by Kate Rudolph
"You can sleep in the bed with me," she told him with a smile. "I won't pull any funny business."
"You seem like the exact kind of person to play dirty," Deke told her with a strained smile. He used to be all smiles, but now the expression he shot her looked so rusty she wondered if it hurt.
She didn't think he would join her in the bed, but it was only her second night here. She had time to work on him.
Chapter Ten
Deke didn't sleep easy, and it had nothing to do with laying on the floor. He'd slept in much worse places, but that night he tossed and turned and couldn't force his mind to calm down. He lay in the shadow of the bed and could barely make out the lumps of Manda's body under the covers.
She seemed to be sleeping easily.
He could be up there with her. Soft mattress. Soft body. His mate. He couldn't think of that too hard or hardness would become a problem.
The floor was good. It was safe down there, if not completely comfortable. But he had a pillow and a blanket. What more could he want?
His mate in his arms.
The thought slithered into his mind and wrapped around his brain. Thinking like that was dangerous. But after their almost kiss in the elevator he couldn't stop thinking that way. His mind conjured the image of her lips, red and rounded and ready to be kissed. Only a breath had separated them. He'd been a fool to pull away.
Sleep came for him eventually, and he didn't even notice the shift from tossing and turning to dreaming.
It was a strange dream. He felt like he was waking right into his room in the Temple of Peace but there was a hazy quality to it, something completely surreal, as if he was walking through the clouds.
He felt safe. He never felt safe these days. And yet right now he was absolutely certain that nothing could harm him.
He sat up and found Manda facing him where she lay propped on one side of the bed. The bed was twice as big as it was while he was awake and she patted the open spot enticingly.
Dream Deke could not resist.
All those inhibitions of his, all of his fears and doubts were distant right now. He could almost feel them, but it was like they were held behind the barrier in his mind. He was safe from them here too.
"Lay down," Manda tempted, her voice taking a sultry tone.
He did. The bed was so big that he would have to strain to reach her, but she didn't seem to mind. It was nice up here with her. He could pretend that this was where he belonged.
"Why don't you want me to get near you?" Manda asked. She ran her fingers up and down in the valley of the sheets between them, tracing an invisible pattern into the soft material.
If he were awake he would have done anything to avoid answering the question, but here he could answer Manda. He could barely remember why he'd hesitated to say anything while he was awake. Nothing could go wrong in this dream. "I've done a lot of things."
She stopped tracing and leveled a steely gaze at him. "What kind of things?" She leaned in a little closer.
"Violent things." He held up his hands, expecting to see the blood he was sure should be coating them, but they were just his normal blue, one clan marking sitting between his thumb and his forefinger. The same hands he'd had his entire life.
Manda placed her hand over his and pressed it down onto the soft mattress.
"You're not a violent person." She spoke like she knew it to be true, the kind of conviction that only came from a true believer.
Or from someone very young.
Deke swallowed back bile at his memories. "I had to become one." Those first months had been the worst. The first missions where he'd barely known how to shoot a blaster and had spent his nights vomiting while he remembered the violence he'd helped inflict. And then it was like a switch had been tripped in his mind. If he wanted to survive life as a merc he had to get used to it. And so he had.
And eventually he slept like a baby the whole night through.
"It's not who you are," Manda insisted.
"You don't know me." The peace of the dream was fading and he wanted to wake up, he wanted this to be over. He didn't want to relive his misdeeds over and over again until there was nothing left of him but memories.
"I think I do." She echoed what he'd said to her in the elevator.
Was it possible? Could they really know each other after so many years apart? After they had both changed so much? Was there something fundamental? Something that came from the denya bond?
He was afraid of the answer either way. He didn't want to tarnish Manda with the darkness inside of him, and he didn't know what it would mean if his own darkness echoed hers.
"Tell me a story," she said. Her finger was tracing the creases of his knuckles and it was distracting him.
"What kind of story?" His voice went deep, guttural, and his body was responding to her touch.
She paused her tracing and gripped his hand for a moment. "Tell me about some of your violence."
He wanted to wake up. He wanted this to be over. But he couldn't stop himself from talking. "We were transporting someone out of the Oscavian Empire." The memory came easily. "She was carrying precious gems to a small planet that hadn't yet been subsumed by the Oscavians. We knew it would be dangerous." He could remember the way tension sat heavy on the ship. "We were attacked. Pirates. They tried to get the woman we were transporting and my blaster misfired. Stopped working. I had to protect her with my claws. I killed four pirates that day." He left out what it felt like when the blood dripped down his hands, the taste of violence in the air. Manda didn't need that.
"Did you protect the woman?" his mate asked in a tone he couldn't quite recognize.
"We delivered her alive to her destination." It seemed irrelevant given the way the bodies had piled up.
"You protected someone," she insisted.
"Not every time." Not even most times. Maybe Deke wouldn't have so many nightmares if he'd spent most of his time protecting people rather than wealth and land.
"Being capable of violence doesn't make you a monster." On this point Manda was adamant. She gripped his hand tightly, as if she could raise him from his own personal hell.
"Doesn't it?" Transporting a woman across the galaxy was a simple job. He could tell her about the wars he'd become embroiled in, the combatants he'd slaughtered. There were a hundred stories, maybe more. But he could see from the look in Manda's eyes that she was not ready to condemn him and call him a vicious monster.
She pulled his hand close, and he had to roll to prevent himself from straining his arm. She kissed his palm. "I think you're brave."
Deke didn't know how to handle that. He could see the want in her eyes and he knew that he could take this dream in another direction.
It would take barely any effort. One touch. One kiss and they'd be rolling around on the bed like fate had intended. He could have her. If he was brave enough to take that step.
But he wasn't brave, not by Manda's judgement or his own. He wasn't some valiant soldier protecting the innocent from the evil. That disconnect was enough to make the dream dissolve around him.
Deke woke up on the uncomfortable floor, his back aching from the hard surface. He rolled up to his feet silently and looked at Manda still curled up on the bed. Had he really told her those things?
Had the dream been real?
He hoped not. He hoped it was just his subconscious throwing stories at him. But he feared it was more than that.
And if she woke he would know for sure.
He dressed silently and left the room, the door whispering shut behind him.
He needed to meditate.
***
Deke was gone when she woke up. Of course he was. Manda curled into a ball and groaned. She wanted to pretend that he wasn't there because he'd gone for a walk, or to breakfast, or for some other reason than the fact that he was hiding from her.
But he was definitely hiding from her.
She didn't think she was being full of herself. Hell, she was su
rprised he hadn't kicked her out of his room after that almost kiss in the elevator.
And then there was the dream.
Was it real? Considering she'd lived the last several years right alongside a handful of Detyens, she should have known a lot more about them, and about the denya bond. But she'd been afraid to ask. All of her friends got this look on their faces when it came to the thought of her and Deke. Pity. Manda didn't want to be pitied. And she didn't want them to think she was thinking about Dekon.
So she didn't know enough.
With Deke gone, it had been easy to pretend that it didn't matter to her. And she didn't want to know what she was missing out on.
Now she could use a bit of knowledge.
"Dammit," she grumbled, rising from the bed and stumbling to her bag to find an appropriate set of clothes. She hadn't brought much with her. She hadn't expected this trip to go on for so long.
So long? She'd been there two days, even if the shuttle journey from Earth had taken longer than expected. She'd find a way to wash her clothes.
After the walk through the station the day before, she had a better idea of the layout, and she wasn't going to wait around for Deke to come back. She didn't depend on him. And if he wasn't going to wait around for her, she would find ways to keep herself entertained until he was willing to acknowledge the thing going on between them.
Or until he told her to go home. Manda scowled at the thought, but it was a definite possibility. But she wasn't leaving until he made her. She wasn't giving up.
Manda headed out. She didn't head for the elevator immediately. She really didn't want to be stuck in it again, especially since this time she'd be alone.
It was kind of strange. The Temple of Peace seemed to run so smoothly. It didn't seem like the kind of place where elevators broke down. But, she supposed every place had its malfunctions.
Where would Deke go?
She wanted to curse herself for the thought. She didn't need him. She wasn't chasing after him.
Well, she sort of was. But she wasn't chasing after him at this exact moment.
Her stomach grumbled and that was enough of a prompt to have her heading off towards one of the cafeterias. The station was big enough that they had them all over the place, and she could remember passing this one the day before.
But getting food only took a few minutes, and she scarfed it down like she'd never eaten before.
It was a bad habit that she hadn't quite been able to break. Back when she'd been held in captivity food sometimes didn't come all that often, and sometimes she'd been held with other prisoners. Fighting for food and gorging on scraps was the only way to ensure survival.
But she could work on food decorum later. Besides, she could see plenty of people eating with the same kind of desperate fury she knew she sometimes had. It was a grim reminder of why so many people had come to the Temple.
She didn't want to hang around the cafeteria, so she kept walking.
The place had a strange vibe, something she hadn't noticed the day before. There was something tense in the air. Was something wrong?
Manda looked around, but she only saw a few residents of the station walking the halls.
They were kind of big. And alien. Oscavian, maybe? Of course, aliens were normal in outer space. And she was as much an alien as anyone on this space station.
But her nerves were telling her to get back to Deke's room. She had the feeling something was about to happen. Something bad.
It could just be the paranoia talking. She'd bouts of it every now and then. Who wouldn't if they had her past?
And she wasn't always wrong.
She took deep breaths, trying to calm herself the way that her therapist had trained her to do. But her heart was still racing. She was on the freaking Temple of Peace, what kind of threat would there be here?
She turned a corner and smacked right into one of those giant aliens. He was nearly eight feet tall and as broad as two muscular men. He was humanoid, with two arms and two legs and a single head, but his mouth was full of razor-sharp teeth and his eyes were slitted and silver. Definitely not an Oscavian. He had bright green skin and just looking at him made her want to scream. But that was kind of speciesist.
Manda tried to get over the immediate reaction, but then the alien grinned and she saw more and more and more of those scary teeth. Laughter rumbled in his gut and he reached out and clamped a hand on her shoulder.
"You're coming with me, little girl," he thundered.
Manda struggled. Whoever this was, he was here to cause trouble, not find peace. And she wasn't going to be anyone's prisoner ever again. She would rather die. She kicked at his shins and tried to dig her elbow into his gut.
But the man was big and super strong and he easily dragged her down the hallway. Manda kept fighting. She would do anything it took to get away.
She jerked at just the right moment and he lost his grip.
She started sprinting away from him and that's when she ran headfirst into the second alien, this one just as big and terrifying as the first.
Then the Temple alarms started to blare.
Chapter Eleven
The sirens blared and Deke took off running. He reached for his blaster only to realize he didn't have it with him. It didn't matter. His claws would be good enough for whatever threat faced the station.
His mind immediately went to a threat, not some sort of mechanical malfunction or other reason the Temple of Peace might be in trouble.
There weren't that many people out and about, so Deke was running alone. It didn't take him long to figure out why. The same giant alien who had been wearing body armor the day before stalked down the hall carrying a giant blaster and wearing the same body armor. Now there was no reason to think it was just an outfit. He meant business.
The alien rounded on him, ready to shoot the blaster, and Deke dropped to the floor, sliding on one knee and twisting around to sweep the legs of the alien. The brute wasn't expecting it and he went crashing to the floor.
But he was trained well enough to keep a grip on his blaster. Deke didn't let that bother him. He unsheathed his claws and struck at the alien with cold-blooded efficiency, striking for the weak points in his armor and taking a grim sort of satisfaction when the alien groaned in pain.
The alien's grip on his blaster slackened, and Deke grabbed it before springing to his feet. He shot the alien once and then a second time to be sure. Like most blasters, it was designed to be nonlethal, but at close range accidents happened.
Whether the alien was dead or unconscious, Deke wasn't sure. He didn't stick around to find out. Manda was somewhere on the station and he had to find her. He hoped she was back in their room, but he feared she wasn't. She didn't seem like the kind of woman to just sit around and wait, especially when there was trouble afoot.
It was only a question of whether she'd left the room before or after the sirens started blaring.
The sound was loud enough and high-pitched enough to make him want to stab his ears, but Deke tried to ignore it.
Even though his gut said Manda wasn't in the room, he headed that way. He had to check before he started stomping through the Temple at random.
He took the blaster with him. It was heavier than his own, but after a few minutes he didn't even notice the weight. One of the priests of the Temple screamed when he saw Deke, but Deke held up a hand, trying to calm the man and indicate he was no threat. "I took this off one of the attackers," he said. "Find security. Get somewhere safe."
"This shouldn't be happening! This is a place of peace!" the priest sputtered but seemed happy that Deke wasn't trying to kill him.
"We're under attack." Deke didn't have time to calm the man down or explain what had happened. He still didn't know what was happening, anyway. "Go!" That command sent the priest running. Good. Deke didn't have time to dawdle.
Keeping the blaster might end up being more trouble than it was worth, but Deke would worry about that later. Those a
liens were big and he did not want to deal with each of them hand-to-hand.
But why were they attacking the Temple of Peace? It wasn't a rich outpost. It wasn't aligned with any of the major powers. It had no strategic importance whatsoever. The priest had a point when he questioned the attack.
It was another thing to worry about once he knew that Manda was safe.
He heard a woman scream and he recognized the voice.
Deke sprinted.
And there was Manda, caught between two of the aliens and fighting for her life. She was using every technique she could, knees and elbows and teeth, striking out wherever she could hit.
But the aliens were twice her size and there were two of them. There wasn't much she could do against that. Deke's heart seized at the way they were abusing her. He gripped the blaster tight even as his claws threatened to sprint out of his knuckles.
These aliens would pay for what they were doing to his mate.
And one advantage of the aliens being so big was that Deke could use the blaster and not fear hitting his denya.
The first shot took one of the aliens in the back. He seemed to shake it off, but he turned his attention from Manda to Deke.
Deke shot again and again and again and finally the alien went down. That just left Manda and the other alien.
"Manda, drop." Deke barked out the order and he saw Manda try and follow it, but the alien caught on and grabbed Manda, keeping her in place and using her body as a shield.
He was going to pay for that.
Deke waded in. He had to throw the blaster aside to fight hand-to-hand. And he did his best to throw it so that the alien he'd already downed couldn't get to it and the alien he was fighting couldn't either.
It was difficult in the small hallway, but it was barely a conscious thought. This was what he'd done for the past few years. These were the things that he did automatically.
He sank into the fight, his focus on getting the alien to let go of Manda and then taking him down with cruel efficiency. The blows were fast, but they had to hurt.
