by Starla Night
Better.
Floating out of the tactical room, she hovered on the landing and stared up at the exit.
What was she doing?
She was crazy. This was a bad idea. Someone was going to get hurt.
But maybe someone was already hurt. Helpless and alone. Waiting for help.
Help only she could give.
Laura gripped the controller.
Don’t second-guess. Don’t hesitate.
Lives might be at stake.
She pressed the ascend button.
Rising, she approached the trap door. It opened automatically. The sun shone brilliantly in the cloudless, freezing sky. Icy winds whipped across the slot.
She pushed into an invisible hurricane.
Howling winds dragged her across the fortress in the same route as the downed jet, whipped her back and forth, and beat her with her own clothes. Icy fingers tore at her goggles.
But she didn’t turn back.
The laser cannons remained silent. Thank goodness.
The jet pack did a great job of keeping her upright when the winds tried to grip her ankles and flip her over and over.
Laura descended toward the wreckage. The wind shook her like a monster and tried to tear the controls out of her hand.
Uh oh. Was she going to pass it by?
Trying to reverse direction, she pushed into the wind.
And stood still.
The wind refused her like pushing into a wall. Ice particles serrated her cloth-covered face.
Hmm. With winds this aggressive, how was she ever going to get back?
Laura talked herself through her problems.
In the worst case, she had Kyan’s tracker. When he got home, he’d see she wasn’t inside the fortress. He was stronger than the wind. She’d shelter in the wreck until he arrived.
The wreckage loomed below.
She gripped the controls too hard and fell the last twenty feet, smashing into the ice-coated rock. The impact jarred her body and snapped her teeth. Her left ankle collapsed. She crashed.
Ow.
Of all the ridiculous mistakes. How could she help anyone if she got herself hurt? So stupid.
With the wind howling overhead, she rolled over and rubbed her ankle through the thick winter boot. It throbbed hotly.
The bone felt unbroken. A sprain? No, the pain receded to a dull ache.
She hauled herself carefully to her feet and tried a couple of test steps. No urge to limp. Good. But she wouldn’t clear herself until she peeled off the boots and performed a visual inspection. Preferably with x-rays. There still might be a hairline fracture.
What would the Peace Corps say?
She staggered through the glacial winds to the smoking wreckage.
Black smoke erupted from the back. A hole gaped in the middle of the aircraft. Around the hole, the skin peeled back to expose massive, foot-thick walls of lead.
How did it fly?
She clambered inside.
Foreign lights glimmered on every surface. All bare. The metal itself gleamed like Kyan’s alien medkits.
Oh.
Was this a spaceship?
She shook off the melting snow — it was warmer inside — and made her way to the cockpit.
The blunt nose stopped at a blank wall.
Right, because if it was an alien spaceship like Kyan’s fortress, the windows could be on any wall.
She moved through what was shaping up to be a hollow, tubular shuttle. The inside was pretty open. No chairs. Unlike on Earth, these aliens weren’t sitting around all day like truckers in space.
Making her way to the opposite end, she clambered over a concrete lump in the middle of the floor.
The rear of the shuttle, if she’d identified the ship correctly, crunched in.
Nobody could have survived.
Huh. Maybe there were no survivors. Or maybe it had been unmanned.
A wasted trip. Ugh. She’d worry and inconvenience Kyan for no reason.
When was she going to learn—
Behind her, someone moaned.
She whirled.
The ship … was empty.
Another moan drew her toward the gaping hole.
Where was it coming from? She stopped and listened. Howling wind, eerie silence… Her boots thumped the concrete. Step, step, squish.
Squish?
She looked down.
Fingers! They stuck out of the concrete lump. What could it mean?
The lump moaned.
Oh!
She rapped the base of her Maglite on the gray concrete. “Hello?”
A muffled noise echoed inside. The lump sounded hollow like an egg. She rapped harder. The metal flashlight cracked the concrete.
She tore into the structure. Kyan’s gloves were more functional than her usual fluffy women’s mittens and she was able to grip and make real progress. Gray plaster walls broke into chunks and she cleared them away to unearth a pale, heavily bruised male in a plain gray uniform.
A survivor!
He squinted up at her. Blood streaked his face and dried under his nostrils. He said something in a language she didn’t understand.
Ha ha! He was alive. Despite the meager supplies and howling winds, she promised to get him back to Kyan’s fortress and keep him that way.
“It’s okay now,” she said. “Relief is here.”
His brows cleared. A hopeful smile tugged at his bruised cheeks.
Then he winced and moaned. “Arms … shoulders…”
“Hold on.” She finished breaking him free. Both shoulders were dislocated and his gray flight suit was too thin for the weather conditions, putting him at risk for hypothermia.
“How did this happen?” she asked, trying to check him carefully for any other injuries.
“Weapons,” he said. “You surprised.”
“Me too. I had no idea those were there. You’re a dragon, right? Can you float?”
He elevated a few inches, grimacing. “Enough?”
“That’s enough.” She eased him to his side and walked her fingers over each vertebra. No cracks or crunches. Good. “And I’m so sorry it blew a hole in your ship.”
“That was I.” He sweated, shaking and pale. Internal bleeding or shock? Hopefully the latter. “I grip the edges of the door to time my escape. But a gun, boom! I hold on. Ouch.”
So he’d blown his own airlock. Being a dragon, he wouldn’t need to pull a parachute. And his story was consistent with a double dislocation if he’d wrenched both arms at once.
“And then?”
“I fall inside and the gray squirt.” He made a noise of being covered in plaster.
The dragon version of an airbag? Hmm. It didn’t sound like internal injuries.
“Are you on your own here?”
“Someone will come. After the mission.”
“How long?”
He shook his head, winced, and stilled.
So, possibly not very soon.
She rolled him onto his back again.
Unfortunately, talking hadn’t distracted him enough to relax his shoulder muscles. The balls wanted to go back into their joints but would need extra guidance.
“Let’s try relocating your shoulders,” she said. “Once the muscles relax, they should pop back into place. Then you’re going to want to ice and rest in a sling. Both shoulders. Okay?”
“I understand.”
A sudden blinding light seared them.
“Close eyes!” the male shouted, clenching his lids tight as he disappeared into the light.
She did so as well.
The light wasn’t hot, just bright. Like the sun had crashed onto the ice and bathed them in a harmless reflection.
It faded.
She blinked and rubbed her eyes. Orange and blue spots chased each other across her vision. Another thing she’d have to deal with, like her sore ankle, while transferring the pilot back to the safety of Kyan’s fortress.
A second later, Kyan’s
fortress exploded.
Chapter Twelve
Laura’s tracker winked out.
Kyan flushed hot and then ice cold. He jolted from his seat.
His siblings paused in the middle of discussing Chrysoberyl’s product proposal. They’d overlooked the simple scarf and he made an impressive case that now was its time.
“Kyan,” Mal acknowledged, assuming he had something to add to their business discussion.
His heart beat loud in his ears and a sour taste filled his mouth.
No. Impossible. It was not her tracker. There was some mistake.
A malfunction.
Something…
He pivoted and strode out of the conference room.
“Kyan?” Mal called.
He flew to his ops center within the Onyx Corporation. Beneath the ferns, his office was well-outfitted, but the ops center held additional things.
Like weapons.
And if he’d gone to his ops center when Pyro had disappeared instead of tearing for his last known location, Kyan might have trained satellites and observed the criminal in the act of the kidnapping. That was a mistake he would not repeat.
The darkly tinted, radio-canceling doors whooshed open. He entered, and they slid shut.
His employees were glued to their screens.
“Calculate its trajectory,” his slick ops manager ordered the excitable comm tech. “When it decloaks again, we must be ready.”
The graying building security manager looked up at Kyan. Worry mixed with admiration. “You already know?”
His heart thunked.
But the rest of him cooled to crystal clarity. “Know?”
“A Draconis warship announced its arrival with a test shot on an isolated glacier.”
Thunk.
“We also have a new lead on the medkits.” The building security manager opened folders. “Someone made the mistake of selling inventory to two of Chrysoberyl Carnelian’s unemployed aristocrats. And they—”
“Which glacier?”
The building security manager dropped the medkit folders and pointed to the map, used to switching to whatever topic Kyan deemed most important. “In the northwestern quadrant of the continent.”
Thunk.
“The glacier known by humans as Denali.”
He studied the map for a full minute.
In the back of his mind, a voice was screaming.
She was supposed to be untouchable. She was supposed to be hidden. She was supposed to be safe.
“Do you have a visual on the test shot location?” he asked coldly.
The building security manager shook his head. “It’s in a visual dead spot. We’re moving a satellite there now.”
Of course his lair was in a visual dead spot. It emitted only encrypted waves, hiding the structure as if it didn’t exist.
A warship could read encrypted waves. His measures hid from ordinary adversaries. Not a warship.
“Identity on the warship?” he growled.
“Not yet.”
Behind him, the door whooshed. Amber appeared in the reflection of the glass. The meeting must have been called early.
He focused on the map. “Trajectory?”
“There are too many possibilities.” His comm tech groaned and rubbed his head. “We didn’t identify the engine. They could be across the galaxy by now.”
“When did they cloak?”
The ops manager checked his log. “Six minutes ago.”
Wait.
“When was the test shot fired?”
“Twenty-two minutes ago.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“The warship fired on a nonessential target. We wanted to present you with more information.”
The times. The times did not add up.
Kyan strode to a screen, hacked his safeguards, and revealed his tracker logs, not even caring that his employees and Amber could see it over his shoulder.
There.
Laura’s tracker had disappeared closer to eight minutes ago. Not twenty-two.
She had survived the attack.
His heart began thumping again. Hot, tingly blood rushed to his lips and toes.
Entering their warship would cut off a tracker. Just after, the warship cloaked.
“Find the warship,” he ordered.
“It’s impossible! They could be in the same place or they could be on the other side of Jupiter. They could be hovering over this very building right now.”
Kyan would know if they were hovering over this building. The sensors in this office building, relics from his black ops days, were capable of reading cloaked, encrypted military signals.
“Calculate again.”
The comm tech scrubbed his eyes and wiped his calculations, starting over. “If we had more data … if we knew what they wanted…”
Behind him, Amber spoke quietly. “Who’s Laura?”
“A female under my protection.”
Her brows lifted in surprise. “A female? Then, the Empress—”
“It is not what you think.”
“What should I think?”
He considered not answering. It would be simpler than trying to explain.
But perhaps there was no need to complicate his answer. Laura had gifted him with her body, her sunshine, and her smiles. No more. She was not his mate no matter how Kyan might crave such a connection.
“She is not my mate,” he finally said.
Amber frowned.
Meanwhile, the comm tech’s words slapped him smartly. Why wasn’t he thinking with his usual clarity? He closed his tracker log, broke into his network a second time, and began dialing.
The video snapped on the fourth ring. His youngest brother, Flint, appeared.
Amber made a noise.
Their reclusive youngest brother rarely called and she’d missed his first in-person appearance in nearly five years — at his request.
His owlish gray eyes focused on a tiny planet the size of a bead which he was painting with a single-bristle brush. His tongue stuck in the corner of his thin lips. Longish dark hair curled over his sloped brow, and he wore a jeweler’s magnifying glass over one eye.
“Can this wait?” he asked without removing his gaze from his work.
“A warship just destroyed my lair. Who is it and what do they want?”
His employees startled, then quickly resumed their assigned tasks.
Flint dabbed paint, examined his work, and smiled.
Kyan knew that expression. He calmed.
Nothing made Flint prouder than figuring out something ahead of his slow siblings.
“A warship? Can’t you guess?” He lowered the planet and turned his superior expression on Kyan. “Of course it is the Gnashing Teeth.”
Of course.
Kyan directed the comm tech. “It will be close. This side of Jupiter. Possibly approaching our building.”
He could only hope.
The comm tech blew a focused breath, wiped his half-formed calculations, and began yet again.
Meanwhile, Amber gasped. “Why?”
Flint’s eyes twinkled with amusement he expected no one to share. “His uncle has come to rescue Chrysoberyl Carnelian from the horrors of a world filled with low caste dragons, fallen aristocrats, and nasty humans.”
“But he had a good idea today. We’re going to use his product for our next launch.”
“Even a pure blood aristocrat can make a mistake.”
Flint implied having a good idea was Chrysoberyl’s error.
“Why did the Gnashing Teeth destroy my lair?” Kyan asked, more out of irritation than because he expected an answer.
Flint only raised a brow. “Perhaps you did something to draw their attention.”
His lair was the only one in this galaxy ghosted so completely. That changed Kyan’s question to why had the Gnashing Teeth targeted what was obviously a hidden lair? And he would only get that answer one way.
“We have five most likely loca
tions for decloaking,” the comm tech said.
“Put them on screen.”
Flint leaned back and picked up his brush. Kyan reached over to close the connection.
“Wait.” Amber rested a hand on Kyan’s arm. “Flint, why don’t you come to our meetings?”
“Why don’t I come to your meetings?” He raised one brow. “For the same reason you’re still single.”
Her lips parted and her eyes unfocused. Then, she shook herself. “No. That can’t be true.”
“My conclusions are never wrong.”
“But you’re…”
“Not a dominant, fire-breathing female?” The wry smile returned. “Unlike you, I am unable to suppress my true nature.”
She clenched the hem of her conservative cardigan.
“Kyan, farewell. I’ll miss our little chats.” Flint reached forward and closed the connection.
She frowned. “What does he mean, he’ll miss your chats?”
Flint had guessed Kyan’s strategy for avoiding the Empress’s marriage offer. Kyan would never share it with his siblings. For their safety.
Without answering Amber, Kyan strode to the armory and keyed in his codes. The huge vault whooshed open on well-oiled hinges. He cached weapons in a few locations around this galaxy but nowhere as extensively as in his lair. He’d be hurting from that loss for some time.
He stripped and strapped on body armor.
Amber lingered in the doorway. “Are you going to get revenge?”
“And collect my female.”
He shouldn’t use the possessive. Laura wasn’t his female. But he used it anyway.
Kyan cinched on his signal-canceling bicep shields too hard and had to back them off.
Clear your head.
“Can I help?” she asked.
“No.”
She clenched her hems again.
He finished dressing and activated the mirrored fibers. His body disappeared as the light bent around him, hiding him not only from plain sight but also from any cameras. A slight blurring smudged his outlines.
He was as close to cloaked as an individual could become outside of a paramilitary unit, and as armed as he could be without sacrificing stealth.
“I can be intimidating.” Amber’s hair crackled with licks of red flame to prove her point.
“That is not needed now.”
“Then, what is needed now?”
“Nothing.”
Her flames doused and her colors dimmed.