by Presley Hall
He nods. “Grab it and let’s go.”
“Wait!” K’Mek wriggles in Kaide’s hold. “You have to promise to take me with you if you get off this rock. It’s only a fair trade. I made the communicator for you.”
“No, you didn’t,” I shoot back, my anger rising. “You stole the most important component from us and then made the device for Hyron. We don’t owe you shit.”
Kaide’s jaw clenches. “She’s right. We won’t make that bargain with you, K’Mek. If you had asked before you betrayed us, maybe we could’ve worked something out. But knowing what you’re capable of, I can’t allow you to step foot on a ship with any of my people.”
The scrawny alien’s pale green face twists in anger, but then he sags in Kaide’s arms. “Fine. Just don’t kill me.”
Kaide grunts under his breath, loosening his hold on the bony alien as he jerks his chin slightly, indicating I should grab the communicator.
Slipping my knife back into the little loop at the waistband of my pants, I step forward and grasp the cube. It’s heavier than I expect, and I have to put a little muscle behind it as I lift the thing up.
The second it leaves the table, a loud shriek cuts through the air.
Fuck. An alarm.
Gripping the cube tightly, I whirl around to face K’Mek and Kaide. Kaide’s cat-like eyes are wide with alarm, but the skinny alien’s face stretches into a smug smile.
“My mistake,” he drawls. “I must’ve forgotten to deactivate the security.”
24
Kaide
Shock and anger course through me as the screeching sound fills the air.
Akhi. The slanching traitor in my hold didn’t forget anything. He deliberately chose not to warn us about the alarm rigged to protect the communication device—an alarm he could’ve disabled if he’d chosen too.
Perhaps he would’ve done so if we had agreed to take him with us, but now more than ever, I’m determined not to let this slimy little worm anywhere near my people.
I spin him around in my grip, grabbing hold of his throat with one hand as fury churns in my gut. But before I can decide whether or not to kill him right here and now, the sound of several guards running down the hall reaches my ears, rising above the blaring sound of the alarm.
Slanch it all. There’s no time.
Raina and I are about to be boxed in, trapped inside Hyron’s stronghold with no way out.
Shoving the little alien away from me, I turn around to face our attackers as they burst into the room. These are the guards who were left behind when the others went to fight Strakk’s people, but more will be coming soon, drawn back to the tower by the sound of the alarm.
And Hyron himself—has he heard it?
He must have, but I don’t allow myself to think about that at the moment. Instead, I step forward to face my first attacker, channeling all of my strength and concentration into the fight. His light gray skin is marked with Hyron’s symbol, and he swings a heavy club at me as he reaches me. I duck under his arm, lunging forward and catching a glancing blow to his ribs with my spear.
As he stumbles sideways a little, I take on the next attacker who nears me, spinning out of the way of his axe before driving my elbow into his face. The first alien has recovered enough to come at me again, and I plant my foot in his stomach, kicking as hard as I can and sending him stumbling backward.
I lose myself in the brutal, violent flow of it. My body never stops moving, my mind always a half step ahead as I search for the next threat and deal with it.
One guard falls.
Then another.
Their backup hasn’t arrived yet, so only two more are left. If I can kill them, I might be able to get Raina out of here before—
The sound of a feminine cry pulls me out of my battle trance, and I glance over to see my mate and K’Mek wrestling over the communicator. I’ve been able to keep the guards from reaching her, but I had to let go of the traitorous wretch to fight.
He slams his bony shoulder into hers, shoving her sideways as he grapples for the black box, trying to tear it from her grip.
“Raina!” I shout her name as I redouble my efforts against the guards, determined to end this fight so that I can help her.
The two remaining guards must’ve been warriors on their own planets, because they’re skilled in battle, working together to try to pin me down. Out of the corner of my eye, I see K’Mek make a desperate grab for the knife at Raina’s hip, and a furious growl escapes my lips.
No. Don’t touch her. Don’t hurt her.
He nearly killed her once. I won’t let him do it again.
As the guards converge on me again, I duck between them, grabbing one by the arm to throw him off balance and lashing out at the other with my spear tip. I let go of the shorter one’s arm and aim a kick at the hand grasping his weapon, sending his sword clattering to the floor. Then I swing my spear around in a wide arc, cutting through his throat. With a feral cry, I pivot on the balls of my feet and drive the pointed end of my spear into the gut of the final guard.
He falls with a gurgling groan, and I whirl around to face Raina and K’Mek. They’ve gone down to the floor, still locked in a vicious fight as K’Mek raises the stolen knife to deliver a killing blow. She flings her arms up, just barely managing to block the attack, and my feet are moving before I’m even conscious of it. Before K’Mek can strike again, I grab the back of his neck and lift him off of her, hurling him away so hard that his head cracks against the stone wall nearby.
He lands in a crumpled heap, unmoving. I haul Raina into my arms, kissing her hair as I breathe her in.
“Thank the gods you’re all right,” I murmur.
“Thank god you’re all right,” she shoots back, her voice a bit muffled as she clings to me. “I’m not the one who just fought four guards. Every time I looked over at you, I was certain you were about to be killed.”
“I wouldn’t let them kill me. I have far too much to live for,” I say softly. “You did well, my kira. If it hadn’t been for you, K’Mek would have snuck off with the communicator again.” My lips find hers in a deep kiss before I pull back, adrenaline pounding through my veins. “We need to go, quickly.”
“Yeah. No arguments there.” She scrambles to her feet, scooping up the black cube from where it rests on the floor nearby. It must’ve fallen there during her struggle with K’Mek. She stows it in my pack, then quickly grabs the stolen knife K’Mek dropped when he hit the wall. He still isn’t moving, and I’m nearly certain he’s dead.
I can’t say I’m sorry about that. Perhaps, if he had acted with honor from the beginning, my people could’ve helped him. But he betrayed us too many times for that to be possible.
The alarm went silent sometime during the fight, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Perhaps it turned off automatically, or perhaps someone manually shut the sound off. Either way, it’s very likely that more of Hyron’s followers know there’s been a breach of the building.
Gripping Raina’s hand in mine, I lead her out of the room, sprinting down the corridor in the direction we came from. Our best chance of escape is to retrace the path we took to get here rather than risk getting lost by trying to find a new way out. Our footsteps thunder on the stairs as we race down them, and I put on another burst of speed as we reach the ground floor and the broken door comes into view.
When we burst out into the mid-morning light, the sound of a battle raging nearby reaches my ears—the fight between Hyron’s and Strakk’s men is still going strong.
But just as I start to think that perhaps we’ve made it, that we’ve escaped the tall building unnoticed, a tall alien with two sets of blunt horns protruding from his head rounds a corner nearby, leading several massive, rough-skinned guards.
He catches sight of me and Raina, and fury lights in his eyes. I’ve never seen Hyron before, but I know this must be the criminal kingpin himself. He radiates power and brutality, and when he barks an order at his
guards, they all leap to obey.
“Stop them!” he bellows, leveling a finger at us as his guards charge in our direction.
“Slanch,” I mutter, baring my teeth. There’s no debate in my head over whether to fight or run. I may have a well-deserved reputation among my fellow warriors for being reckless, but even I know that some battles are better to avoid.
Raina and I turn at the same moment, sprinting down the street away from Hyron and his followers. The clash between the two rival gangs is still going strong, and I shove a man out of our way as he tries to block our path. He stumbles into the middle of another fight nearby, and shouts rise up as we dodge between two large groups enmeshed in a brawl.
A blaster bolt whizzes past, singeing my skin and making me hiss with pain. I don’t even know if I was the intended target for the bolt, but I don’t slow my pace long enough to find out.
The chaos around us is the perfect cover for our escape, but it’s also a very real danger. Blades are swinging, blasters are firing, and bodies are colliding in a frantic melee.
Beside me, Raina throws a quick glance over her shoulder, her pack bouncing on her back as we sprint.
“The guards are… falling behind,” she pants, each word coming out on a gasp.
Fresh hope gives my limbs another burst of energy, and we duck down a smaller street as the worst of the fighting begins to thin out around us.
We run in a circuitous route, taking smaller side streets to make it harder for the guards to track us, and after several minutes, we burst out of Hyron’s territory.
Still, we barely slow our steps. The part of the city controlled by him might be one of the most dangerous sections of Pascia, but nowhere will be truly safe now that Hyron is after us. We need to get out of the city and into the woods where we’re due to meet up with the rest of our group soon. We’ll be safer out there, especially since we’re more familiar with the wilderness of Nuthora than most city dwellers.
If Hyron’s men are able to track us that far, we should be able to take them down.
But my hope is that it will never come to that.
My lungs burn, and I can see sweat trickling down Raina’s temple when I glance over at her. She’s running with a slightly staggered gait, as if she has a stitch in her side, but she bares her teeth and pushes through it.
“Almost there,” I tell her, lifting a hand to point ahead of us to the ramshackle territory we passed through when we first entered Pascia. The outer rim of the city.
As we near the crude tents and lean-tos, the sound of heavy footsteps nearby draws my attention. I glance over, my grip on my weapon tightening as I prepare to fight if need be.
But it’s not one of Hyron’s guards, thank all the gods.
Instead, it’s Bohrir.
And he’s not alone.
A Terran woman is slung over his shoulder.
25
Raina
Kaide makes a startled noise in his throat, and I follow his gaze, catching sight of Bohrir as he draws up beside us.
Then I do a double-take, almost losing my footing as shock ripples through me. There’s a petite woman draped over his shoulder, her legs pinned to his chest with one strong arm. I can’t get a good look at her face, but from everything I can see of her, I’m pretty sure she’s human.
She’s wearing a gauzy dress, and her ankles and wrists are bound with ropes.
What the fuck?
My footsteps start to slow, but Kaide grabs my elbow, urging me onward.
“I have questions too,” he mutters, sounding winded but much less out of breath than I am. “We need to get out of the city first, though. We’ve lost Hyron’s guards for now, but if we hesitate, they could still find us.”
A ripple of fear travels down my spine. I’ve been running on pure adrenaline since we broke into Hyron’s tower, and I’ve barely even begun to process how many times we’ve flirted with death in the past hour.
The woman in Bohrir’s arms isn’t screaming or struggling, so I decide Kaide is right. I have no idea what the other Voxeran has been up to in the days we’ve been apart, or why he has a human woman with him, but answers to those questions can wait until we’re farther away from the city.
Kaide leads our small group, cutting a zig-zagging path through the flimsy tents of the slum. I’m sure he’s trying to make it harder for Hyron’s men to follow us, especially if they question the residents of this outer circle of the city about whether they’ve seen anyone passing through their territory.
I hope like hell that it’ll be enough.
By the time we finally race out of the city and into the wilderness that surrounds Pascia, the stitch in my side has turned so brutal that it feels like I’m being knifed through the ribs with every step. I have no idea how Bohrir is managing to keep up this strenuous pace and carry an entire person at the same time—but I probably shouldn’t be surprised, considering he’s one of the largest of all the Voxerans.
Kaide glances at me with concern, but I shake my head, letting him know I can keep going. We’ve come this far. There’s no way I’m letting us get caught now.
I’ve always been stubborn, and I let that determination take over as we push toward our destination.
Finally, I catch sight of Ochar and Orin standing in a small clearing between several trees up ahead. We stumble to a stop as we reach them, and for a few seconds, I just gasp for breath, my lungs burning as my heart thuds heavily in my chest. Kaide rests a hand on my back as I brace my palms on my knees, and the feel of that connection between us is grounding and reassuring.
We made it.
Holy fuck, we made it.
When I look up, I see that Bohrir has set down the woman he was carrying. All three of his fellow Voxerans are looking at him with surprise on their faces, which makes me feel a bit better. In the limited amount of time that I’ve known them, the Voxeran warriors have always seemed to be honorable men, so I don’t think they make a habit of abducting women like some alien species seem to.
Which means there has to be some other reason why Bohrir brought this woman with him when he left the city.
“What happened?” Kaide asks his friend.
I glance between him and Bohrir as my breath finally slows. I know Kaide must be as curious as I am, since he’s addressing this issue before even telling the others that we managed to get the communication device back from K’Mek.
Bohrir runs a hand through his thick dark hair, looking down at the small woman. She’s sitting on the ground where he set her down, her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them—a bit awkwardly due to the bindings on her wrist. Her auburn hair is pulled back from her face in a rough braid, although several strands have come loose to brush against her cheeks. She’s thin and pale, and something about her posture reminds me of a wounded animal. There’s a haunted look in her jade green eyes as she shifts her gaze warily between each of us, unspeaking.
“After we split up, I started asking around to see if I could find prisoners who often did business with K’Mek,” Bohrir explains in his deep, rumbling voice. “Someone told me about a group of pirates—alien thieves whose ship was raided and who were all sentenced to life on Nuthora at the same time. They’ve made a reputation for themselves here, trafficking in stolen goods and contraband on Nuthora.”
“Let me guess,” I mutter, my jaw tightening as I glance from the woman to Bohrir. “She was part of their ‘contraband.’”
“No.” He shakes his head, his usually placid face tight with anger. “From what I was able to gather, I think she was banished to Nuthora at the same time they were. They had captured her sometime before their ship was raided, and when they were sentenced to prison on this planet, she was given the same sentence as those slanching criminals just for being on a ship with them.”
“What?” My mouth drops open, and I look back at the woman as pity wells up inside me. God, that’s fucking awful.
I have a sudden vision of what my fate could’ve been if the
ship we were on hadn’t crashed on Nuthora. As awful as it was to wake up stranded on a prison planet, at least we ended up finding the Voxerans. At least we’ve been able to build some semblance of a home here.
If the Foreigner II had reached its intended destination, I probably would’ve woken up to find myself the sex slave of some alien arms dealer, sold by my own government with no way out and no hope of escape.
Was this woman sold? Or did she just find herself in the wrong place at the wrong time back on Earth and get snatched up by alien pirates?
And as an added twist of cruelty, when the pirates were finally caught, she was punished along with them instead of being rescued.
“You were convicted of the same crimes they were?” I ask gently, crouching down beside her. “Even though you were their prisoner?”
She scuttles away from me a little, looking at me with wide eyes as if she can’t quite understand what I’m saying. For a second, I wonder if maybe she doesn’t speak English—just because she’s human, that doesn’t necessarily mean we speak the same language.
But then she nods. It’s a small, jerky movement, and her gaze doesn’t leave my face as she responds.
“Yes,” she murmurs. “I was… sent here with Gornok and his men.”
My heart aches. She looks so small and scared and fragile that I want to find this Gornok asshole, wherever he is, and beat the shit out of him for hurting her.
I want to help her, to reassure her that at least she’s safer now than she was before. Just like I told Kaide, I’m not great at this sort of thing—I’m bad at soothing, at caring for other people and putting them at ease.
But I want to try.
“What’s your name?” I murmur softly. “I’m Raina.”
She blinks at me, giving me that same look of vague confusion she did before, as if it’s taking her a moment to process my words. Then she licks her lips, swallowing hard. “I… it’s Willow. My name is Willow.”