she couldn’t drag in a deep breath, as if the air around her had suddenly gotten thin. Her cheeks felt heavy, as if they were being pushed around by some invisible force, and everything around her was so loud that she wouldn’t be able to hear herself scream. The ship was rocketing into space and with a final jolt and a final pop of her ears everything went silent, and the air around her thickened as the life support system kicked on.
What was going on? Had there been some kind of miscommunication? Was the ship being stolen? Was this some sort of maintenance run? Questions ran through Quinn’s mind at a hundred kilometers a minute, then her teeth chattered as her body shook with the realization that she had been unwillingly taken from Earth a second time.
No. No, no, no, everything rebelled at the thought and for a suicidal second she wondered if there was a way to jump out of the ship and somehow make her way home. Of course that was impossible, she knew that. She had survived way worse than this. She didn’t even know who was flying the ship and where they were headed. It was probably the Detyens, or a maintenance crew, and they’d be back on the ground in no time. She clung to that thought, but it took several more minutes of convincing herself that she wasn’t about to get hurt to force herself to climb out of the cubby and slowly make her way towards the cockpit. If the ship was being stolen, she didn’t want to give her presence away, but she needed to see who was flying the thing, needed to see if they were friend or foe.
This was probably one big misunderstanding, she told herself again, but she could remember the painful grip of the slaver’s hand on her wrist, holding her tight enough to bruise, almost tight enough to break. She had thought that was a misunderstanding too, at the beginning.
By the time she made it to the seating area outside the cockpit, she could see a dark head of hair over the top of the pilot seat. There only appeared to be one person in the cockpit, but a ship like this usually had a much bigger crew. Why would someone fly it alone? Not for legitimate purposes, she was almost sure. If the Detyens were on a mission, surely they would’ve sent at least two. So if that was one of the Detyens, was he going rogue? If he had checked in with security before taking the ship, he would have known that she was on it.
The pilot shifted in the seat and Quinn got a good look at his profile. Bluish-green skin, straight nose, sharp jaw, and lips that she had spent absolutely no time thinking about whatsoever.
Kayde.
This was okay, she tried to tell herself. The Detyens were her friends, and though there was something off about Kayde, something she couldn’t stop thinking about no matter how much she tried, she knew that he would take her back home. Whatever he was doing right now had to be legitimate. She had to believe that.
She took a deep breath, trying to center herself, trying to psych herself up to what she had to do, and closed the final distance to the door to the cockpit. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake,” she said after clearing her throat. “Did you know I was here?”
At first she didn’t think that Kayde had heard her. He was frozen in his seat, still as a statue. But after a long moment he turned to her, the moment slow, beginning with his head and moving down his body until he was sitting at a strange angle in his seat. He stared at her for several moments with unfathomably dark eyes. His face was completely expressionless, something that wasn’t strange for him, even if it was a bit unnerving. “Of course you’re here,” he said in his flat, robotic voice. From anyone else she would have thought those words were sarcastic, but from him he was stating a fact.
She waited for him to say something else, to say anything that would make it clear that this was a mistake. The silence stretched around them and the sinking feeling in her stomach told Quinn that Kayde wasn’t about to add anything else to his statement. He’d known she was here, and he’d taken her anyway. He wasn’t about to explain where they were going, and he wasn’t about to let her go.
It was happening again. Her folding knife pressed against her leg where it sat in her pocket, reminding her that she wasn’t as defenseless as she looked. But Kayde was a trained warrior, a dangerous man, and from the looks of it he had gone off the deep end. So she needed to wait for her moment, p
lay this right, and find a way to get home. She wasn’t about to be a victim again, and she would die before she submitted to anyone.
Chapter Three
QUINN WAS ON HIS SHIP. They were rocketing away from Earth, halfway to the jump gate, and the one person on the planet that he was trying to avoid was standing only a few meters away, the brown skin on her face gone pale and her eyes wide. He’d been given his orders, had requested his orders. And now his mind stuttered at this unforeseen complication. How could she be here? The airfield was guarded, and the ship should have been locked.
He could ask those kinds of questions all day, but they were useless. She was here now, and if he wanted to make his scheduled time to exit the solar system through the jump gate, he couldn’t afford to turn around. But he needed to do something to calm her down. Yes, calm. He recognized the symptoms he was seeing on her face. She was panicked, afraid. Perhaps she wanted to be away from him as much as he needed to be away from her.
“I mean you no harm,” he said. “I did not realize you were on the ship.”
She choked out something that might have been called a laugh under other circumstances. “That isn’t what you said a minute ago. Take me home, I want to go back to Earth.” She reached for the seat in front of her with one hand and gripped the headrest tightly. The soldier inside of Kayde noted that she kept her other hand out of sight. If she hadn’t been an ally, if she had been someone other than Quinn, he might think that she could have a weapon, that she could be a threat.
No, she could have a weapon and she could be a threat. His own obsession, or fixation, or whatever madness had bungled his brain didn’t extend to her. Whatever connection he felt, it had to be a one-way street. He could not underestimate her, could not trust that she wouldn’t do him harm.
