Faultless

by Kate Rudolph

  It was her nightmare all over again. Varrow was trying to take her, to claim her, to keep her, and there was nothing that Laurel could do to stop it, no matter how much she struggled. She cried out, her scream swallowed up by the sound of vehicles around her. There were hundreds of people on the street, how could they be letting this happen? How could they be ignoring her?

  She tried to dig her elbow into the Oscavian’s side, but he easily deflected it. She had to get away now. If his friends showed up, there was no way she could fight all four of them. She was no match for one, so his friends would take away all hope. She managed to stomp on the Oscavian’s foot and he hissed, his grip momentarily loosening. Laurel squirmed like a madwoman and managed to step away until the only hold he had was on her wrist. But that meant he had a hand free too, and in one smooth, practiced motion he pulled out a blaster and pointed it straight at her, making it clear that whatever Varrow’s orders were, he hadn’t told them not to hurt her.

  “You are coming with me, human,” the Oscavian bit out.

  “Weapons down! Sir, lower your weapon and step away from the girl,” a tall woman in a police uniform commanded the Oscavian. She stood beside another woman and two men, all of them uniformed, and all of them pointing blasters in Laurel’s and the Oscavian’s direction.

  The Oscavian froze. He turned his gaze towards the cops and softened his tone. “There’s been a misunderstanding. We are returning this woman to her master.” He made it sound normal, rational, and Laurel wanted to scream.

  Which she did. She tried to struggle some more, tried to rip her hand away from him, ignoring all of the blasters. “He’s lying, he’s trying to kidnap me!”

  The officer looked between the two of them, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Let her go,” she insisted. “We’ll sort this thing out in the station.”

  Laurel saw the Oscavian’s grip on his blaster tighten and she was sure he was about to engage in a shootout that would leave them all dead or injured. Instead he heaved her close for just a second before pushing her at the cops and turning around, sprinting back towards his people. Two of the officers chased after him, leaving the main woman and one of the men with Laurel.

  “Are you okay?” one of them asked.

  Laurel couldn’t keep the tremble out of her words. “No, I’m really not.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE DETYEN GUARD STANDING outside the door to Laurel’s new room at the Montrose Hotel let Dru in after a quick check of his credentials. Dru found Laurel sitting at the room’s kitchen table, her hands clasped loosely in front of her. Her sister stood beside the window, looking out onto the sprawling expanse of Washington DC as if she could prevent any further threats by glaring at them.

  Laurel looked up as Dru closed the door behind him, and she offered him a watery smile. She pushed herself up from the table and crossed the room, meeting him in the center, her arms going around him in a tight hug. Dru squeezed back, and couldn’t make himself let go. They stood there for several minutes, simply basking in each other’s company.

  When word had come in of the attempted abduction, Dru had gone mad with worry for his mate. He was torn between doing everything he could to hunt down the monsters who had tried to take her from him and rushing to her side to assure himself that she was okay. Local police were shutting the SDA and the Detyen Legion out of their manhunt for the four Oscavians who had chased Laurel down. If Dru had not run into Sandon in the hallway of the training quarters, he would’ve left the Legion building without leave, uncaring of the consequences. But Sandon waved him on, and now Dru was exactly where he needed to be.

  “Who exactly is this guy to you?” Jules’ question broke through the private bubble that he and Laurel had made for themselves.

  Laurel gave him a final squeeze before pulling back. “He’s my mate,” she said, the declaration tearing through Dru and filling him with joy he hadn’t known could exist in these terrible circumstances.

  “What?!” Jules took a step towards them, her eyes wide, gaze darting from Dru to Laurel and back as if she could find some meaning in the way they were standing, something that would make Laurel’s declaration make more sense to her.

  “Laurel is my denya,” Dru confirmed. He’d known it from the first moment he saw her, and every moment since then had made him glad that she was the one that fate had chosen for him.

  But at Dru’s words, Jules’ eyes narrowed. She raised a hand, pointing the finger at him. “Wait, I think I heard something about that.”

  “You have?” Dru asked, surprised. Since arriving on Earth, the Legion had learned that a few Detyens had chosen to settle on the planet, but there was not a large presence. How this human had heard of his race’s peculiarities, he didn’t know.

  But Jules was happy to explain. “When everyone started talking about Detyens I did my research. I wanted to know who was around my baby sister.”

  Laurel crossed her arms. “Jules...”

  “Don’t ‘Jules’ me. I don’t want you to feel obligated to form a relationship with someone just because the sex will save his life.”

  Laurel stared at her sister before her gaze darted back to Dru. “Um, what? Dru, what is she talking about? Is that true?”

  Suddenly the ground beneath Dru’s feet was made of putty. Keeping information about the denya price from his mate had not been a conscious decision, at least not at first. She’d run away from their first conversation about mating, and he had been wary to bring the subject up again. But he could see darkness clouding his mate’s eyes as she began to wonder what else he had held back from her, if he had betrayed her in any way. He should have said something in the first place, should’ve found a way to reveal that information to her. Even if it would have made her run.

  Jules seemed to sense Dru’s flailing. She narrowed her eyes at him and took a step towards Laurel as if she could come between the two of them. “So now you’re lying to her too? Laurel, I think you should come to my room for the night. After today, I don’t want you making any rash decisions.”

  Laurel sucked in a ragged breath and stepped back, not quite behind Dru but definitely closer to him. “Rash decisions? Really? Jules, come on.”

  Jules’ expression softened. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  “You have no idea what I’ve been through,” Laurel shot back

  Jules clenched her jaw. “And that’s why I want you to come home! So you can heal and tell us... if you want.” She added the last bit as an afterthought.

  Dru wrapped his arms around Laurel as if he could protect her from her sister’s meddling. Laurel reached up and patted his arms, leaning back into him. Tension ran through her body and she had to be near her breaking point. To face what she had faced today and now have to deal with this would have tried anyone’s patience.

  “I think I need to talk to Dru,” said Laurel.

  Jules nodded and stepped towards one of the nice chairs in front of the media center. “Okay.”

  “Alone.” Laurel stared at her older sister in challenge.

  Jules froze, half crouched over the seat. “He’s just—”

  “Don’t say he’s just using me.”

  Jules straightened up and took a deep breath. “I want you to be safe.”

  Laurel squeezed Dru’s forearm again. “Right now the only time I feel safe is when I’m with him.”

  A wave of emotion washed over Dru, pride that his mate chose him, determination to be worthy of her, and something warm that kindled deep within him, an emotion he didn’t have a name for but one that had been created just so he could feel it when he had his denya in his arms.

  Jules stared at them for several beats before finally shaking her head and leaving them alone in the room. Only once the door closed behind her did Laurel step out of Dru’s grasp and turn towards him. “What did she mean about saving your life?” she asked.

  This wasn’t a conversation to have standing in the middle of the room. Dru took Laurel towards the couch
opposite the media station and settled on the soft cushions. He wanted to hold his mate close, to feel her pressed up against him, but given that he had kept this information from her, he wasn’t sure that she would be willing to let him. Their clasped hands were a good sign, and she didn’t let go. “It’s called the denya price.”

  His mate’s face scrunched up in confusion. “The what now?”

  It had to sound ridiculous to a human, or to anyone not bound by this cruel gift. Dru wanted to soften the explanation, but there was no way to do it, not while still giving her the truth. “If we do not claim our mates by the age of thirty, Detyens die. Unless...” He shook his head, thinking of the men and women of the Legion who gave even more than their lives.

  Laurel’s fingers squeezed around Dru’s. “Don’t hold back on me now.”

  “Have you noticed how some of the warriors in the Legion are... cold, emotionless.” He would have used Kayde as an example, but he didn’t think that Laurel would remember what he was like the first time she’d landed at Detyen HQ.

  “I guess so, I haven’t given it much thought.”

  “Those are the soulless. They sacrifice an essential part of themselves in order to prolong their lives in service of the Legion. They feel no emotion, no drive, no passion. They’re almost like living robots, acting on nothing but orders.” It was too much to ask of anyone, and yet so many warriors signed up for that life.

  “Is that something you were going to do?” Laurel traced a pattern along the edge of the clan markings on Dru’s hand.

  “No, before I met you, I decided that I would meet my fate. I did not want to become one of the soulless.” He been afraid to admit it before, but the more people he told, the easier it was to say.

  Laurel finally looked up, meeting his eyes, her gaze as strong as iron. “And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “The soulless are the most closely guarded secret of the Detyen Legion.” It was death to discuss them to anyone who wasn’t part of the Legion. The instinct was so ingrained in him that Dru had never considered doing anything but keeping silent. The only person he’d ever wanted to tell outside of the Legion was Laurel.

  “Not about that. About the price.”

  Oh, that made more sense. And still it took Dru a moment to get his thoughts in order. The denya price was another thing that really needed to be spoken of. All of his fellow Detyens were intimately aware of it, racing towards death’s door with little hope of survival. Finding mates among the humans was still so new, and he had never thought before that he would need to explain all this to his mate. But even that wasn’t exactly the reason why he had kept the information to himself. “Because that is not anything that I would use as leverage against you. I want you as my mate because you’re an amazing woman, a survivor, someone I admire. I don’t want you simply for a night. I want you forever.”

  I WANT YOU FOREVER.

  Laurel wouldn’t ever get tired of hearing something like that from Dru’s mouth, even as her mind reeled with everything else he’d just revealed. Dead by thirty without a mate? How could a person even live like that? The whole mate thing had shaken her to her very core, but the idea that Dru would die if she didn’t accept him threatened to collapse her foundations. What kind of fucked up race were the Detyens?

  Strangely, though, the new information gave her the stability she’d desperately been searching for. Ever since the Oscavians had shown up, she’d been at a loss, terrified to move from her room as if they were lurking just down the hallway, waiting for her to slip up. But no, it wasn’t the information that Dru gave her, it was Dru himself. She hadn’t been lying when she told Jules that he was the only one that made her feel safe. The second he’d walked into the room, everything had righted, everything had made sense again.

  And in a weird way, she was almost thankful for the failed abduction. She’d be happy if she never saw another Oscavian again, but those men on the street proved that she hadn’t been crazy the night before. Had it really only been the night before? Time seemed to move strangely right now, speeding up and slowing down in ways she couldn’t wrap her head around. But now she was sure that Varrow was out to get her and that Dru would stop that from happening. For the moment she didn’t need to worry about anything but what Dru was telling her right now.

  “Does it matter that I’m human?” Several of the Detyens she’d met seemed to have human mates, but that was on Earth. When they’d been on the ship headed here, she’d seen the way some of the Detyens looked at Quinn, like she was a curiosity, not a person.

  Dru was shaking his head. “No.” He gripped her hand tight, unconsciously pulling her closer. “I know there are problems that we’ll run into, things we may need to discuss. But I would not wish for another mate, not ever.”

  Her heart flipped over, her stomach dropped, and her lips almost couldn’t contain their smile. But they weren’t done yet. She had to get all this out. They had to have this discussion or their entire relationship, however it ended up, was bound to blow up around them. “But you didn’t choose me.” He said that fate told him that she was his mate. Did that mean that it was fate for Laurel to be captured by slavers and then taken by Varrow? Was it fate that had planted a control chip in her head and made her betray her fellow survivors? If it was, Laurel didn’t think she could trust something so cruel.

  Dru reached up and cupped her cheek, rubbing his thumb gently back and forth. “Yes, I did.”

  “You said it was fate.” Choice and destiny were opposites, it couldn’t be both.

  “If we were to make love once, that would pay the denya price,” Dru explained, and his use of the term make love did interesting things to her insides. “Each of us could walk away and live separate lives.”

  And when he said that, the pang in Laurel’s chest would have staggered her if she hadn’t been sitting down. From the way Dru’s fingers splayed across her cheek, she knew she hadn’t been able to keep the pain at those words out of her eyes. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to.

  “But I choose to want more with you,” Dru continued. His gaze bored into her, as if he could convince her by look alone that she was the one he wanted, fate be damned. “If that is something you want with me.”

  Was it? Sitting beside him, being held by him, Laurel couldn’t imagine wanting anything else. But Dru was talking something big, some kind of commitment that it felt too soon to be making. They barely knew each other. And even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true. They’d known each other for months, and in some ways Dru knew her better than anyone else. He’d seen her at the darkest point in her life that she could remember. He’d helped her survive, been her rock when she feared that she couldn’t make it on her own. What better way was there to know a person? They’d had their misunderstandings, their missteps, but every time that happened, they came out the other end even stronger, their relationship better for the ways they had to find to fix it.

  “I don’t know how we can make it work,” Laurel confessed. He was an alien warrior, she was just a farm girl. Even if everything about them felt right, she didn’t know where this path would lead them.

  “We can’t make it if we don’t try.”

  Laurel bit her bottom lip and Dru’s eyes flared red, his gaze locked on her. Her heart stopped for a moment before pounding even harder, her entire body heating at the desire in his gaze. And just like that, it all made sense. Any question she had dissolved. They could deal with that later, and they would. They would find a way to make this work because Laurel didn’t want to imagine a world where this man wasn’t standing at her side, where she couldn’t claim him as her own.

  She lunged forward, closing the tiny distance between them and sealing her mouth over his own, her lips set on devouring him. He tasted of something spicy, of man, and mate, and everything she’d ever wanted.

  They came together in a tangle of limbs and Laurel ended up sprawled over Dru’s lap as he fell back. One of her legs slipped off the couch and she let out a c
urse, trying to find a way to keep her balance and not let go of her mate now that she had him just where she wanted. She forgot about it as he pulled her flush up against him until she could feel the hard length of him against her stomach. She wanted to see him, to feel him, and she wanted it now.

  Laurel tore at his top, pulling and jerking until it came loose and she could pull it over his head, exposing the purple skin of his chest to her hungry eyes. Dark marks, his clan markings, covered both of his shoulders and ran across his stomach in a thin strip. She wondered what his pants were hiding and Dru seemed to read that question in her eyes.

  He reached for the clasp of his pants and undid them, but the way Laurel was sitting prevented him from pushing them down. She didn’t want to get off of him, didn’t want to give up the delicious feel of his hard muscles between her legs, but if she wanted this to go any further, she’d have to move, only if for a moment. When Laurel pulled back, Dru surprised her, surging up and grabbing for her, scooping her up in his arms and crossing from the couch they’d been sitting on to the bed on the other side of the room. She landed with a bounce and started pushing the covers away; she didn’t want anything to come between her and the glorious Detyen warrior looking down at her as if she was his.

  “I’ve dreamed of taking you,” he confessed, his voice thick enough with desire to send a shiver through her.

  “You’re not the only one.” Her dreams had been enough to make her wake up gasping and reaching out for Dru, but nothing was better than the real thing. No matter how much she had imagined him, he far exceeded her expectations. Or he would, if he’d take his damn pants off. “I want you naked.”

  His hands went back to his fly before he glanced back at her. “You’re wearing more than I am,” he pointed out.

  “How rude of me.” Laurel grinned, a sudden bout of playfulness hitting her. She’d expected harsh passion, something so strong that it would make her like a woman possessed. And the need for him rode her hard, but there was something more, something special that they were making between them that went beyond desire, beyond lust, beyond fate, something she didn’t yet have the words for but knew that she’d never want to let go. It was a miracle that she’d found it with Dru, and it wasn’t something she was about to let go.