Marie and Jevon were joking about something. She half paid attention, mentally reviewing her plan to find Bennett. She had access to the officer deck. He did the early morning dogwatch on the bridge, so once she grabbed her shower, she’d head up to the officer’s deck as usual, and knock on his door.
Hopefully he’d accept her groveling, begging, and the matter would end there.
“You okay?” Jevon asked under his breath.
“Yeah,” she said.
“You look like you’re going to puke.”
“Just my meds,” she lied. Her mind was busy conjuring the memory of Bennett’s stench and extrapolating what he’d smell like once she appeared on his doorstep like a stray dog. He’d be so goddamn smug and would graciously return her comm to her. Hopefully he’d have on clothes, but her luck, he’d have on a skimpy pair of barely-there shorts.
She briefly tortured herself with what it’d be like if she ended up married to Bennet. Dealing with him every day. Getting fucked by him. He’d been keeping himself company for years at this point. Surely the unmarried senior officers had to have some sort of exchange where they traded sex between each other so they didn’t go insane.
Now she was going to puke.
“Please don’t,” Jevon muttered. “You really need to eat something.”
“I will after this.” Because very soon she was going to be down on her knees eating a bowl of crow while Bennett told her what a good dog she was. Her skin shuddered. He’d get off on that. Fuck, she could almost feel him stroking, crooning to her about good, good doggy and stinking of sex and arousal.
Footsteps—booted—on the floor. The purposeful stride and the way the line hushed and silenced like dominos falling drew her ear.
Then that scent wafted up from behind her.
“Lachesis.” Bennett strode up the corridor.
The implant jabbed her heart and kept jabbing, like she’d stuck her finger in a socket. She eyed him sideways. “Commander.”
He actually looked her up and down, not like Operations officer, but with a distinctly different eye. And a gaze that made her feel every bit of her exposed skin, and the flimsy layer of towel shielding her from him.
There was a very different scent when a male was just flat-out horny and whatever was in front of him turned him on, and when he wanted specifically what was in front of him. Bennett smelled like a mix of the two, combined with the scent of a predator lusting after prey.
He unfolded his left hand. On his palm was her comm. “You forgot this yesterday evening.”
No… wait… no… what’s happening?
About half the line snapped right back around to mind their own business. The other half kept right on staring.
Bennett’s expression remained neutral, friendly, but his eyes were wicked, and his scent…
She stared, struck dumb, trying to figure out what was happening. She’d just been checkmated, and she hadn’t even seen it coming.
He moved his palm closer.
She recovered enough to pluck it from his palm and say, “Thank you, Commander.”
He ducked his upper body in a formal, gallant half-bow, and walked back the way he’d come.
She did not watch him go, but Petey, in front of her, sure as hell did, and he gave her a very impressive side-eye. A few other people did too. Jevon sucked his breath in through his teeth.
Pretend this is not happening. Pretend this is not happening.
Oh, it was happening.
I am so screwed. And I didn’t even get fucked…
Exactly zero surprise when Rainer came through the door into the quarters a few hours later. His expression could have cut glass. His scent was worse.
Curled up in the big chair with her tablets on her leg and Telemetry data in front of her, she said, “I guess the gossip train on this ship does work.”
Rainer came into the living area. “It works very well.”
So much for forced levity.
“I convinced Tsu to let me speak to you before he did,” Rainer said, tone cold and measured, restrained before he raised it. “Gossip about senior officers is kept very quiet, but we all have our eyes and ears. My spiders are particularly efficient at sensing what’s in the web. It would appear you left the wardroom yesterday with Bennet, and were in his quarters. However, hand imprint says you were also in your bunk. This is about to turn into a scandal, Lachesis. I don’t know how Ark views infidelity—”
She shoved her tablets onto the ground. “I was never in his quarters! Don’t you dare accuse me of… of that!”
“You say you don’t know who I am, but I’m beginning to wonder who you are.”
“I was never in his quarters!”
“Then explain it to me. In very careful and precise detail.”
She sank back down onto the chair and stared at the rug.
“Lachesis.”
“You can’t seriously think I fucked him,” she whispered.
“You spent a great deal of time thinking I tried to kill you with about as much evidence.”
“I didn’t do anything.” She closed her eyes. “Gaia, please, you have to believe me.”
“Now you invoke Gaia. When I’m standing here demanding you explain why the fuck you were in another person’s quarters last night and were apparently so distracted, you left your comm there.”
She should have told him the first time Bennett had… had… accosted her. She should have filed that Lost Comm report and made up a lie. Any lie. She curled over her knees and laced her fingers behind her neck. How could she have been such an idiot to think it had happened by accident?
Rainer pushed himself between her knees and the coffee table. He sat down, inches from her, and stared at her. His scent confused everything, but it also clarified: he was pissed.
And hurt. Deeply, deeply hurt. More hurt than pissed.
“We were in that concert together,” he said. “We held hands. We came back here. I thought we were coming back from the brink. Now I find out you were with Bennett? Were you just using me? Was I just easy?”
“I wasn’t with him!”
“Did you just fuck me like some goddamn… stud dog?” he spat it out.
“No!”
He ground it deeper. “You’re smarter than me when it comes to this. Am I just another cock to bounce on?”
“No!” she exclaimed. “Why are you being horrible?”
“I’m sick of being used for my cock and balls,” Rainer snarled at her. “Crèche spent many years reducing me to biological parts and making me very aware of why I’ve got certain pieces of anatomy. Why do you think I wasn’t going to just mount you and fuck you for Supervision?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Am I just some animated sex toy?” he growled.
“No! No, that’s not what happened!”
“Then explain it to me.”
Withered, she shifted her face so her cheek lay against her thigh, and she stared at the beautiful rug. “The day I ended up in Medical. You asked me what caused it. I begged you not to make me talk about it.”
“Yes.”
“It was Bennett,” she said.
“Keep talking.”
She forced herself to face him. “I was in the gym. He came over to me. He told me he knew my heart wasn’t going to recover for Crew and I didn’t want to be in Operations, but he had an alternative section idea. We went to go talk in a hallway corner. He took off his comm, so I did too. I knew it was a bad idea, but… it was too late. He demanded to know what you were up to. What you’ve told me.”
“He wanted you to violate spousal privilege.”
“I didn’t tell him anything. He told me to divorce you and marry him.”
Rainer tensed all over. “I’ve heard him say he wants a human spouse if he gets a choice. He doesn’t want a wolf.”
“I swear it’s true. He said he’d rather have a human bride, but because Tsu’s got a human husband, and Keenan isn’t married, and you’ve already
burned through three wolf brides, he’s going to have to get a traditional human/wolf pair to reassert normalcy when he’s Captain.”
“And how does he propose you two have children?” Rainer asked.
“If I wanted yours… he said you could just fuck me until it happened. He didn’t care. He liked the idea of raising the pup you don’t want. Because he thinks the only reason you want me is to win, and I’ll just end up like a trophy. Sitting on a shelf like those rocks.” She gestured helplessly to the rocks on the wall. “He said since I’m going to end up a trophy, why not be his? Then I thought he was going to kiss me. I froze. I don’t know why. He told me how dangerous you were, and he could help me stop you. Then he left.”
“And you were so shaken you ended up in Medical,” Rainer said, tone exactly neutral.
Even now, her heart rate fluttered, or tried to, but the device Medical had shoved into her heart forced it to behave.
After a moment, he said, “Tell me about yesterday. Explain how your comm ended up in his possession.”
“He caught up to me in the wardroom. After I left, he followed. Told me to reconsider. He’d make it happen. Keenan wanted it to happen. He took his comm off to talk and took mine off too. I was so focused on him and trying to stay calm I barely paid attention. He knows you’ve been digging in the archives looking for information on mates. He knows about the sandbox. I told him to fuck off and left. I just wanted to get away from him. I didn’t remember he had my comm until I was back in my bunk.”
“Why didn’t you report him to Tsu? Why didn’t you file a report last night?”
“Because Tsu wasn’t going to do anything! What was anyone going to do? And as for the Lost Comm report, I figured I’d just go knock on his door when I came up here this morning, he’d make me grovel a bit, then hand it over because why would he want to have it anymore than I want him to have it? I had no idea he’d do this!”
She made herself hold his gaze. “He knows what we’ve done, Rainer. He knows about the sandbox. He knows you think we’re mates.”
“He thinks he knows,” Rainer spat. “He’s got his theories and nothing else.”
He got up without a word and went to get one of his tablets. He pulled up a screen of data. Her heart sank: he was verifying her story and movements.
I should have told him. I should have just filed the report. Any lie would have been better than this.
He moved through the logs: access logs and comm tracking logs. She wiped at the tears on her cheeks. It seemed to take forever before he came back and sat down across from her on the coffee table.
His expression didn’t comfort her. Neither did his scent. “This is going to take time for me to resolve.”
“Do you believe me?” she whispered.
“You need to go. You are on your own for now.”
“I understand.” It didn’t matter if he believed her or not. It mattered what everyone else believed, and everyone believed she’d left the concert with Rainer, then ended up in Bennett’s quarters a few days later.
“I want to believe you,” he said, voice torn. “I want to. I’m prepared to.”
There was no way she was going to win. NightPiercer wouldn’t let her win. Gaia wouldn’t let her win. Gaia had that knife right between her ribs, in her liver, and was about to twist.
“I don’t want to marry him,” she said, voice ragged. “I won’t do it.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
She managed a miserable laugh. “That’s not a promise you can keep. I may not be the historian you are, but I know the old Laws. Everyone says you’re a wolf without limits, but you have them.”
She got to her feet, and he rose with her.
“Pack first,” she said, reciting the old First Law, the highest Law of werewolves, ground into their DNA and brains. “Pack first, family second. And NightPiercer is your pack.”
She was an outsider.
He didn’t disagree. He couldn’t.
She left.
22 Gauge
There was no record of her having palm-printed her way into her bunk that evening, but that meant nothing. Her bunkmates had come and gone as well. She could have arrived or left with any of them.
The comm data said she’d been in Bennett’s quarters.
The thought of her having been on the same deck tormented him. How had he not known? How had he not sensed it?
If she’s chosen someone else…
Nobody chose. Crèche chose. Nobody chose. Except for him. He had chosen, but even he had had to pull strings and hope for the desired outcome.
She deserves to be happy.
But Lachesis didn’t like Bennett.
Unless that has changed. Perhaps it has.
Lachesis was Crèche. She believed in the way marriage worked. Bennett offered her that: a conventional human/wolf marriage without the stormy emotions and secrets. He offered her everything she’d ever wanted and expected.
Bennett didn’t not like Lachesis. Rainer could never pin down exactly what his rival’s scent told him when Lachesis was around or mentioned.
The comm data said she’d been in Bennett’s quarters.
Data could lie. Data could be skewed. Inaccurate. Flawed. Incomplete.
There had to be something he could use to fix this.
He pulled up her personal file. Proctoring command aptitude meant he had had to look at all of it, including the service records sent over from Ark. He’d avoided it like he’d have avoided a diary, but now there was nothing left to lose. He knew Lachesis better than anyone on NightPiercer without reading it. He didn’t need the granular details of her life to know her weaknesses.
Her picture stared back at him.
“Did you?” He touched the screen. “Did I drive you so far away you went to him?”
Why had Bennett targeted her? She was defenseless. He had not failed her for Operations, nor was he treating her unfairly for Aptitude. Discussing her caused that scent to bloom across him and piss Rainer off, but on the surface, Bennett had never betrayed he’d done anything unsavory. Bennett was also not the only male or female Lachesis caused a reaction in—she was attractive, exotic, and in some ways, forbidden.
“Why didn’t you report it,” he asked her picture.
Although he knew exactly why she hadn’t reported it: she’d been afraid to. She’d feared no one would help her, nothing would be done, everything would only be made worse.
Her Ark Medical records were blissfully short. She’d never needed so much as stitches. Her NightPiercer records were far more expansive, mostly due to the inclusion of thousands of rows of Medical Telemetry data from when Medical had started monitoring her after the first Bennett incident.
The telemetry sent data no less than every five minutes. He wrote a script to detect any gaps longer than that and waited while it ran.
Nothing. No gaps.
If she’d been separated from her comm like she claimed, why wasn’t there a gap in the data?
He sank down onto the table and stared at it, his heart cracking and flaking and everything crumbling.
He ran the script several more times.
This called for a drink. He poured himself a triple, then just grabbed three bottles.
“Gaia sent you the first mate in a hundred years, the summon home, and you lost her,” Rainer said to himself. “Maybe Lachesis is right about Gaia hating us. This is the final fuck you.”
He went through every single line of data screen by miserable screen, progressively drunker, and it was either the booze or his broken heart, but the data wasn’t consistent. The data was all encoded strands Medical had to parse, but there were definitely two different formats, and there were large spans of hours where the data went to that secondary form.
There were no gaps, though. Nothing to suggest Lachesis had ever been separated from her comm for more than five minutes.
But that made no sense either. How had Bennett returned it to her… if she’d never been separated f
rom it?
Everything in him said Lachesis was the soul Gaia had chosen for his.
“Or you’re the one Gaia chose for her,” Rainer said, drunk enough he couldn’t tell exactly how much booze was left in this bottle, or what bottle it was.
But all the data, blurry and wavy as it was, said something else.
He woke up on the rug, in human form, and hung over as hell.
And surrounded by bottles.
He pushed himself upright, leaning on the coffee table, his head pounding.
The large screen flickered with three dozen pings and about a hundred tickets, and on the other half of the panel, the damned data he’d been reviewing the previous evening before he’d decided to drain his liquor stash.
His shift had started two hours ago.
A proper broken-hearted old-Earth bender. Why did it feel like it wasn’t the first time he’d done something this stupid? He squinted against the bright light, but the lights were still dim. His brain and eyeballs said it was intensely bright.
“I am still drunk,” he said as he sat up and cradled his head.
Entirely possible he was still drunk. He’d lost count at how many bottles he’d cleaned out somewhere around five, and there were at least eight. Even a werewolf’s liver was going to crawl away under a rock at that point.
He grabbed his comm from the table and shoved it behind his ear with another curse, went to shower, and drink a gallon of water before deciding this was as clean as he was going to get, and headed off for his shift.
“You look rough, Boss,” Juan said, grimacing as Rainer made his appearance and slunk towards his office, but not before he was assaulted by three of his minions needing him for something.
“I am very rough.” Rainer saw no point in lying about the obvious, even if this was completely unacceptable and he probably should have just stayed in his quarters. He was not leading by example at the moment, unless it was an example of what not to do.
Which was still a valid way to live. One of his ancestors had apparently coined some term equivalent to an Alpha always leads by example, if only for their life to be a testament to bad choices.
Separated Starlight (NightPiercer Book 2) Page 13