by Eva Priest
Rage unlike anything I’d ever felt before in battle filled me, stretching my skin, easily doubling in size. I let out a roar.
“Shit, Cade! You’ll go into battle frenzy if you’re not careful.”
The tinny voice in my ear pissed meoff, and I tried to scratch it from my head. A quiet voice, the smallest rational piece of my mind stated something about the voice being implanted deep into my skull. Somehow, I was able to activate comms. I growled, “My mate!”
“What happened? Is she hurt?”
“He’s gone feral—”
“You could hurt her if you don’t get control of yourself.”
I could never hurt her. Dorn didn’t understand. But he was right about one thing. Battle frenzy could end up burning me out. I would be no use to Solana if I died.
The smuggling ship sounded an alarm because the docking legs were retracting. They were pulling up stakes and ready to leave. “They’re stealing my mate,” I growled out.
“What are you doing, boss? Don’t tell me you’re running toward the shuttle.”
Words were getting harder to form in my brain, and I wouldn’t have the ability to remember much in my altered state. I slammed my palm against my chest to activate the suit’s monitoring system. It would be uploaded to the rest of my crew. “Track my signal. Find the main ship.”
“And then what?”
“I will hunt down my mate and steal her back.”
4 SOLANA
I woke to a loud metallic clang. A warning siren blared in time to the pounding in my head. Everything around me was a foggy haze. Why was I in so much pain?
I sought to massage my temples and ease the pressure throbbing behind my eyes but I couldn't. My arms weren't listening to me. And not just my arms. My... everything.
Flashes of memory came at me bit by bit.
Running away from killers in the jungle. Men in black freezing me in place. Floating.
I was still floating. This wasn’t a dream. I was somehow suspended and wrapped in something I couldn’t see. There was nothing for me to fight against. Nothing that I could feel to untie, unzip, un-anything. So much for the useful tips in that self-defense course I’d taken.
Hell, I couldn’t even blink. At least I could see. Whoever took me didn't bother with a blindfold, so that was a plus.
It looked like I was trapped inside the back of a U-Haul truck, but wider. The utilitarian space was a study in efficient packing. It was crammed with tools and equipment, but everything was neat and orderly, including the cages of various sizes stored neatly along one wall.
Best not to think about what those were used for.
Buzzing and clicks approached me and I could just make out the fuzzy outline of two figures in my peripheral vision. It was those two men in black again. Slowly, my body was being re-positioned. Instead of the mid-running stride I’d been locked in, I was laid out flat like a mummy and left staring upwards.
They loomed above me as if they were studying me. The pose looked like something out of an alien abduction comic. I had one of those out-of-body experiences, like I should be freaking out about the fact that I might be dissected at any moment. It just all seemed unreal that this was even happening. The thought made me giggle. Or at least attempt to.
I tried to yell, scream, fight against them, anything, but not a bit of me moved. My face, reflected in their visors, was locked in surprise. I tried blinking, and, nope, no response. That remote control thing must have frozen every bit of me, not just my limbs.
One of them adjusted something on his remote control. Mechanical, winching sounds produced a small coffin-looking thing from a hidden compartment. They were going to float me inside it.
Panic seized my gut. I wanted to rage and fight, anything, just so I wouldn’t be confined. Not even my eyeballs shifted and knowing that I was physically unresponsive made everything worse.
The dread that I’d been keeping at bay finally started to seep into my mind.
This was real. I was not dreaming. I was being abducted.
I raged at the thought and commanded my body to move. It took all of my will, but I felt my toe twitch. Good. That was a start.
Maybe whatever they’d dosed me with would wear off soon... like in the next minute. When it did wear off, I would get my chance. I would need to snag that controller first, maybe zap them with it, but I would fight. I need to fight.
Please muscles, please fight against it.
I could wiggle all of the toes in that foot, and I could blink and swivel my eyes. Progress! But not soon enough. I was being moved.
I could feel myself floating, jostled in the air. From my position, I could see out of a panoramic window that I hadn’t noticed when my stare had been frozen straight ahead.
Earth loomed large and beautiful amid a backdrop of darkest night and brightest stars.
This was impossible. If I was seeing the planet like this, it meant I was no longer on it.
Maybe I’d died in the jungle.
I was placed inside of the coffin. A plug went into my nose and ears.
As it shut, violet light washed the inside, pulsing with soothing sound waves. My limbs felt heavy.
There was a viewing shield that the men in black were able to observe through. Whatever they were doing on the other side made the inside feel warm. It was filling with warm goo.
I was moved into a bigger space, one that resembled a warehouse. When that happened, I realized that the first transport I was on had been a smaller shuttle, and though it was the same size as a few cargo containers put together, it was dwarfed by the massive ship it was inside of.
I had been abducted. By aliens. Who weren't little green men, but skinny men in black suits with big helmets. I giggled, the sound of it echoing in my head as a wave of euphoria entered my system. They were doping me again, and this time I didn’t fight it.
* * *
I woke up naked and restrained, with a fresh dose of paralyzing drugs in my system. This time I was in some sort of gigantic test tube thing full of liquid with a breathing mask strapped to my face. I hadn’t seen anything like this outside of a science-fiction movie.
Ugh, why did I have to think that? Weren’t there always military bad guys doing weird experiments to the beings they captured?
As if on cue, the men in black entered my field of vision. A third, taller skinny alien in the same black suit joined them. How many of them were there?
I tried to seem as sedated as possible as I observed them.
They pushed some buttons that adjusted some of the probes that were attached to me. After each adjustment, they stared at a glass display that I assumed was a kind of computer monitor. It was a good thing I was under a ton of sedatives. It was the only thing that kept me from having a full-blown panic attack.
After one of the latest adjustments, something made the smaller two actually giggle with glee. The sound was too close to a child’s laughter, with a robotic edge to it reminiscent of a Chucky doll.
In between the giggles, there was a common word that they kept repeating. Omega. I understood that term. It was a Greek letter, but why were they so excited about it?
Wait. I understood something they’d just said. Words started to connect and give me meaning. As they kept chirping in their strange language, more words started to fill in the blanks in my mind.
It was whatever they were doping me with, as much as I could gather. It was healing my body, but it was also changing it. That part was a scary revelation. What exactly were they changing?
Their words were only halfway translatable, at least so far, but the changes seemed impactful the way they were excitedly flapping their hands. Installing a translator in my head seemed exciting to me, but seemed like a basic installment for them.
No, something else was changed inside me, and whatever they did to me, they were hoping to test out later. They just needed a few alphas to know for sure if their experiment worked. The way they said alphas made them seem important, as if the
y were thinking of very specific people.
What did it all mean?
Blackness edged my vision, another wave of suppressants must have been injected into me.
An unformed dream space appeared like a haze in my mind, and I seemed to be looking through another person’s eyes.
Wherever I was, it looked cold. Industrial, like a warehouse or a docking bay. It sounded like a crazy zoo, too, with strange sounds that I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
What was this? Was this me? Where was I?
“Hello?”
Instead of the echoing sound of my own voice like I’d expected, the scene stopped moving. A voice answered me, rough and male. “Solana? Are you all right? Where are you?” The voice was curious and excited. I could imagine him tilting his head in question. Immediately, my dreamy spotted man from last night came to mind.
I ignored the question. “Aw, Cade? That’s your name isn’t it? So nice of my subconscious to give you to me. This must be what dying feels like. All floaty with happy thoughts.”
A burst of anger, roiling fire and heat rolled through my body. “You are not allowed to die. Where are you? Show me.”
I snorted. “You’re funny when you’re angry. Psst, guess what? I like you most of all when your mouth is full of me.” I giggled as I shared my secret with him. My comment sounded delightfully naughty, and I wasn’t even sorry for it. With him, I could be everything I never was when I was awake. Namely, fun and playful.
“I would rather that, too, my lovely. But I need to find you first. Tell me where you are.”
That magical voice. How in the world could I have forgotten that? He could call me up from the dead sounding like that.
“I’m so tired, Cade. Tired of a boss who won’t listen to me. Tired of a family who cut me off. Tired of feeling stuck. Maybe it’s a good thing for me to just slip away.” I didn’t mean to unburden myself, but it just felt right to tell him all my secrets. They were so hard to hold onto, so heavy. No need to feel heavy when I was floating.
He didn’t answer me verbally, but it felt like I was enveloped in a warm embrace. Rumbling purrs vibrated against my back, melting away all of my worries.
This felt better than any drug the men in black could pump into me.
“That’s it, relax. I will take care of you. You won’t slip away. I have you.”
“Mmmkay,” I responded. This time, instead of seeing through his eyes, it was like he was inside of me.
“Can you open your eyes for me?”
“Too heavy. Too dark. Too scary.” It was so hard to think.
“I’m here. No need to be afraid. I have you now. Show me the last thing you remember.”
God, that voice. I could listen to him talk forever. “Never stop talking,” I said. My words sounded slurry even in my dreams.
“I won’t. You need to be awake and alive to hear it, though. You got it?”
“Okay.”
“Now relax and work your way back in your memories. Remember the forest? You were running? Show me what you did from there.”
My mind obeyed the gentle yet firm command. Memories blurred together. Flashes of my desperate run through the forest. Being frozen and restrained. The men in black. Waking in the test tube container. The probing invasion.
My anxiety threatened to engulf me. In response, a strong vibrato purred against me growing louder; a reverberating beat increased around me, steady and strong. It was his heartbeat. I calmed to match its hypnotic rhythm, and the panic inside me receded.
I saw myself floating in a clear suspension tank, a breathing mask strapped over my face. Unconscious and doped up, I was in a different part of the ship, nowhere near the warehouse-looking area I was in before. I was someplace clinical, with white walls and blue lights. It was a sterile-looking environment.
There were other glass containers that were being prepped for use. Other probing devices not too far away. They made me nervous but I wasn’t afraid. At least not now that Cade was with me.
I fixated on the door. It reflected numbers. They had been scratches and gobbledygook, but I understood them clearly now as I read it to myself.
“Subsection 2. Clean Room A. Medical Personnel only.”
Another wave of suppressant warmed my body. I would be slipping away soon I could feel it. What a weird way to die.
“You will not die, Solana. Do you hear me? Say yes to your mate.”
“Yes,” I thought. “You know, you don’t have to be so bossy. Just talk to me all normal-like. I’ll get it.”
I heard voices nearby, this time outside of my head. They droned in a sort of high-pitched insectile whine. “For a moment there, she seemed to be slipping. But she is stable now. This species seemed weak, but this specimen has taken the enzymatic reaction well. She should be stabilized before we even break orbit.”
“It took a few tries, but it’s worth it to find one specimen that worked.”
What were they saying? Did they try this before? Did others die, and I was their first successful… experiment?
The footsteps and voices receded, as if whoever was speaking was walking away from me.
“She won’t be damaged after this?”
“Damaged? If anything, its body would be better than ever, resilient to most diseases and equipped with a healing factor now that we activated the pandora strain. That’s all that’s needed for our test.”
“Will there be enough alphas at the trader’s market?”
“There’s always at least a few squadrons there. That would be enough. Once we put her up for auction, we will see if our test is a success.”
“Soon, the Legion will fall…”
“One step at a time. But yes, if this works, we have viable hosts to create more pandoras to complete phase one.”
The room became silent once more.
Pandora strain? Auction? Alphas?
“Hey, beautiful voice in my head? Cade? I’d rather die than be bought in an auction. If you don’t want me to die, can you manage a divine intervention, please?”
5 CADE
They were all going to die. Every last one that touched her. Stripped her. Scared her.
My mate.
I didn’t even want to contemplate what they meant about a pandora strain, but I noted it well. Anything to do with omegas, the Legion would want to know. Most of the races in the collective carried Alpha-Beta-Omega dynamics, and Eridani alphas were especially protective where omegas were concerned.
It would make sense that she was my mate if she were secretly an omega and didn’t know it.
Still begged the question: How are there omegas on this end of the galaxy in the first place? And what did they mean about the pandora strain?
As I snaked through the duct work of this ship, my body vibrated with the need to go to her, comfort her, protect her. My rational self knew that I needed a plan so I wouldn’t get us killed, but it was hard to keep that logic when every fiber of my being clawed at me to get to my mate.
Already I felt her absence. The connection between us was deeper than even I could ever imagine. Now that it had awakened, it was pushing me to complete our bond. I needed to convince the rest of me that the best way to get her safe was to take the ship, kill these fucking poachers—to hell with keeping them alive long enough for questioning—and rendezvous with the rest of my team. Only then would I return to the rest of the fleet.
If Legion command was annoyed I killed the target before he could be questioned, then command should have fetched him themselves.
All I could taste and feel was what they had done to her, and I would not be satisfied until I saw their blood spilled. I knew in my soul that vengeance would make Solana happy, and she would want to ride my cock and roll our bodies in the blood of our enemies.
I shook my head. My battle rage fogged my senses to reason.
With the last vestige of rational thought I had, I engaged the comm embedded in my jaw. “Dorn, over.”
“Problem, Cade?”
My second always knew how to cut to the heart of the matter. One of his best traits. “They’re holding my mate somewhere on this ship. I can’t find her fast enough.”
The sharp intake of breath spoke volumes. “The female that the poachers dragged on board?”
“The very same. Can you read anything?”
“No, there’s some impressive shielding on that wreck of a ship. Having a hard time even keeping a lock on it.”
“Dammit. This ship is huge, too many places where they can hide…anything.”
“Any sign of crew?”
“No, but I intend to kill each of them slowly and bathe in their blood.”
There was a beat of silence before Dorn responded. “Need I remind you that Praxis is expected to be brought in for questioning before Legion command.”
“Praxis shouldn’t have touched what was mine.” I pushed the words out through clenched teeth.
“I see,” he said in his crisp tones. “We shall be there soon.”
“Stay clear until I signal you,” I snarled.
“I have no designs on your mate, Cade. Your alpha nature is awakening in the presence of your fate-mate and is clouding your judgment. And, making you territorial.”
“Am not.”
“My mistake. You’re the picture of maturity and rational thinking.”
Was that a hint of humor coloring Dorn’s dour voice? Dammit, when Dorn became the funny one, we were all in trouble. “I’m glad you find this amusing.”
“Entertaining, actually. Try not to kill anyone until we get there. I do like a good show. Anything else we should know before we enter slipstream?”
Once they entered slipstream, they wouldn’t be able to use comms. “No.” Then I said my reservations aloud. “How come you didn’t question that she was my mate?”
Without hesitation, Dorn answered. “You said she was your mate, and that is enough reason for me. Beside that, she was accosted. I assumed that in her debilitated state coupled with her proximity to you, that she was able to establish a telepathic rapport with you. Perhaps even started a unity bond beforehand. Under the circumstance, it seemed logical. Besides, you are not the type to exaggerate.”