by Maia Starr
I thought I might see her features wash over with fear, but instead, she looked defiant.
“Never gonna happen,” she enunciated with glee. “We have forces, you have forces, we’re in an alliance. There’s no way Rerdig is going to do anything to us without serious backlash. This rebellion is–”
“Members of the Koth are involved,” I blurted out.
That got her attention. Finally, the reaction I was hoping for. Her features fell with marked disappointment, and she pushed her head into the mattress to get a better look at me. I was still overtop of her from our previous encounter; still wedged in between her legs.
“Oh,” she said.
“Oh,” I repeated in the same tone. “So please, it’s my job to make sure we’re sending Rerdig to Earth for the right reasons. Do you honestly believe that you will do a better job of getting information out of him than we can?”
Her eyes flicked back and forth from mine. This was the do or die decision. The green flecks looking up at me were intense, thoughtful. She reached up and kissed me once more. Not passionate this time. Just sweet, simple… honest.
“I love you,” she said with all sincerity.
My heart began to swell with joy, and I smiled as wide as my lips would allow. I smiled so hard it hurt. “I love you too,” I said, kissing her.
“So… we’re in this?”
“Of course.”
“And… your secrets are mine. Mine are yours?”
I put her hand over my heart and looked her square in the eye as I promised, “You have my word.”
She held her hand over my chest for a moment longer before releasing a sigh of relief. “We think Rerdig is Zaphira’s son.”
“What?”
“Furthermore, Zaphira’s been onto the resistance for a long time now, she just couldn’t pin down who was involved. We got word from a spy in the Koth.”
Ikar, I groaned inwardly. It had to be him.
I couldn’t believe they had a mole in our government. Dirty little sneaks, I thought. If they had moles on council, it could be especially dangerous, not to mention a huge violation of our alliance.
“I see.”
“And…” she bit her lip. “Zaphira has a weapon.”
My brow perked up, and I tried not to sound too intrigued. “Oh? For the purpose of…?”
“Killing shifters,” she said through gritted teeth. “Or just disabling them,” she quickly defended. “It’s supposed to be for the choosing ceremonies only, you know, in case things go wrong. I haven’t seen it myself, nor has she confirmed its existence to me, but I know she has it and I know it’s dangerous.”
“Then she’s well-prepared indeed, isn’t she?”
As if on cue, my phone rang. We locked eyes for a moment as though we stood on a precipice; the ring continued to sound throughout the apartment. I stood from my comfortable nook and walked over to the tablet. I pressed talk and immediately Eddrys’ face came up on the other end.
“Good news for your little missus, boss,” he said cheerfully, though not without reserve.
“What’s that?”
“We’re taking the prisoner to Earth. You, me, Rerdig, and Sarra. Choice security.”
I cocked a brow and turned to Sarra to see if she’d heard the news. She did. Now perched on her knees, still on my soft mattress, she looked absolutely elated. I turned back to the phone with a bemused roll of my eyes. “When do we leave?”
“Tomorrow.”
Chapter Nine
Sarra
We’d packed our things as soon as Haden got off the phone with Eddrys. The morning couldn’t come fast enough for me. I could barely sleep all night thinking that I would be able to bring not only a rebellious prisoner, but potentially Zaphira’s son home to her.
We boarded a private shuttle back to Earth first thing in the morning. The prisoner was restrained by the Koth security, but Rerdig seemed apprehensive to make a move out of turn. Haden told me the Koth had threatened Rerdig’s children, and since then he was more than willing to comply with our wishes. I couldn’t exactly put my stamp of approval on their methods, but whatever got him to behave as we got him into cry was fine by me.
Shifters didn’t have to go into cryo for hyper speed space travel as humans did, but we figured this was our best bet for not having to watch him all the time.
The room I now inhabited was filled with beds, just a handful of them occupied by members of our crew, now disheveled by the cryo and the cold. The occupants, even from their pods, seemed to be in some sort of psychosis. This included Rerdig. It took some extra time for him to feel the effects of our induced sleep to hit him. But when it did, I knew we were truly in the midst of something overwhelming.
I loved the cryo room, the comforting hues of the glowstone and the absolute silence.
I frowned and looked around the room for my pod. I knew Haden would soon be in to administer my cryo, and then we would be back on the Earth. Technically, I still had days to go before I had to be put under, but I was so eager to get back to Earth and share my findings with Zaphira, I was ready to go now. Haden told me he would be in the chamber the entire time, in case something went awry. Then he kissed me on the forehead and told me everything would be fine.
My toes tingled with anticipation that made me want to run indefinitely with excitement. I was bringing back a member of a resistance organization; I was bringing back a story. I was bringing back a reason for Zaphira to be proud.
I was so getting a raise.
Spinning on my heel, I felt my burst of excitement suddenly waning. My brow raised just an inch as I looked around the room. There were no guards, no nurses. No one. My eyes flicked upward as I heard a sudden commotion coming from the deck above me. Some kind of struggle.
I breathed out sharply and ran to the doorway. I could hear stomping and screaming, and then all at once... silence. I bit my lip and instinctively crouched down, hitting the passcode into the wall above me to open the interlocking doors. I crept out into the hallway and looked down the vast, white corridors for any signs of life.
My mouth gaped as I realized that one of the pods had begun to ignite with sparks. I closed the door to our room once more and ran to the cry pod. Girls coming back from their science expeditions were kept in here. If not chosen to be a breeder, scientists would have exactly one year on Udora to research. Having one of them keel over on our expedition back to Earth would definitely take the cherry off of my sundae.
But it wasn't one of our girls.
Upon closer inspection, I could see it was Rerdig's pod that was sparking. I backed away from the domed casing with a gasp as his eyes shot open. He stared straight ahead; yellow enveloping the space around his pupil. His sightline seemed eerily calm, never offering me any mind, even as I was mere steps away.
I frantically input the code for him to be frozen once more, but I was interrupted as his orange scaled fist burst through the glass on his chamber and the broken lid raised above him on a track. Blood trickled down his strong arm, and I blinked in surprise, my breath echoing out in heaves. My hands began to shake wildly, and I instinctively ducked down behind the pod, pushing my back against the steel and willing my breaths to be silent as Rerdig crashed out of his chamber.
Crouching down, I could feel him move across the room, stopping only once to give a brief once-over to the rest of the pods. I didn’t know what I would do if he started attacking the chambers, and luckily I didn’t have to wing it because he strode right over to the door, whipping his tail wildly behind him as he tried over and over to open the door with his hands.
He wedged his fingers between the doors interlocking clasp and let out a groan of effort as he made to pull the doors apart, but it was no use.
Finally, his attention rested on the passcode reader next to the door.
I cringed inwardly. He would never be able to figure out the code to the room. Then I would be stuck with him, and it would only be a matter of moments before he found me. Trappe
d with my enemy. I swallowed and tilted my head to the left to try and catch a glimpse of what he was doing.
He tried to open the door twice with a passcode before violently pounding his fists against the door and letting out an enraged roar.
I shook from behind the pod and knew I either had to find a way to open the door or confront him. The latter didn’t seem like an ideal choice, so I crawled behind the row of pods, quietly, slowly approaching the keypad.
He whipped around the room wildly, letting out an aggravated cry every so often as he busied himself with the central computer that connected all the pods. I used his cries as opportunities to shuffle a little faster without being heard. Then, suddenly, he was silent again. I peeked out from above on of the pods and ducked immediately as I caught sight of him in the blue glow of the glowstone.
I’d reached the door but felt too afraid to make my move. I could feel my body shaking violently within, but as I held my hand out in front of me, it was steady as ever. I pressed my eyes shut for just a moment before checking on the dragon again. He simply stood at the mainframe with his hand on the screen below him, not moving or attempting to unlock the pods.
With a breath, I raised to my feet and input the code for the door. With a click press of the enter button, I fell back to my knees and scrambled behind the metal beds as the doors shot open. Rerdig turned quickly, and his whole body seemed to shift the room.
He raced to the door and into the hallway, stopping only once to turn back around and inspect the cryo room from the hallway. I pressed my face to the floor and tried to get as small as possible as his gaze passed over the room.
The moment seemed to linger on forever before he finally turned on his heel and stomped down the hall and out of earshot.
He’d escaped.
I crouched in the fetal position and cupped my hands over my mouth as I let out a stifled cry, scarce tears falling down my face before I inhaled sharply and willed them away.
I had two choices: stay and pray or leave the room and find a weapon. Find Haden.
Several minutes passed, and the doors had already locked shut again. I found the strength to crawl across the floor once more, and soon I reached the doors. I pressed my back up against the wall and raised my legs slowly until I was standing next to the opening.
I input the code once more, and the doors slid open with an audible click. I waited, listened for footsteps or the sounds of breath or commotion. I heard nothing and took it as my cue to slip out into the halls.
The bright white lights made me feel even more vulnerable than I already had as I tiptoed along the hallways into the main vestibule. The ships reception area was the main hub for each section of the shuttle. From here, the room branched off to the main elevators, control room, and stateroom corridors. With any luck, I would be able to find Haden there.
I shifted around the U-shaped desk and crouched behind its shelves, making myself as low to the ground as humanly possible. Footsteps could be heard running through the corridors up ahead leading into the control room, and then they went disturbingly quiet. The lights in the ship suddenly went down, causing the whole carrier to be lit up only by emergency lights in the ground that gave off a warm white hue and very little visibility.
The ship was suddenly ablaze with shifter energy. I looked down into the hall adjacent to me, and my body tingled with fear. My eyes widened as far as they could as my pupils tried to adjust to the darkness.
I scraped my top teeth against my bottom lip, and my eyes darted around in suspense. Find Haden. It was the only thought that ran through my mind. I jumped in surprise and crouched even lower as the orange shifter charged through the room, striding with confidence through the office to get to the corridor behind me. I willed myself to stay quiet and tried to think where weapons were kept.
Then suddenly I felt a hauntingly familiar hum of energy. I’d felt it only twice before. Once when I was making love to Haden, and the other time when shifters invaded the offices at Riddell, coming to demand answers from Zaphira about an incident that had happened years prior regarding a match gone missing.
The ship seemed to beam with their force, and as I heard footsteps coming down the hall, I took off running.
I made my way into the cargo room and found myself stumbling through the shelving units. My hands trembled along the flat tops of the shelving, looking for anything I might be able to use to slow his progress. I could still hear commotion back in the hall. I was sure my genius idea to run hadn’t exactly put me in first as the master of stealthy maneuvers. Still, I hoped I would have at least a little time before he found me again, if at all.
This was too much to hope for, it seemed, as the small shifter entered the room. My eyes widened, and I crouched down once more in the corner of the room where the light hit the least.
Different colored shifters, I’d read, had different specialties. Red dragons were often the only ones left to breathe fire, white dragons had the largest wings, black dragons had incredible strength, and yellow dragons had incredible night vision.
I was glad he wasn’t a yellow dragon.
I tried to think back to what orange dragons were good at, but the only word that entered into my mind was betrayal. I watched him carefully, my eyes wide in the blackness, and felt behind me to a tin gun cache that had been stored in case of an emergency. I figured if there were any time to use it, it would be now.
I steadied my hand as the dragon whipped blindly through the room, throwing storage boxes out of his way and feeling around the shelving units.
“Where are you?” he seethed through his clenched jaw.
I rolled my eyes inwardly. Yeah, like I was going to volunteer myself for that one. I reached behind me and began to unlatch the gun case. I knew the code to unlock the cache and instinctively put it in. I cringed at the difficulty of feeling for the numbers backward; my back pressed hard against the case.
The gun case opened with a quiet snap, and I quickly moved my hand over the lid to prevent any further noises. Rerdig froze in his tracks and delved deeper into the cargo room. There were fifteen rows of shelves that took up a good portion of the hull. I backed up with my laser pistol in hand and began to crawl toward the north end of the room to try and made my way back toward the door.
“I want to talk to you,” came the dragon’s offer. His tone seemed calmer now. “I know you’re in here and I’m tired of playing cat and mouse. Come out, and I will talk to you the way I wanted to back in my cell, without your traitor around.”
Traitor? Was he talking about Haden? I licked my lip and dashed for the door. He reeled backward and walked toward me.
I swallowed hard and raised the weapon in front of me as I slowly crawled backward out of the room.
“You and I have more in common than you think,” he said with a warning in his tone. “Sarra, please. You know firing a weapon at me could only endanger the ship.”
He was right, but at this point, I didn’t care. He was a rebel intent on overthrowing a government that was in my alliance. I sincerely doubted all he wanted to do was talk with me. I envisioned myself becoming his hostage. Suddenly that pride I had hoped Zaphira would have in me would be stained with disappointment for getting into such a ridiculous situation in the first place.
I held my breath as I raised to my feet in the darkened hallway. I watched his silhouette in the cargo room for just a moment, studying whether or not he could see me before turning and running down the hall.
I felt hard footsteps come up behind me with full force and I fell to the ground, crawling for an air duct and forcing my body into it. I watched as the tube closed in front of me and reopened as Rerdig walked past; his half-formed body looking more dragon than ever. Orange scales were made to look yellow in the glow of the lights, and he stopped cold in front of the vent I was hiding in. He turned around briefly, and I could almost see the annoyance in his eye.
My body shook against the metal behind me, and I grabbed my arms, willing them to st
op trembling. Rerdig seemed to hear it too as he spun around slowly and began to scrape his fingers down the walls next to him, slowly walking to the end of the corridor and out of sight.
I thought I was in the clear as he continued down the hall, but my heart stopped as his tail still lingered behind; swaying from side to side and moving up into the vent; touching my leg.
The dragon stopped cold and flung around at speeds so intense that the ship shook under his weight. He knelt down in front of the grate, and suddenly the rage that had overtaken him had grown calm. He reached his arm into the grate with fury, and I aimed the laser at him with shaking hands, tightly closing my eyes, and he ripped my body from the vent.
“There now,” he said with a satisfactory tone. He put his hand around my neck and lifted me with one arm until I was high in the air. He spread his wings victoriously and gave a laugh as he inspected me.
“I know who your mother is,” I spat out furiously, grabbing his hand and desperately pulling them away from my throat.
He raised a quick brow to me and smirked. “So do I.”
I coughed against his grip and flailed my legs wildly at him, kicking him in the stomach over and over until he set me back on the ground, his hand still firmly around my neck.
“I know who your choosing is,” he mirrored my tone.
I pressed my feet into the ground and felt somehow surprised to feel the floor beneath me. I looked up at him with my brows drawing to a furrow. “Yes,” I managed to breathe out. “You met him in the jail.”
“No,” he shook his head. “I met him in the rebellion.”
Chapter Ten
Haden
I raised a brow and curled my lips slightly; my eyes were the color of ice: blue and clear and thoughtful. I felt as though I had seen nothing but sadness in the time spent away from my new union.
We overtook the shuttle and were on a course back to Udora. We were docking in the old ruins of any day now, and I still wasn’t sure what to say to my beautiful love. I’d heard Sarra roaming the halls at night and hoped she would come to me, but she never did.