“Pleased to meet you all,” I say, still clutching the modesty sheath to my chest. When I look down, most of my body appears to be missing, shielded as it is by the nano-tech garb. “My name is Grace and I’m eighteen Earth-standard years old. I was born—”
“In a convent,” Lilli says. “So I heard. And I’m sure that’s one hell of a story. But what I think we’re all wondering right now is how you got on this ship.”
“Doesn’t matter how.” Coleman’s voice seems to dig into me, just like his gaze does. As if his throat and eyes have the same power his hands no-doubt have to hold me in place. “She’s here, and she clearly needs help.”
“How does matter.” The captain moves past me and releases the thick strap holding two crates against the back wall. He hauls one of the crates forward, his arms straining with the effort, and gestures for Lilli to sit on it. “Unless we want to collect stowaways everywhere we stop, we’d better plug up whatever hole she crawled through.”
“I didn’t crawl. I walked right past you all.” I hold up the modesty sheath. “You clearly aren’t used to seeing women who don’t want to be seen.” I knew that the moment I saw the guest sheaths their women wore on the landing pad. “And Meshach’s men were too busy staring at your woman—the one who spoke so boldly in their presence—to notice me when I snuck on board.”
The only advantage to being mostly invisible is being…well, mostly invisible.
Sotelo crosses his arms over his chest with an amused glance at his woman. “I don’t think that particular ‘hole’ will be a problem again, unless we wind up on another planet with access to these stealth garments.”
“Modesty sheaths,” I correct him.
Coleman snorts as he pulls the remaining crate out for me to sit on. “That may be how your people use them, but I guarantee you that’s not what the tech was designed for. Your people have repurposed a battlefield design. I’d bet my right hand on it.”
“They are not my people.” I sit, because the seat was offered, but I don’t like having to look so far up at both of the men from this position.
“That’s why you left?” Lilli asks.
“I left to avoid being given to Silas. And I’m sorry for the danger I’ve put you in. But I promise if you let me off at your next stop, Meshach will never know I escaped on your ship.”
“Danger.” Coleman snorts. “That platinum-headed fool is no threat to us.”
“He will hunt the galaxy for me,” I insist, guilt crawling up my spine. Churning in my gut. “Please just drop me off somewhere, and I’ll find my way home.” Back to Theron. “I should not be on your ship when he realizes I’ve left the planet.”
Coleman draws himself to his full height, the top of his head scraping the metal ceiling of the cargo hold. He seems to…puff up, his well-defined chest straining at the material covering it. “Let him rant and rave. No man will come near you against your will ever again. Not as long as I’m alive and breathing.”
3
VAUGHN
GRACE STARES AT ME, and I am hypnotized by her wide, dark eyes. I have never in my life seen anything so beautiful. Not just anyone. Anything. Not the crystalline green waterfalls on my homeworld. Not the plump, medium rare inside of a perfectly cooked steak. Not even the vast, velvety darkness of space staring back at me, as we escaped the lab on Rhodon and reclaimed our freedom after two years of torture and abuse.
Nothing in this entire universe compares to the face staring up at me.
How is that possible? I don’t even know her.
Then her dark brows furrow. “You’re a fool,” she says. And I laugh, because the blunt statement sounds so spontaneously honest. So unlike all the carefully considered things she’s said before now. And because she’s not wrong—I’m not sure I’ve ever acted as foolishly as I seem to be now. “If Meshach finds me here and you refuse to hand me over, he will kill you all,” she continues, and she sounds breathless. As if voicing such an assertion—or maybe just speaking in front of two men—requires a great deal of nerve. “So, you should just drop me off somewhere. Really.”
Well, she’s wrong about that. But she has no way of knowing that our crew is not made up of normal men. And…Dreyer.
“Coleman,” Sotelo says, and the warning in his tone is what finally drags my gaze from the magnet that is Grace’s beautiful face. “May I have a word upstairs, please?”
“Yeah.” But I give him a strange look, because this is my third trip up the stairs in the past five minutes. We really need that bigger ship.
As I turn toward the steps, I resist a ridiculous urge to apologize to Grace for my temporary absence. Because she doesn’t care if I leave her here. I am nothing to her.
Show her, a voice inside my head insists.
But I don’t know what that means.
“Lilli, will you please find something for our guest to eat?” Sotelo gestures at the food crate his woman is sitting on. “Do what you can to make her feel at home?”
“Of course.” But she only watches, puzzled, as he follows me up the stairs, then slides the hatch shut again.
“What the hell?” Tirzah Dreyer demands the moment the panel clicks into place in the floor, and I realize the rest of the crew has just been waiting for this chance to ask questions. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Grace,” Zamora says. “She’s eighteen Earth Standard years old. She was born—”
Dreyer throws a cheese puff at him from the packet open on her console. “I heard that part. But what the hell does it mean?”
“It means we need to discuss our options.” Sotelo leans against the lavatory door, and Burke Jamison swivels in the pilot’s chair to face the rest of us as I take one of the remaining seats. “The way I see it, we have three of them. We can return her to Gebose and continue with the job that will earn us that ship. We can drop her on Miscellany during our supply run, where she’ll be alone and vulnerable, and hope Meshach never finds out we removed her from the planet. Or we can shelter her and risk making an enemy of the only seller on the black market willing to accept service as payment for an unregistered ship.”
“We are not taking her back there,” I growl, and I can feel all eyes roll my way.
Lawrence clears his throat, relieving me of the full attention of the crew. “I take it she doesn’t want to go back to Gebose?”
Sotelo shakes his head. “Grace, it seems, was bought as a concubine for Meshach’s son, a kid named Silas who isn’t quite old enough to take possession of her.”
“Possession?” Dreyer scowls.
“It’s every bit as barbaric as it sounds,” I assure her. “Sexual servitude. Evidently their holy text ‘allows’ for concubines. This, coming from a society that doesn’t believe women deserve to be seen or heard.”
Zamora shrugs. “Well, they’re assholes, on Gebose. But they’ve got good taste.” I glare at him, but he only shrugs again. “I mean, is it just me, or is she the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen in your life? Like, eerily perfect. Flawless, even. I don’t think that girl even has pores.”
“Keep your eyes to yourself,” I snap, fighting a sudden need to stand and step into his personal space until he retreats, admitting defeat in a ritualistic face-off I don’t even fully understand. I don’t know what the urge to confront Zamora means, yet somehow I know exactly what it would feel like to win that battle. To back him down. To exert my dominance. To lay the foundation of my claim to—
Grace.
Mine.
But now everyone’s looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind.
“Staring at her makes her uncomfortable,” I explain, but they don’t look fooled by my attempt to normalize a statement that obviously sounded as possessive as it felt. “I mean, she’s clearly not accustomed to being seen, much less ogled.”
“Fair enough. But Zamora’s not wrong.” Lawrence’s reddish brows dip as he thinks out loud. “From a purely scientific perspective—evolutionarily speaking—her features are so perfectly pr
oportioned and symmetrical that we’re biologically programmed to find her attractive.”
So, it’s not just me. Grace really is that beautiful. Which explains Meshach’s apparent willingness to hunt her to the edge of the galaxy. For his son?
“The chances of a face like hers developing naturally—without surgical alteration—are infinitesimally small,” Lawrence adds. “I captured her image when she was up here a few minutes ago and I ran a scan—”
“You what?” My hands curl into fists, and they itch to leave their mark on his face. “You had no right to study her. You should know exactly how that feels. We all should.”
“Coleman’s right. She’s a woman, not a science experiment.” Yet Dreyer doesn’t look as offended as I am on Grace’s behalf. “Still, since she’s here, we should find out everything we can about her. Do you seriously think Meshach had her altered to be so attractive?”
Lawrence shrugs. “You’d have to ask her that. I have no—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I growl. “She risked her life to escape a place where she has no rights and no power, all on her own. She’s much more than just a face for you assholes to look at. She’s—”
Brave. Smart. Perfect.
Mine.
“I have no idea what you’re all talking about,” Sotelo says. “She looks perfectly normal to me.”
“That’s because you see the world through Lilli-tinted glasses,” Dreyer informs him. “It’s actually kind of cute.”
The captain glares at her, then he turns to address the rest of us. “Could we all please focus on the problem at hand? If Meshach finds out we have her and failed to return her, he’s probably not going to honor our contract. And we need that ship. We’ll never be free of Universal Authority without long-range travel.”
“Ours is not the only need to be met anymore,” I insist. “‘For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.’”
“Spartacus?” Zamora guesses.
I roll my eyes at him. “Nelson Mandela. And my point stands; we’re not sending her back.”
“I’m not saying we should,” Sotelo says. “I’m just saying that we need a consensus on one of the options I just outlined.”
“There are no options,” I growl, and even I can tell that there’s something wrong with my voice. Something…different. “She stays here.” With me.
“Okay, seriously.” Zamora frowns in my direction. “Is it just me, or does Coleman look like his beast is whispering in his ear?”
No. That can’t be what’s happening.
“That’s our other problem.” Sotelo sighs. “Coleman seems to be going into a mating frenzy. Over a girl who’s just escaped sexual servitude.”
“That’s not—” I shake my head. “There’s no frenzy. I just don’t want to send her back to that place.”
“Is there a voice in your head right now, Coleman?” Sotelo demands softly, leveling a look right at me. “Or, not a voice, really. But some kind of urge or instinct, telling you that she belongs to you?”
I blink at him, and for a second, I’m relieved to know I’m not losing my mind. Or hallucinating. Then I realize what this means. We all just saw Sotelo go through this with Lilli, and they both nearly lost their shit, fighting the overwhelming attraction. The irresistible physical urges. She resented feeling forced into a connection, and he… Well, Sotelo’s uncontrollable possessive streak was a wedge driven between crew members who’ve been like family for nearly a decade.
I can’t put them all through that again.
“No, the beast isn’t talking to me,” I lie. The crew doesn’t need to know that Sotelo’s right. I’m more than man enough to suffer in silence, to keep from making them a captive audience to the hormonal shit show we all endured with Sotelo and Lilli. Especially since I have the benefit of their experience.
Sotelo shrugs. “Okay, then, if your beast hasn’t claimed her, you won’t mind if I send Zamora down to check on Grace? Make sure she has everything she needs?”
“Happy to.” Zamora stands, heading for the floor hatch, and I’m out of my seat in an instant. Rage fires through me—an uncontrollable surge of aggression—and I grab the back of his shirt. I swing him toward the wall and smash him into it, face-first.
“Coleman,” he croaks, his cheek pressed against the wall of the main deck. He shoves at the metal panel, trying to push us both back—to free himself—but in this moment, his strength can’t match mine. His beast is hibernating and I’ve tapped into something…extra. “Fuck off!”
But I can’t fuck off. I can’t let him go until he understands what’s happening here. That Grace is mine. That if he goes near her again, I’ll have to—
Kill him, that voice whispers in my head.
I stumble backward, shocked by the betrayal from my own mind, and Zamora springs away from the wall, snarling. His irises glow a deep green, as his beast starts to wake up, and his response-in-kind to my aggression only deepens a conflict I can’t fully comprehend.
Sotelo slides between us, his arms extended, palms out. He gives me a sad, almost nostalgic smile. “My point stands. Have a seat, Coleman.”
“What’s happening?” I demand as I sink into my chair.
“As I said, your beast has decided Grace belongs to you. So, I’ll ask you one more time: are you hearing a voice? Commands in your head?”
I nod slowly, and I can feel everyone else staring at me. “It’s so strange,” I confess. “Like a compulsion. I just met her, but I need to touch her. I need to…” I close my eyes, trying to understand the urge rushing through my veins with every scalding pulse of my heart. “…protect her. I need to prove…something.”
“You need to prove yourself worthy of her trust. Her affection,” Sotelo says. “That voice in your head is a set of instincts originating from the alien DNA we were spliced with, triggered by meeting Grace. By smelling her, actually. A lot of this is triggered by scent.
“I call that voice my beast, but the truth is that it doesn’t have one sentient source. It can’t be coming from the alien you were spliced with, because you weren’t only spliced with one source of DNA. We’re each a walking smorgasbord of genetic material, taken from who knows how many sources, and that voice is coming from all the material that isn’t human. It’s like instructions being broadcast from your genes, telling you how to be…well, the beast. It’s teaching you things a member of that alien species probably would have been born knowing. Namely, their method of attracting, claiming, and defending a mate. And I’m just going to tell you right now that their courting technique is a bit different from ours.”
“Oh my god,” Dreyer breathes. “I think I’d figured some of that out, watching you interact with Lilli in the lab, but hearing it like this…”
“Yeah, it’s wild.” Sotelo’s expression is a sober warning as he turns back to me. “And it isn’t fair, the things those foreign instincts are going to ask you to do. That voice in your head believes that Grace will want your protection. That she’ll be attracted to a show of your strength. That you’ll have to keep every other potential mate away from her, to prove yourself capable of claiming and defending her. But she can’t feel any of that.”
Of course she can’t. Because she’s not an alien hybrid.
“And until or unless she accepts you, those instincts are only going to get stronger. Which means our problem is two-fold.”
“Protecting Grace from an underage perv on Gebose, and protecting her from Coleman?” Lawrence guesses with a grin.
A growl rolls up from my throat, but Jamison beats me to the punch as he swivels to glance at his flight instruments, to make sure we’re still on course. “There’s no need to protect her from Coleman. He would never hurt her.”
He’s right, of course.
Some of the abilities we gained along with our alien DNA are easily visible, at least when they’re in use. Others…not so much. Like Jamison’s unerring empa
thy. Like the collection of foreign impulses and needs now making demands in my head. Pulsing through my veins.
“We know you’d never hurt her,” Sotelo admits. “But Grace does not. And that’s one of our problems; your beast has set its sights on a woman who will not be receptive to your advances.”
“That isn’t a problem,” I assure him. “I have no intention of making a move on Grace. She’s only eighteen years old, and considering what she’s just escaped, the last thing she needs is to have to fend off my beast. So I’ll do that for her.”
Sotelo’s focus narrows on me, and the sympathy heavy in his gaze sets me on edge. “Trust me, man. I may be the only creature currently alive who’s been through what you’re about to go through. You are not the same man you were an hour ago, and you never will be again. She’s in your blood, whether she knows it or not. Whether she likes it or not. Fight it if you want. In fact, the longer you can fight it, the easier it will be for her. But understand right now, Coleman, that this is not a battle you will win.”
“That’s insane,” I tell him.
“Yes. But that doesn’t make it untrue.” Sotelo clears his throat and turns back to the rest of the room. “And that’s our problem number one. Just to be safe, while Coleman’s sorting through this hormonal shitstorm, none of you should go near Grace, if you can help it, to keep from setting him off. Except Dreyer. My beast wasn’t threatened by her, and I don’t think Coleman’s will be either. Unless Grace prefers women.”
“Wouldn’t matter if she does, Captain,” Dreyer says. “Because I don’t.”
Sotelo nods. “Then you and Lilli are in charge of making our guest comfortable.”
“So, she’s a guest, then?” Lawrence asks. “Not a stowaway?”
Vendetta (Project Vetus Book 2) Page 4