They’d barely joined Jasmine, Shauss and Tiber on the dining deck when a large flare bubble popped open, depositing nine occupants in the bright morning sun.
“Everybody relax, we’re not dead,” Monica announced, grinning from ear to ear. In her arms was Wyatt, fast asleep and drooling on her shoulder. Beside them, Hastion held Kalinda in a similar boneless pose.
Cecine’s heart contracted so violently at the sight of four beloved faces he’d thought lost to him, he swayed and his ears rang.
“More’s the pity,” a male voice snarled. “I should have slit your throat while I had the chance.”
Blinking, Cecine turned his gaze on the speaker just as Shelley gasped, “Mark?”
By the Powers, it was Bonham—shirtless, poorly groomed and sporting a number of vivid bruises on his face and torso. Lieutenant Zannen held him by the scruff of his bony neck.
“Can’t you put a neural gag on that asshole?” Monica said sharply. “He’s driving me crazy.”
Fury finally overcame Cecine’s moment of weakness and he clenched his fists.
“You won’t have to suffer his presence a moment longer,” he growled, taking two steps forward with the intent of taking Bonham apart. Before he could touch the asshole, he was halted by rigid neural restraints.
“My abject apologies, Minister,” Tiber said, “but I can’t allow you to kill him.”
“His death has already been recorded. Killing him would be merely a formality.”
“Unfortunately, too many witnesses can attest to his being alive, so he’s entitled to a hearing in front of the council.”
Cecine growled again. “That’s more than Ensign Beral received.”
“And I’m certain the council will see that Mark Bonham pays for his death.”
“They won’t kill him slowly and painfully.”
“No, but they’ll deposit him on Crunus, where he can spend the rest of his life mining crunite.”
Cecine sighed his annoyance. “Very well. I’ll let the council deal with him.”
When his restraints released, Monica rushed forward and threw her free arm around his neck. He hugged her tightly, tears prickling in his eyes as he kissed her temple, and then Wyatt’s head, with trembling lips.
“I love you, Father.”
“I love you too, my dear Monica,” he whispered in her hair. “So much. I should have said so before, a thousand times.”
He heard a dull thump and looked up in time to see Shelley’s follow-through on a blow to Bonham’s already colorful cheekbone. “That’s for trying to kill my babies, you beatnik bastard!”
Her dead husband glared at her. “Shelley, what the hell!”
“I’m a little scarier now that I can look you in the eye, aren’t I, you prick?” She smiled with bloodthirsty glee as she shook out her hand. God, that hurt so good! She was dying to hold her babies, but they were in good hands at the moment and she had to get her licks in before someone took Mark away.
“I wasn’t trying to kill them,” he said, his brown eyes broadcasting the same contempt he’d shown for her on the Heptoral. “I just needed the cover of an explosion to get off the ship. I knew the blast containment systems would keep you all safe.”
“The same way you needed cover to get my kids away from me?”
“Yes! Detonating sillarite with abarain masks a sillar-based flare’s signature.” Then he scowled at Monica. “But I hadn’t planned on Dr. Loudmouth Bitch coming along.”
“I’d have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids,” Monica muttered in a decent impression of a Scooby-Doo villain.
“God, I hate you!” he snarled.
Curling her fingers into a fist again, Shelley punched his bearded jaw, whipping his head to the side and making him stagger in Zannen’s hold. “That’s for calling my friend a bitch, and this—” she clocked him on the side of the head before he could recover, “—is for using me to get to the Garathani, you worthless piece of shit.”
Mark cowered, rubbing his jaw. “Don’t do that again, Shelley.”
“Or what?” she taunted. Her hand screamed with pain and her fingers hung limply, still reverberating from the blow. Dammit, now she’d have to use her other hand. This would have been a great time to be ambidextrous.
When he didn’t answer, she sneered. “That’s what I thought.”
She swung with her left hand and he tried to duck but she managed a glancing blow to his eye. “That’s for causing so much death and destruction on Earth, you sniveling coward.”
“That wasn’t me!” he roared.
“Lieutenant Zannen, if you’ll hold him still, please?” Shelley requested.
Zannen grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
“God dammit, Shelley, if you don’t stop—”
She threw everything into one last punch and Zannen held him in place so she got him right in the kisser.
“Ow, shit,” she hissed, shaking out her hand and stomping her foot to help manage the pain. She’d cut her knuckles on his teeth, probably broken her pinkie, and judging from the amount of blood on his face, split Mark’s lip. “And that’s for stealing my babies and Monica and Tara, you miserable cocksucker.”
“Excuse me for interrupting your awesome show of girl power, Shelley,” Monica said, “but Tara was in on it.”
Shelley turned to stare. “What!”
She’d seen Tara standing beside Mark, but she’d been so focused on putting his lights out, she hadn’t even noticed Holligan had her upper arm in a firm grip.
Holy shit, she’d left her babies in the care of a kidnapper?
Tara sneered at her. “Well I wasn’t going to leave my own niece and nephew with you, especially after I found out you’re Garathani.”
Completely blindsided, Shelley could only gape at her.
“Omigod,” Jasmine gasped. “You’re Mark’s sister, Cara?”
Tara scowled. “I’m Cara, yes, but—”
“I can’t believe I actually lay down with the enemy,” Mark interrupted bitterly.
“Trust me, it was lousy for me too,” Shelley snapped. “And I’m not Garathani, dumbass—if I hadn’t met you, I’d still be five foot two. Not that I’d want that,” she added with a reassuring look at Cecine, who watched her with wide eyes and a wider smile.
“You transitioned,” Tara accused.
Crossing her arms carefully, in deference to her injured fingers, Shelley looked back and forth between Cecine and Hastion. Cecine had taken Wyatt from Monica and kept dropping kisses on the top of his head. Both babies were still sacked out in spite of all the yelling.
She gave a long-suffering sigh. “Really? Didn’t either of you bother explaining to her what was going on while I was out of it?”
“Forgive me, szisdagya,” Cecine acknowledged with a nod. “I thought you had.”
“Look, Tara or Cara or whatever your name is,” Monica said, “didn’t it occur to you that Shelley already had babies? Sparnites haven’t been exposed to enough male pheromones to ovulate so they can’t get pregnant until after they transition. And if she were a Sparnite, having sex with Mark would have triggered her transition more than a year ago. He may not have a spur—or a heart, or an ounce of integrity,” she added with a scathing glance at Bonham, “but he does emit pheromones.”
For just an instant Tara looked uncertain, but then her chin went up. “So I’m not an expert on Sparnites. She’s still mated to Garathani males.”
“And you still kidnapped the minister’s children,” Shelley reminded her. “I imagine that comes with a pretty hefty sentence too.”
Mark jerked against Zannen’s hold. “They’re my children!”
“Not from the moment they were born,” Cecine said darkly. “And actually, Shelley, Tara has the option of taking Garathani mates rather than going to Crunus.”
Shelley scowled. “She can choose punishment or reward? That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Sending females to Crunus is tantamount to a death se
ntence. The majority of miners are criminals, many of them violent, and females rarely live long enough among them to bear young.” He looked into Tara’s apprehensive eyes and added coldly, “It seems an appalling waste of reproductive capability.”
Tara swallowed visibly. “Wait. I never had anything to do with—”
“No!” Mark grabbed her wrist. “You can’t do that! Tara’s my stepsister. She’s Terran, not Narthani.”
“Which explains how she went undetected when we ran DNA scans searching for her among the mate candidates,” Shauss observed.
Cecine shook his head. “Her heredity doesn’t matter. She qualified as a candidate and will spend the rest of her life with Garathani males, either mates or miners. The choice will be hers.”
“Mates,” Tara said instantly.
Fighting Zannen’s hold, Mark grabbed her other arm. “Tara, no! I’ll protect you.”
“Because you did such a great job of it on that mercenary ship your mother’s family sent for us,” she said with an eye-roll.
“But you’re my wife!”
She got right back in his face. “And you slept with Shelley!”
“Whoa, incest and bigamy?” Monica said with wide eyes.
“Did you not hear the word stepsister?” Mark ground out with a nasty look. “We’re not blood relatives.”
Shelley blinked as the surprises just kept coming. Guess that answered the question of whether or not she’d been legally married to the prick.
“Those should have been my babies, you bastard!” Tara raged on, poking him in the chest with her index finger. “I only married you because your control-freak mother wouldn’t let me date anyone else and you’re such a damn mama’s boy you didn’t even try to stand up to her. Sleeping with one of them will be a relief af—”
Faster than Shelley would have believed he could move, Mark got an arm around Tara’s neck and used the other to twist her head roughly to the side, snapping her spine with a gruesome crunch.
Holligan caught Tara’s sagging body as Kellen and Shauss leaped into action, but before they could do anything, Zannen growled and performed the same brutal maneuver on Mark.
“Oops,” he said, letting the body drop to the hard floor.
Shelley stood there with her mouth hanging open, appalled at how much violence could be committed in less than three seconds. Thank God the twins slept like the dead—they loved Tara, and seeing her killed would have been traumatizing as hell. Shelley was a little traumatized herself.
After a moment of shocked silence, Monica spoke. “Well that’s one way to shut him up. Anybody else feel like puking?”
Shelley, Jasmine and Tiber all raised their hands.
“I should put you on report, Lieutenant,” Cecine said gruffly. “You know I wanted to be the one to do that.”
“It won’t happen again, sir.”
“See that it doesn’t.” He looked at Tiber. “Am I fit to have my command back?”
“I believe you are, sir.”
“Good. Empran, flare the prisoners to the medical complex and have Tysan put the female back together. I don’t care what he does with the male as long as I never have to lay eyes on him again.”
Holligan gently laid Tara’s limp body beside Mark’s and then stepped back.
Once they’d disappeared in a flare bubble, Shelley hesitated only an instant before marching up to Zannen. She crooked a stiff, aching finger at him, and when he lowered his head with a wary look, obviously thinking she was about to punch him too, she grabbed his face between her palms and planted a smacking kiss on his lips. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
He straightened with a toothy grin, looking almost cute. “You’re welcome, but what for?”
She gave him a grim smile in return. “Dispensing instant karma.”
“Believe me, the pleasure was all mine.”
Shelley took a deep, shuddering breath, glad she’d acted on that impulse while she had the chance. Then she turned and set her sights on Hastion.
He had never been more in love with Shelley. With her blue eyes spitting fire and damp blonde curls flying around her bare arms, she could have been a sculpture of Peserin come to life, raining vengeance on her very much alive dead husband. Who was now dead again.
Transition had changed her so very much, making her not only larger but stronger and more confident, yet he had the feeling it had merely released what was inside her all along.
Slipping her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans and leaving her battered knuckles dangling, she strolled toward him, staring at his face as if it were the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
“Hi,” she said when she stopped before him, smiling radiantly.
“Hi, yourself. I brought you something.” He leaned forward, intending to let her take Kallie, but Shelley shook her head.
Without another word, she took his face in her hands, as she had Zannen, and stretched up on her toes to give him a lingering kiss. She held there, staring into his eyes while she brushed back and forth over his sensitive lips as if savoring the feel of him. Then she slid her hands back into his hair and pulled him closer, deepening the kiss into a joining of their souls.
Hastion shuddered in ecstasy as his eyelids drifted downward. He wouldn’t mind if this moment lasted forever.
Someone else had other ideas. Sandwiched between them, Kallie squirmed and gave a whining cry before sucking her thumb into her mouth again. Though her eyes were still closed, she clutched a lock of Shelley’s hair and absently wrapped it around her little hand.
Slowly ending the kiss, Shelley took her daughter in her arms and rocked her, rubbing her face against Kallie’s cheeks and hair.
“You did it,” she breathed, watching him with open adoration. “I knew you would.”
Hastion stroked her from her crown to the small of her back and smiled wryly. “It wasn’t much of a challenge. Their ship, the Cathepak, was small and not nearly as fast as the Heptoral, or as heavily armed.”
“I believe Hastion is understating his role in the rescue, Minister,” Kellen said. “Because we hadn’t revealed our presence to him yet, he flared aboard the other ship alone, disabled four guards, removed Monica and the twins to the Heptoral, and then returned to round up the rest of the Narthani aboard.”
“Which you’d already done when I arrived,” Hastion interjected, his cheeks and neck growing hot under the weight of the minister’s unwavering stare. “You and Zannen found Bonham and Tara.”
Kellen shook his head. “You took the initiative, Ensign, and you took the risks. You’re a hero, one who’s due several honors and an elevation in rank.”
“Th—thank you, sir.”
Cecine reached him in two strides. Grabbing the back of Hastion’s neck with his free hand, he pulled him forward and kissed him squarely on the mouth.
“And I thought I loved you before,” he whispered without easing his grip, his gray eyes bright with tears. “You’re brave and honorable, Hastion, and so unbearably beautiful I don’t deserve you at all…but I’m yours forevermore, in whatever capacity you’ll have me.”
His heart hammering, Hastion stared at him in disbelief. “Sir?”
Cecine stared back for a moment and then blinked, looking around uneasily, as if he’d just remembered they weren’t alone. “My apologies, Ensign. I shouldn’t have—”
“No! Don’t apologize, sir,” Hastion added in a quieter tone, searching his eyes. “I love you too.”
Releasing a shuddering breath, Cecine murmured “Thank the Powers” before pulling him close again and kissing his lips one more time. “And thank you, Hastion, for more than I can ever repay.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cecine’s staff managed to throw together a breakfast feast for a dozen in less than ten minutes, though the twins never really woke up enough to do it justice. Monica said they’d hardly slept at all during their adventure, and whenever Mark tried to hold them their irritable fussing had escalated to screams of outrage.
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“Their mommy didn’t raise any dummies,” Shelley had declared with a grin.
Cradling the precious weight of her son in her arms, she looked around the long table, basking in an unbelievable sense of contentment and belonging. To her left, in his customary spot at the head of the table, Cecine held Kallie in one arm as he sipped from his mug, grinning at something Shauss had said. Across from her, Hastion chuckled as he lounged back in his chair, his fingers laced loosely over his flat belly, and behind him, the ocean sparkled brightly in the morning sun as if it were amused too.
This was all hers. They were all hers. It was a brand-new world, and it seemed she might be a brand-new Shelley. Despite facing some of the bleakest, most terrifying moments of her life over the last few days, she’d never once had to concentrate on riding the dragon. She’d just handled everything as it came, rolling with the punches and even delivering a few punches of her own. She’d sent Hastion after her children. She’d let Shauss hold her. She’d taken control of Cecine. Hell, she’d even kissed Lieutenant Zannen.
Maybe she really had become the dragon.
“What are you thinking about, szisdagya?” Cecine murmured, sliding his fingers into hers.
“Dragons,” she admitted with a smile. “And how happy I am.”
Hastion smiled too. “Little dragon. That suits you perfectly.”
“It does indeed,” Kellen said. Then he startled the hell out of Shelley by pulling her over to plant a warm kiss on her temple. “I’m delighted the minister had the good sense to claim you, Shelley.”
“Um, me too,” she murmured, blushing.
“Unfortunately, I’m going to have to spoil the mood,” he said. “There’s the matter of Empran to be dealt with.”
Cecine sighed. “Agreed.”
Shelley’s stomach contracted and she hugged Wyatt’s sleeping body closer. She couldn’t regret having her children back safely, but she hated that the cost for Empran would be so high.
“Wait, what are you talking about?” Monica leaned forward to look around Kellen at Shelley. “What’s he talking about?”
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