Valerian staggered on his feet and leaned against the wall for support, inching toward the hatch door. “I’ll buy you time.” His dark eyes stared ahead as he pushed himself away from the wall.
Exposed, Valerian raised his gun and drunkenly walked a step forward.
“No!” Dragon sprinted to reach Valerian as a volley of shots illuminated the room anew.
Jade provided cover and staved off the worst. He was hit in the shoulder, but didn’t slow down, barreling across the space and shoving Valerian against the corner.
“Idiot,” Dragon shouted at his friend, who was looking at him with wide eyes.
One last scream resonated in the room, and the navigator fell on top of the chief engineer. Dragon and Jade were the only ones standing amidst the wounded and the dead. The firing stopped at once. The enemy line opened, and Lauren stepped in.
“Lauren,” Dragon said, eyeing the heavily armed guards who flanked her.
“High Lord.” Lauren’s tone was mocking. “We meet again.”
From the corner of his eye, Dragon saw Jade stand up straighter.
Lauren’s heavy stare weighed on Jade as the woman looked at her with hate written all over her face.
“You,” Lauren said, her eyes falling to Jade’s stomach and lingering before rising again. “You thought you could have it all.” A dark laugh punctuated the end of her sentence.
“What do you want, Lauren?” Dragon asked, walking back to Jade’s side.
“Justice,” she answered, her eyes narrowing when he touched Jade. “But I’ll settle for retribution.” She raised her gun and fired.
23
Jade saw the gun fire at the same time Dragon pushed her out of the bullet’s trajectory, sending her straight into Valerian’s arms.
When her shot missed Jade’s belly, Lauren swung the gun at Dragon.
Jade’s reaction was immediate. She retrieved her second dagger which she threw at once. The blade sailed in the air toward Lauren’s chest, hitting its target a moment later. More shots were fired. Sharp pain exploded in Jade’s right forearm and left thigh. Crippled, she fell to her knees, one hand protecting her stomach as the other reached for the switchblade in her boot.
In front of her, the front line of the rebel army moved at once around Lauren, as the rest advanced toward Jade, Dragon, and Valerian.
“Get her!” a man commanded, emerging from the fray.
“Crane—” Dragon hissed under his breath, disgust in his voice.
Jade didn’t recognize the man. He was bald and wore a dark uniform with golden epaulets. A barrette with the letters FPH showed on the man’s chest, marking him as the rebels’ leader.
Three men detached to go after Jade. Cornered, she hid the blade in her sleeve. Rough hands grabbed her by her shoulders and dragged her to a corner. She didn’t provide resistance, making her body boneless before retrieving the switchblade and striking in short succession behind both men’s knees.
On the other side of the command room, Dragon bellowed, sending enemies flying as they tried to surround him.
“Shoot him!” the leader shouted over Dragon’s roars.
Two rebels advanced toward Jade.
“Kill her—” Lauren’s pained voice emerged from the melee.
“No!” the rebels’ leader ordered. “We need the assassin alive.”
Lauren emerged from behind the flank protecting her. “I want her dead,” she said, venom in her voice. Her hand pressed against the red flower that had blossomed on her dress, just a fraction below her heart.
The leader stepped forward, facing Lauren. “I don’t care what you want. We have a deal.”
“And I don’t care about your deal, Crane. I’ll have my revenge—” Lauren’s eyes narrowed, her face scrunched in pain. Going pale, she leaned against the man next to her.
“You’ll have to content yourself with the shifters’ death,” the leader said, walking toward the middle of the command room. He skirted bodies on his way to the corner where Dragon stood, surrounded by a circle of rebels who kept their distance.
“You and your lieutenant will follow me now,” the man said.
Dragon closed the distance between them and stopped in front of the man, towering a full head over him.
“You comply,” Crane said. “Or the assassin pays. I can’t kill her, but I can hurt the baby.”
Dragon’s eyes flared with hatred, but he stepped back, turning to Jade.
She silently shook her head as she calculated how many rebels she could bring down before her inevitable defeat.
Dragon’s eyes cut to the men surrounding them, then his gaze lowered to her stomach and he gave her a sad smile that broke her heart. When he faced the man once again, Dragon said, “Leave her alone, and I’ll go with you.”
“You won’t get away with it,” Lauren screamed. Even though her wound should’ve rendered her unconscious by now, she attempted to launch herself at Jade.
The leader grabbed Lauren and jerked her back. “You won’t ruin our plan.” He squeezed her arm hard, causing her to scream in pain.
“You promised me—”
“What did you think? That I would cater to your delusions? I told you what you wanted to hear.” Crane shoved Lauren away, sending her whirling against the wall of men standing by.
Valerian’s low moan interrupted them.
“Grab him,” Crane ordered, nodding at the men standing closer to Valerian.
Valerian made to stand, startling the man who had reached down to grab him by his elbow, and causing the rebels nearby to raise their guns.
“We’re coming voluntarily,” Dragon said, raising his hands in surrender. Keeping his arms up, he stepped closer to Valerian. “I only want to help him get up.” He made to lean, but only lowered his hand when the leader nodded.
“Don’t try anything heroic,” Crane said, pointedly looking at Jade.
Dragon’s hand closed around Valerian’s arm and pulled him up.
With a few short orders, the leader positioned six men around Jade. “Shoot at her arms and legs if she moves.” He moved toward the exit and addressed Lauren. “You come with me.”
Lauren jerked away from the man holding her. “I don’t need help to walk.”
Jade watched as Dragon and Valerian were escorted from the command room, sandwiched between rebels.
“I love you,” Dragon mouthed, giving her one last look before he disappeared behind the doorframe.
Her heart sank at the realization that it might be the last time she would see him.
24
Dragon’s feet propelled him forward, but his heart and mind remained in the command room with Jade. He didn’t care about his life. His only fear was leaving his soulmate and child to fend for themselves if anything happened to him.
More than twenty men escorted him and Valerian, and Crane and Lauren followed close behind. Dragon couldn’t believe that the meek house manager he had met at Gabriel’s manor was the rebels’ leader. The last time he had seen Crane, the man had been hit by an arrow and transported to Celestia in critical condition.
“We meet again,” Dragon said when the leader stepped by his side. “We searched for the traitor all over Paradisia, and it was you all along.”
Crane’s upper lip curved up into a cold sneer. “Your kind thinks so little of humanity, it’s almost too easy to use your arrogance against you.”
“Were you ever wounded?” Dragon asked.
The man laughed. “Of course not. All smoke and mirrors to divert Master Martelli’s investigation.” He pronounced “master” as if the word were poison in his mouth. “The girls’ location had been discovered and we couldn’t let them talk. Too bad we couldn’t get rid of the vampire, or you and the werewolf.”
“What has Gabriel Martelli ever done to you?”
“His father claimed my planet as his own and gave it to him as if it were nothing more than a piece of property. As if it were a deserted island he could dispose of any way he liked. B
ut Celestia belongs to us humans. The Fifth Moon’s System belongs to us,” Crane answered. “Vampires and shifters have dominated us for far too long, but we will erase you from history. Soon, your cursed species will be a pale memory from a forgotten past, and our grandkids will inherit a universe which won’t remember you ever existed.”
The man’s words resonated over the din of the men’s steps.
Crane moved away from Dragon with one last contemptuous sneer. “Move!” he ordered when it became clear his men had slowed while listening to his speech.
Under his scrutiny, the rebels immediately doubled their pace, marching through the deserted corridors at a jog. They only slowed again before reaching the hatch doors to give the security chief time to open the locked sections. As they waited, Crane’s barked orders broke the heavy silence.
The pulsating light colored the metal surfaces in blood-red, and the walls seemed to close in all around Dragon.
Valerian stirred at his side. “Why didn’t you let me take that bullet?” he whispered. “I was going—”
“Shifting wouldn’t have worked,” Dragon interrupted. “Jade and I might have escaped, but your beast would have been a sitting duck.”
Valerian stumbled, and Dragon held him up and pulled him forward to avoid giving the rebels behind them an excuse to hit his friend. Despite their leader’s orders, those men were on edge and ready to pull the trigger at the least provocation. If the command room was too small for a shift, the corridors would become a coffin when Valerian’s dragon came out.
Holding Valerian upright, Dragon jogged at the same pace of the troop, wondering where they were headed. The answer came several minutes later, when Crane commanded his men to stop in front of the refuse bay. The rebels moved to let their leader and Lauren walk to the front of the line.
Crane nodded at the security chief to unlock the last hatch door.
“It will take me a few minutes for this one,” the man said. “The refuse bay has a triple security mechanism because—”
The leader cut the man short with a curt, “Just hurry,” and stepped closer to Dragon. “Fitting, right?” He gave Dragon a chilling smile as the security chief worked on the wall-mounted control panel. “Flushed out like the shifter scum you are,” Crane said, laughing.
Dragon ignored him and looked at Lauren instead. “I guess murdering me will grant you the immortality you so much wanted.”
The briefest glimpse of remorse showed on her face, then she raised her chin and gave him a hard glare. “I told you what I wanted, but you wouldn’t listen—”
“When did you switch sides?” Dragon asked.
Lauren seemed to debate answering him, then shrugged. “I started working with the resistance soon after my family signed the termination of our betrothal contract.”
“You were behind the attack that happened before we left Solaria,” he said, putting together the pieces of the puzzle that had eluded him.
“You were going to leave me behind, but the Front Pro Humanity needed me by your side on Celestia.” Lauren’s eyes shone with a cruel light.
“That heart to heart we had that day in the observation deck?” Dragon remembered how for the first time, he and Lauren had a civilized conversation, and how he had hoped that they could reach an understanding.
“My tutors taught me how to dissimulate. As the High Lord’s bride, I was expected to please him and be the perfect companion. Faking was in my job description. I needed you to think I had relented in my quest.”
“Why go after Gilda?”
“She stopped being useful to me a long time ago. On Celestia, I framed her to wreak havoc between you and him—” Lauren’s eyes cut toward Valerian for a moment. “I don’t know how Gilda managed to convince you she wasn’t guilty with the trap I’d laid for her. But it doesn’t matter anymore. She won’t be a problem any longer—”
“What did you do to her?” Valerian’s voice was low and menacing.
“I made sure she won’t be telling anyone what happened here,” Lauren answered with a satisfied leer before adding, “I shut her pretty mouth forever.”
With a pained bellow, Valerian launched himself at Lauren, but Dragon held him back for fear of the men shooting in retaliation. For a chance of making it out alive, he needed to control when and how a shift happened.
Valerian tried to jerk his hand away. Slightly squeezing his arm, Dragon hoped his friend would understand his reassuring gesture. He couldn’t say that Gilda was still alive and put her in danger but hated for Valerian to believe his soulmate was dead.
Gears whirred, and the hatch door’s iris started unfolding, section by section.
“Enough,” Crane said, motioning for the men in front of Dragon and Valerian to enter the refuse bay.
Valerian fought him at every step as Dragon forced him along. They stepped inside the large room with the high ceiling that composed the anteroom to the airlocked chute. The walls of the chute moved, acting as a large press that compacted the spaceship’s garbage before jettisoning the compressed cubes into deep space.
“Open it,” Crane told the security chief, who immediately moved to the hatch door separating the anteroom from the chute.
With the corner of his eye, Dragon looked around.
The security chief stepped back when the door began opening.
“Walk or your assassin will suffer the consequences for your disobedience.” The leader pointed his gun at the chute, gesturing for Dragon and Valerian to cross into the next room.
There would be no coming back from being squashed and thrown out into the black void outside. Even a dragon’s power to regenerate a broken body had its limits.
Dragon gave Valerian a nod and stepped forward.
25
Jade switched her weight from one foot to the other. She had been standing in the same position for the last fifteen minutes and the telltale sign of an impending cramp made her nervous.
“Don’t move!” a young-looking man ordered. His hand shook and the gun he was holding shifted from her head to her stomach.
“I need to sit,” she said. “I still have rights—”
“Shifter lovers have no rights,” the rebel shot back. His eyes lowered to her bump and his face contorted in disgust. “If it were up to me, I would’ve handed you to the princess. The deal—”
“Shut up,” another rebel told him as he approached Jade. He was the older of the lot and had assumed command as soon as their leader left. “And do what you were told to do.”
Jade had been studying the men, taking in their general nervousness and lack of formal training. It meant that the Front Pro Humanity had recruited them only recently. Her enemies were young and inexperienced.
“I really need to sit.” She locked eyes with the self-appointed leader who was now standing in front of her.
Without lowering his eyes, the man spat on the ground. “You are a Master Assassin. I was told you were tough.”
“I’m also pregnant and need to rest.” She scanned the small army of rebels left in the command room, looking for the weak link. With a grimace, she added, “Let me sit for a few minutes.”
Two of the men lowered their eyes, looking uncomfortable.
The one still wearing civilian clothes turned toward the leader. “Let her sit, Gus.”
A subtle shuffling of feet followed the man’s request as other people faced the leader expectantly. Timid glances were exchanged around the room.
With narrowed eyes, Gus regarded Jade with a long stare before shrugging one shoulder. “Suit yourself.” He pointed at the floor with his gun.
Bending her knees to lower herself, Jade reached her hand to the back of her boot and retrieved her dagger. In a fluid movement, she brought her arm up.
“Hey—” Gus leaned away but it was too late.
At the same time the dagger swung toward his throat, her free hand grabbed the man’s wrist and jerked it until he let go of his gun. The serrated part of the blade pressed against the m
an’s throat as Jade seized his elbow and shoved him in front of her.
Forcing Gus to lean forward, she picked up his gun and aimed it at the stunned rebels.
“Tell me where your leader has taken the High Lord and his lieutenant,” she said loud and clear, her voice carrying across the room. When Gus didn’t answer, she applied some pressure, and the dagger cut his skin. A thick rivulet of blood soaked the man’s collar. “Where are they?” she asked again.
“Refuse bay,” Gus answered. “They’re drifting away by now,” he added with glee.
Jade’s heart hammered against her ribcage. Fear gripped her fast and hard. A painful contraction almost made her lose her hold on the man. A strangled moan escaped her mouth before she could control her reaction and pull the man closer to her.
Several men stepped forward, guns aimed at her.
Keeping her voice calm, she looked at the rebel crew and said, “Move and I’ll kill him.” She turned the point of the blade against Gus’s throat, digging into his flesh.
“Do as she says,” Gus said hoarsely.
“Open a map of the spaceship,” she commanded the man closer to the control station.
After a nod from Gus, the man hurried behind the high desk and worked on the console for a few seconds before raising his face from the screen.
“Project the map on the ceiling and mark the refuse bay.” Jade pointed the gun to a spot over the man’s head and he immediately complied with her request. She memorized the fastest route to the refuse bay. “Let’s go for a stroll,” she said a moment later. “Do not follow us, or he’ll die.”
The rebels opened to let them pass. Jade wished she could lock the room, but without the codes, it would take time to hack the spaceship’s security system.
As she pushed Gus past the archway, he jerked in her hold, trying to dislodge her arm.
She dug the blade deeper into the man’s throat. “Wrong idea.”
Gus cried in pain and swore, but when Jade’s hand moved to press the blade once again, he immediately gave up. “I won’t try anything else,” he said.
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