Faultless

by Kate Rudolph

  Despite the aggression, Kayde didn’t seem fazed. He stood there calmly until Dru managed to take a step back and put a little space between them. “A call came in on her communicator.”

  “What? From who?”

  “Varrow.” Kayde gave the answer that Dru already knew had to be coming. “He wants free passage off of the planet, and in exchange he says he’ll pull back the Oscavians and leave Yormas to rot. The leadership are discussing the proposal now.”

  “They can’t just let him go. Not if he has Laurel.” Dru couldn’t believe that of his people. They wouldn’t sacrifice his mate based on the word of their enemy.

  “He hasn’t admitted to having Laurel, but we know he does. Come on, we need to talk to Sandon. If anyone can help, it’ll be him.”

  But Dru remembered his last encounter with Sandon and knew the man didn’t trust in Dru’s relationship with his denya. Would he really be willing to risk the Detyens’ new home in hopes of saving a woman who he still thought refused to be a Detyen mate? Dru wanted to gather up his friends and chase Laurel down himself before any order to do otherwise came down, but instead he forced himself to follow Kayde, to trust his friend. Maybe this time Sandon would see reason.

  Dru could only hope it was true. Because he would tear the world apart before he let Varrow lay another hand on his mate.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE CABIN VARROW TOOK her to might have once been a quaint vacation spot, but it had clearly fallen into disrepair at some point. The road leading deep into the woods and ending at their destination was so pockmarked with ruts and potholes that their driver was forced to use the anti-grav to navigate rather than their vehicle’s wheels. Laurel tried to get some sense of her surroundings, but they could have been in any old forest in Maryland or Virginia, or possibly even farther away from home. Just because she’d been snatched from DC didn’t mean they were still anywhere near there. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, and since their little shuttle had landed, they’d been moving for more than an hour.

  Varrow had fewer people with him than she expected: six Oscavians in total. She couldn’t tell if any of them were the same four who had tried to abduct her off the street, but she wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. If they’d all come in the shuttle, there was a limited amount of space for personnel, she knew that from experience. If it had felt cramped with just her and Dru on the ship they’d stolen, half a dozen Oscavian warriors had to make the vessel seem tiny, even though they hadn’t filled it to capacity. She was almost certain that the aliens she saw were all that Varrow had brought to Earth with him. He had stopped talking to her after she woke up, but that hadn’t stopped his conversation with his men. No one mentioned anyone that wasn’t on the ship, and from the way they spoke it was obvious that it had been difficult to get through Earth’s defenses with the shuttle. That meant it was unlikely that a second ship was hiding somewhere.

  She hoped.

  Once they were in the cabin, Laurel’s hands were bound and she was shunted into a windowless room, little more than a closet. She struggled against the rope at her wrists, but the person who tied her had a deft hand with knots and struggling only made her skin red and raw. When the sounds in the outside room subsided she gave up on getting untied and tried the door. No surprise, it was locked, but that didn’t stop her from doing her best to force it open.

  Just like with the knots, her best wasn’t good enough.

  Laurel collapsed onto the floor in a frustrated heap. She screamed out all of the emotion that had been bottled up inside for the last several hours. It was that or cry in fury. She feared if she began to cry, she’d never stop.

  News of her disappearance must have reached Dru by now and Laurel wished that she had just done what he asked and gone back to the base when he went in for training. Her determination to speak to her sister now seemed reckless and Laurel realized that it had simply been a desperate grab for normalcy in these abnormal times.

  Dru had to be going crazy. Was he looking for her already? She wished she had a way to signal him, to give him a clue to where she was or who had taken her, but she had no idea where that was, and she trusted her mate to figure out that Varrow was the culprit. Who else could it have been?

  She pulled at her bindings again, and the sweat or a trickle of blood must have helped something since she seemed to be able to move a little more. Laurel bit her lip and concentrated so hard that she didn’t hear the door opening.

  “Those are just a precaution. I hope you don’t hurt yourself too badly.” Varrow shut the door behind him, locking the two of them in together. He carried a small light, offering just enough illumination to see by.

  Laurel had to squint to get a good look at him. Her eyes had adjusted to the dimness and the minor light was almost enough to hurt. “If you don’t want me to hurt myself, why don’t you untie me?” She waved her bound hands up at him as if he might actually take her up on it.

  Varrow sighed. “I wish I could, but you aren’t yet ready.”

  His voice made her sick. It slid over her like smooth wine, but with a sour, biting undertone that curdled the air around her. “You seem pretty sure that I’m going to change my mind about you.” His confidence was delusional and terrifying, almost enough to make Laurel doubt herself. She’d been through hell and the only reason she’d faltered was because choice had been taken away from her. Unless Varrow was about to stick a control chip in her head, there was no way she was ever going to trust him.

  “And you seem certain you won’t.” Her captor leaned in, the light coming with him as he studied her. His hands trailed over the rope at her wrists before he pulled back. “It will be fun to find out which of us is right. And when you realize that I’ve saved your life, I think things will shift.”

  “Saved my life?” Laurel scoffed, remembering the state she’d been in when she woke up on the Detyen transport. “Your butchers couldn’t even pull out the chip correctly.”

  “No? You have my sincere apologies for that.” Strangely enough, he sounded like he meant it. “But that isn’t what I’m talking about.”

  There was no use in prolonging this conversation. Laurel knew that, knew that the more she talked to him, the more he would believe that she might one day like him. He could just lie to her, spin tales that sounded true enough that she would want to believe them until her resolve weakened enough for his poison to slip through. But the room was dark except for the light that Varrow brought in, and there was nothing to distract her from the pain in her wrists except this conversation.

  Curiosity got the better of her. “Then what?” She tried to tell herself that she was talking in the hopes that it would give her information she could use to escape, but even to her own mind it sounded weak. She just didn’t want to be alone in the dark.

  “An armada is amassing at the edge of this solar system.” Varrow revealed this with all the enthusiasm of a magician performing his best trick. “The only place safe will be far away from here. This planet will be nothing but rubble before the week is out. By then we will be long gone.”

  They’d all been talking about the threat Varrow posed for weeks, but now that she heard it straight from him, it seemed that much worse. Rubble? Earth was such a vibrant place, full of people and hope and life. She thought of her sister and of the little baby her brother was planning to adopt. What did Varrow have against them? Why did he want to destroy this place? What had Earth ever done to him?

  “They’ll stop you.” She’d returned to this planet with an entire army. The combined forces could hold off anyone. Couldn’t they?

  “Just like the Detyens stopped Yormas so many years ago?” None of Laurel’s protestations seemed to faze her captor.

  “Why?” She needed to know so much that she’d stopped struggling, her whole being focused on this conversation.

  “Why what?” Varrow challenged.

  “Why attack us? Why attack them? We have no quarrel with you.” Earth hadn’
t always been peaceful, but in the galactic arena it was a small player and it had no goals for conquest.

  Varrow leaned back against the door and crossed his arms, explaining as if he’d just been waiting for Laurel to ask the right question. “It’s a simple matter of resources. Detya and Earth share many properties which seem to have produced two highly compatible species. But it isn’t the people we need. Once they’re gone, we’ll be free to come in and take anything we want that’s left.”

  “You’ll kill billions of people!”

  He shrugged, silently saying it wasn’t personal. “If the planets were willing to trade, we wouldn’t need to.”

  They could debate all night and she knew he wouldn’t move a centimeter. Billions of lives for whatever resource he and his allies were after was apparently a fair trade. If they talked about that any more, she was going to be sick. She could already feel her stomach churn. Laurel needed to change the subject, fast. “So what’s that leverage you were talking about? They have you, why would they let you leave?”

  “They will let us leave,” Varrow corrected her, “because they think it will even the odds. And by the time we are half a light year away, they’ll learn their mistake.”

  Of course he was dealing in bad faith. “You’re despicable.”

  “I’m sure you’ll see it differently one day.”

  “Dr—” Laurel cut herself off, not wanting to bring Varrow’s attention to how much Dru meant to her. Who knew what he would try to do to her man? She couldn’t risk it. “The Detyens and the SDA will stop you.”

  Varrow smiled at her like she was a stupid child. He leaned in close and ran his fingers through her hair, making Laurel shiver in revulsion. She pulled her legs in close and kicked out, catching him in the ribs and sending him stumbling back.

  “Oof,” Varrow breathed out through gritted teeth. “Throw your tantrum, this will all be over soon.” For a moment she was sure he was going to do something worse to hurt her, but Varrow knocked on the door behind him and was let out while he had a hand held to his ribs.

  Laurel sank back to the floor and struggled in earnest against the ropes at her wrists. It didn’t do any good, but panic rode her hard and she needed to do something, anything, to get out of here. She needed to find a way to contact Dru, needed to try to escape.

  She needed her freedom. If she didn’t get it soon, she knew she’d never have it again.

  DRU WAS GOING TO GO crazy with waiting. Sandon urged patience, but minutes ticked by into more than an hour after that conversation and still there was no conclusion from the leadership, no plan of action to recover his denya. His mate was out there! She was at the hands of the enemy, undergoing unknown hardships all while the Detyen Council dithered about the best course of action.

  They couldn’t really be planning to take Brakley Varrow at his word. Dru couldn’t imagine a world in which that made sense. They couldn’t trust the man, they knew his record. Recovering his mate should have been an easy decision to make. And yet the minutes ticked on.

  Kayde watched him pace and said nothing. Several more minutes passed and they were joined by Dryce, who joined Kayde in staring at Dru while they waited for the decision to come down.

  “I can’t do this,” Dru finally said, rounding on the two men and glaring at them as if ready for a fight.

  “Do what?” Kayde asked in that annoyingly calm voice of his.

  “Wait,” Dru bit out. “Laurel is out there and I need to find her.”

  “They could decide to send a unit after her,” Kayde pointed out.

  “Or they could decide to let her hang!” It came out a yell and Dru took a deep breath in an effort to calm himself down. Battles weren’t won with anger and impulsiveness. He needed to be calm, needed a plan. He eyed Kayde and Dryce. He needed a team. “The longer we wait, the more likely it is that something terrible happens to Laurel. What if it was Quinn out there?”

  Kayde’s eyes flashed red for a moment, but his expression didn’t change. Beside him Dryce was a coiled spring of tension, ready to jump to his teammate’s defense if Dru continued that line of thought.

  “I need help,” Dru beseeched them. “I have no resources, no leads. You’ve both been on this planet for months. If anyone can find her, it’s you.”

  That seemed to be what Kayde was waiting for. “Come with us,” he said. “We’ll show you what we’ve found.”

  The relief that Dru felt at those words was enough to stagger him, and he followed the two warriors as quickly as his legs would carry him, carried by a surge of hope for the first time in hours.

  They assembled at the Detyen suite where Raze, Toran, Sierra, Iris, and Quinn waited for them along with two human women that Dru didn’t recognize. No, that wasn’t quite right. They looked a little familiar, and he realized that he’d last seen them during the battle at Detyen HQ while shepherding the human survivors to their escape ship. He couldn’t remember their names, but these two women were the other members of the team that Sierra had been on, the team that had recovered the women from Fenryr 1. Sierra introduced them as Mindy and Jo, but there was no time to catch up, no time for small talk, not when Laurel was in danger.

  “You do know that the SIA frowns on sharing resources with civilians,” said Jo as she called up data on a holo projector for the rest of them to view.

  “And we all know that I should have never been fired,” Sierra shot back. Then her expression softened and she smiled at her former associates. “I can’t thank you enough. I know what you’re risking.”

  “I mean, we get the satisfaction of a job well done. Protecting the planet and all,” said Mindy with a grin. “What you have to show for it? Only a hunky alien who looks at you like that?”

  Sierra rolled her eyes. “You’re the one who told me that I should be in a relationship.”

  “I think you took my advice a little too seriously.”

  “Cut it with the banter, this is what I’ve got.” Jo sat back and gestured at the holo player as the screen showed five Oscavians walking out of Laurel’s hotel with several large bags on a levitating cart. At least two of the bags were big enough to hold a human of Laurel’s size. “This footage is from about an hour before Dru realized that Laurel was missing. All of the feeds from inside the hotel went dead for six minutes, and that lines up with Jules’ statement about when Laurel decided to go back to her room. That was five hours ago. Since then, six ships have attempted to break atmo without authorization. None have been successful. As far as we know, Varrow’s ship was one of them. Two ships launched from within 200 kilometers of DC, and both disappeared into the Virginia woods. Varrow is close, but we don’t know exactly where.”

  It was more than they’d had, and yet it was still nothing. Dru was relieved with the confirmation that Laurel was still on the planet, but if that was the best they had to go on, he was beginning to understand why the leadership was taking so long to come to a decision.

  “So is it just Varrow and those five Oscavians?” Kayde asked. “Or does he have a bigger team on the planet?”

  “The data indicates that he does not have a bigger team,” Mindy replied briskly. “We still have the algorithms scouring for more info, but nothing they’ve found so far has suggested a force bigger than can fit on that single shuttle.”

  “We need to draw him out,” Dru realized with a growing sense of determination. “We could spend a year scouring those forests and still never find them. We need to give him a reason to come to us.”

  “What do you suggest?” asked Toran.

  Dru didn’t know, but they had to figure it out. If they didn’t, he’d never see his mate again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  LAUREL WOKE WITH A start and only as she came to realized that she’d fallen asleep. It must’ve been the last year taking its toll. Before she’d been taken, she’d never been able to sleep when she was stressed. She would toss and turn all night and suffer through the day bleary-eyed and fuzzy, which only made the stress w
orse and compounded the insomnia. She wondered if she’d been drugged, but her senses were on high alert, so she couldn’t be certain.

  She was moving now, disoriented and hot. She was confined, and the darkness around her closed in tight. Laurel struggled against it and realized she was in some sort of small, coffin-like box. Were they burying her alive? Hiding her somewhere that she would never be found? Had Varrow changed his mind about taking her with him? She had thought that the worst thing that could happen to her would involve being taken off the planet again. She hadn’t realized that being buried alive was on the table, and it was suddenly so much worse.

  She pushed against the walls around her, trying to find give somewhere, a latch that would magically open up the box and let her out, but there was nothing. She was only dimly aware that her hands were no longer tied, but she couldn’t even celebrate that small improvement, not when things had gone from bad to worse.

  Sweat dripped down her neck and she forced herself to stop moving. There couldn’t be much air in there with her and if she kept struggling she was going to use it up too quickly. Even while she held herself still, she was jostled from side to side. They were moving her, and they didn’t want her to be seen. Had Varrow been right? Had Earth decided to let him go in exchange for what he had offered them? She found it hard to believe that they hadn’t seen through his deception. They had no reason to trust him. And even knowing that his ally might have access to a weapon that could kill the planet in a single shot, did they really believe that Varrow would abandon him?

  She couldn’t hear much of what was going on outside. There were distant muffled voices, but she didn’t know if that was people talking around her, or people yelling far away. The box fell with a jolt, throwing her around until she hit her head and jarred her shoulder against one of the corners. Something clicked and a small shaft of light came in a crack by her left foot. Laurel pushed all thoughts of pain aside, gritting her teeth and kicking at the newly developing hole. She didn’t know why she’d been put down so roughly, but she wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity, not when it might be her only chance of getting away.