by Reagan Woods
The sonishower beeped, signaling the end of the cycle and she burst out the sliding door into the cabin. Frustrated anger carrying her into the room like a shot.
“Wha-?” Lyon sat up quickly, eyes half blind with sleep.
Ignoring him, Nora stomped to her pile of clothing and snagged her pants. This was another humiliation. Their shipsuits could be worn into the sonishower and laundered while her clothes got grubby every day. There was a clothing refresher, but it didn’t do near the job old fashioned soap and water would. Living the nomadic life had been cleaner than this, she grumbled internally.
The Lyarans had cut off her only solid avenue of communication by shutting down the translation system and all but isolated her in this room. That told her that for whatever reason they didn’t feel comfortable pushing her out an airlock, but whenever they got where they were going, she needed to be able to defend herself both physically and mentally.
Mental fatigue plagued her. Most of her time was spent learning the complex and tongue twisting Lyaran language. It was unlike any other language she’d learned before with the time between syllables being as important as pronunciation.
She knew she was making progress when she’d begun to dream in Lyaran. Now, she often caught herself thinking in the alien tongue. There was still a long way to go to be one hundred percent fluent. The threat of total isolation, of total ignorance to her situation, was a great motivator. There was no way she would voluntarily face that again.
Physically, she constantly ached from the prison-style exercise routine she forced herself through at least twice daily. Planks, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups and anything else she could think of went into her quest for a tough physique.
The biggest change wasn’t in her body, but in her mind. The optimistic girl she’d been was gone. In her place was an almost feral woman with a chip on her shoulder.
She was tired of being cooped up in this ship, in this room, with these aliens. Not knowing if they trusted her ate at her, certainly, but she knew she hadn’t placed the homing device in her own boot. So, who had? Was someone trying to frame her or to kill her? Or simply to drive her mad?
All these concerns festered because the fuckers had cut off her only avenue of communication. If she wanted to speak of her concerns, she had to learn Lyaran faster, and damnit all, she needed to practice with a live person more.
Theoretically, that wasn’t an issue as either Lyon or Zocan was nearly always with her. One or the other, usually Zocan, slept next to her in the giant bed at night. She was becoming accustomed to sleeping next to the untrusting jerk. At first, being in that kind of constant proximity to such handsome males was intimidating. She was over it now – or mostly. Her belly only fluttered with attraction every now and again these days.
Lyon usually returned to the cabin to catch some sleep while she put herself through the physical and mental rigors of what passed for daytime on the ship. When he awoke, he quizzed her in Lyaran over what she’d studied. Overall, they behaved like pleasant, attentive friends with a hint of schoolmaster thrown in for good measure.
But they weren’t friends, or roommates even. They were prison guards. Sexy, bastard prison guards.
The hot ball of resentment in her stomach was something she tried to shield from view even as she fed it.
At some point, the tension simmering in the air was bound to boil over. Either they’d get tired of babysitting her or whomever was gunning for her would come at her directly. While she might be trapped, she wasn’t going to be a helpless victim. Nor was she going to rely on blind luck or fortunate timing. This time, she was going to be the badass.
Lyon scrubbed a hand over his face. “Whazamatter?”
“Go back to sleep,” she advised grimly, not in the mood for company. Sticking her foot into her poorly repaired boot, she snarled as one of the ugly cross-stitches gave. It would have to be repaired. Again.
He swung long legs over the edge of the bed and replied testily, “Who can sleep with you stomping around?”
“Maybe if you’d let me out of this room, I could take my stomping elsewhere. Did you ever think of that?” She snapped, whipping around to face him. Heedless of her state of undress – topless and missing one boot – she marched over to poke him in the middle of his solid, sliver-clad chest as the anger and frustration poured out. “I can’t take this anymore. I’m not some pet that you can lock away in a cage all day.”
When he did nothing more than stare at her dumbly, she glanced down and then rolled her eyes heavenward. “Males.” Snapping her fingers in front of his face, she barked, “My eyes are up here!”
“So they are,” he agreed, trying and failing a few times to tear his gaze away from her naked breasts before he finally managed to raise his eyes long enough to meet her exasperated stare. “Er – what were you saying? You’re unhappy with your accommodations?”
“You might have forgotten that it was me who got us this ship, but I haven’t. ME.” She beat a fist between her breasts to emphasize her point. That only served to draw his attention down once again. “I should have taken my chances with Vrenti and the CGA,” she growled. “Instead, I’m locked in this stupid cabin with either you or Zocan for company. You never let me out, never tell me what’s going on. I’ve had it!”
“Did you ever stop and think that Zocan and I are guarding you from further…mishaps or misunderstandings?” Lyon pointed out all too reasonably.
Nora wasn’t in the mood to be reasonable, but she couldn’t focus with the strange way his eyes kept roving over her. Quickly, she whirled away and snatched her tunic up to slip it over her head.
“Oh, now why’d you have to go and do that,” Lyon complained bitterly. “If we’re going to argue, I should get to enjoy the view.”
She pinned him with an angry look, prepared to verbally flay the skin from his bones when she noticed the smile he was trying to suppress. Mirth danced in his eyes, and against her will, she found herself smiling back at him. Then, they were both laughing.
“You suck.” Nora turned away and tried to catch her breath between the waning chuckles. “You’re so good at diffusing my temper. I don’t know how you do it.” She knuckled a stray tear from her eye, grateful for the temporary relief of the tension building inside her. “I was so angry I forgot that you aren’t even attracted to females.”
Chapter 37
Zocan’s mood was foul as he stalked toward the stateroom he shared with Nora and Lyon. He’d turned command of the ship over to Natar and Z’cari. Either he or Lyon had been at the helm since the day they’d found the homing device in Nora’s boot – for all the good their vigilance had done.
Initially, the back trace on the device had failed. As had every attempt since. Without the superior tech they’d had aboard the Nom’magata – and the two psychic members of their crew, they were severely hobbled on the counter espionage front.
They’d tried duplicating the tracker’s signal with hopes of boosting it and following it back to the receiver to no avail. So, desperate to force a move, he’d taken them back into the Dead Zone past the point where they’d destroyed the CORANOS assassin’s ship. He reasoned it was the very last place the assassin would be looking for them, so he would be able to lure this unknown enemy into the open.
Nothing happened. No one came for them. It made no sense. His instincts were usually spot-on about such things. Or so he’d believed. Now, he was forced to admit he’d relied heavily on Ssszit and Lara’s psychic abilities – perhaps too heavily.
The deathblow to his plans to flush out their unseen enemy had come mere hours ago when the homing beacon had simply stopped transmitting. Zocan didn’t know what to make of that and he needed to confer with Lyon. A strategy session wasn’t the only thing he needed his mate for. He was out of ideas and out of patience.
They were accustomed to working in tense situations and going long stretches without intimate interludes, but this was getting out of hand. It was near impossible to find privacy
on this ship even if they could manage a few moments alone. Normally, they’d simply take their release when they could get a spare moment someplace like the cargo hold, but they’d tacitly agreed to keep distractions to a minimum. Zocan bitterly regretted that now.
Lyon was also unmatched in hand-to-hand combat. Oftentimes, they would work through their aggressions and clear their heads with a round or two of Po’nadi, the form of martial arts developed on Lyara, but there was no place for them to spar on the Tetraglide.
Frustration was his default emotion at this point. Sleeping next to Nora every night didn’t help. Her scent, sweet and warm, combined with the lingering musk of Lyon on the sheets made for long nights.
Nora spoke in her sleep, nonsense words that made him believe her mind was working hard to assimilate the Lyaran she’d been learning. Rather than finding her ramblings annoying, he found it endearing. In short, the carefully constructed walls he’d used to hold her at bay were eroding before his very eyes. He couldn’t find the will to care.
He’d had a grudging respect for her since they’d found her. That had grown into an unwilling affection for the resilient female. These last weeks, he’d come to admire her determination to meet her future head-on.
Now, he stood in the doorway of the cabin and met Lyon’s sardonic gaze. He’d walked in to hear riotous laughter and listened with twisted amusement to Nora’s assertion that Lyon couldn’t be attracted to a female. His mind went blank for a moment as he tried to motivate his tired brain to decide if it was worth the effort of correcting her erroneous assumption.
She stood, one boot on and her tunic slightly askew, her mouth laughing and a pretty flush over her sharp cheeks. When she caught sight of him, her smile widened as she arranged herself beside Lyon where she could easily study him. As she did, worry clouded her eyes. Her smile dropped into a concerned frown. “You’re early, Zocan. Is everything alright?”
It hit him, as she crossed to him and gently took his elbow to guide him to the sleep surface, that he might just love her. No, he realized with awe, he did love her. That was…inconvenient.
“Here. Sit down, now,” she was saying as she pressed him toward the only place to sit – the sleep surface. “Tell us what’s wrong.”
Lyon watched him with knowing eyes, but Nora was adorably oblivious to the effect she had on him – on them both. She sat next to him and took his hand supportively. “Zocan?”
He cleared his throat and met Lyon’s steady stare. “The homing beacon stopped transmitting.”
Lyon frowned, crossing his arms over his broad chest and taking up the wide stance he often used when assessing a problem. He made an awesome picture even in bare feet. “We were going to destroy it eventually.”
“Yes, but I’d hoped to force another confrontation first,” Zocan reminded him wearily. “We’ve lost that opportunity.”
Nora patted his knee consolingly. “What will you do now?” Her accent was atrocious. She spoke their words with a hard bark instead of the sibilant flow of his people, but he understood her. That was a vast improvement.
“I don’t know,” Zocan admitted, closing his gritty eyes to gather his thoughts. “We obviously can’t go to the colony now.”
“What colony?” Nora wanted to know. When Zocan opened his eyes, she was looking to Lyon for an answer.
“There is a Lyaran colony,” Zocan explained, eager to have her attention back. “Its location is secret because that’s where the mated trinepacts that remain have settled to raise their young. They are our future.”
Nora sent an uncertain glance between them. “What’s a trinepact?”
“A mated triad,” Lyon answered with another pointed look at Zocan. “Two males and a female.”
They both watched as realization washed over Nora’s open face.
“Oh.” She laughed self-consciously, pulling away from Zocan to rub her hands on her thighs. Her gaze bounced around the cabin as though seeking someplace safe to land.
“Wait.” She held up a hand, her eyes going first to Lyon and then meeting Zocan’s stare. “So. This homing device thing? It kept you from going to your colony?”
“Initially, we’d planned on simply disappearing for a bit, waiting out the CORANOS assassin. Then, we got into an altercation with the Priests of Ashwamei and stole their ship as you know. We hadn’t planned on bringing Z’cari and Natar with us. They were supposed to remain in place on Xani, but they would have been killed had they stayed.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“It’s probably best if you start from the beginning,” Lyon advised with a challenging look. Zocan knew his mate well enough to realize that Lyon was done treating Nora like an untouchable outsider. If they were to broach a relationship with her, then she needed to know exactly what she was into if she stayed with them – or as much of it as they could comfortably relay.
“You’ve heard us speak of Hash-Han and how he destroyed our planet while our military branch was conducting wargames in deep space,” he began, going all the way back to the beginning. Though, he did hold back the information that he was a military commander and the Lyaran King’s youngest son. His survival was not something he wanted advertised to the universe at large.
“Yes.” Nora nodded. “The Novink…um the Warlords – right?” At Lyon’s nod, she continued, “They destroyed your world but some of you guys – the military types, I guess – were off planet?”
“Hash-Han sent his Warlords to hunt us down and we took heavy losses,” Zocan continued. “We devised a system to keep the fully-realized trinepacts safe.”
“The colony is for families only.” She caught on quickly, Zocan noted.
“Yes.” He pushed to his feet so he could pace the small area. Her nearness was distracting. “Single males and mated pairs like Lyon and I scattered. Some of us worked in procurement while others like Z’cari and Natar forged relationships in places where goods could be sold, and information might be bought.”
“You’re saying that the four of you are part of a pirating network,” Nora summarized, her head tilted charmingly as she processed his words.
“That’s the gist of it, yes,” Lyon agreed, legs in a wide stance and arms crossed as he watched her for a reaction.
Briefly, Zocan explained that their primary goal was to raise funds for the colony with the side benefit of keeping track of Hash-Han – and to some degree, making Hash-Han finance their survival as they enjoyed stealing from him.
“We found a badly damaged CGA Warship. It looked like easy pickings for salvage,” Zocan outlined how they’d lost Lara to Vank and found Bram and Lacy.
Blinking several times in succession, Nora held up a hand to indicate he should pause. “Woah. That’s a lot of information.” She took a breath. “Who is Lara, again?”
“Lara is an Earther and a powerful psychic. Because of her unique abilities and her contacts in VENTIX space, we were able to be much more proactive in situations like this. Losing her and Ssszit, our Tixerian crew member, as well as losing our customized ship in so short a time has severely crippled our abilities both to do our jobs and to avoid capture.”
“In short, finding the wreck was the beginning of the end for us,” Lyon took up the story when Zocan paused to gather his thoughts again. “Like Zocan said, we intended to take a hiatus from pirating and then come back strong, but the Xanites ambushed Bram. We found him on the brink of death and Lacy – I think the best way to say it was that she had a lot of rage inside. She slaughtered the temple priests and we all had to run or stay and be eaten. We couldn’t hold the Xanites off forever.”
“Everyone split-up. You took the priests’ ship,” Nora concluded, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her cheek on them. “And you found me.”
Zocan didn’t like the sadness he saw in her eyes. Without thinking, he sat down and slipped an arm over her shoulders. “That was the highlight in an otherwise terrible day.”
She pulled back to look him in the eye, “I can see
why you weren’t thrilled, but I’m thankful you let me live.”
Chapter 38
Lyon saw that Nora’s quiet words struck Zocan like a physical blow as he drew away from her, a stiff smile on his face. He knew his mate well enough to understand that Zocan was falling in love with the Earther.
It was glaringly obvious that Nora had no idea that she was the object of their desire – and why would she? This was the first time the three of them had had a full conversation since he and Zocan shut down the translator.
He felt similarly chastised by her words, but it was clear she wasn’t attuned to their reactions by the earnest, wide-eyed look on her face. Before he could formulate a way to clear the air, she began to question them, “How did an Earther have contacts in – um – VENTIX? – space? Isn’t that Hash-Han’s empire?”
“Lara was taken from Earth as a young girl,” Zocan answered. “Hash-Han has sent Novink War Lords to various planets to harvest psychic females for millennia. He swept Lara up in what is known as a ‘collection period’.”
“Huh. Alien abductions back in the day weren’t a hoax? Interesting.” Nora frowned and sat up straighter on the sleep surface. “So, he knows where Earth is? And you don’t?” Her words carried a note of skepticism that he didn’t care for.
Lyon narrowed his eyes at the implication that they were lying to her. “He has kept the locations of these planets to himself, and because the planets are so far removed from universal shipping lanes, no one really knows how many or what kind of females he has,” Lyon answered crisply.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” she retorted drily. “I’m just trying to get a clear picture of what happened. I still don’t understand how this Lara got from Hash-Han’s hands into yours.”
It was Lyon’s turn to frown. “I do not wear these panties you speak of. How do they twist?”
Nora pressed a hand to her forehead, her cheeks turning a dusky pink. “It’s a figure of speech. Never mind. Back to Lara: did you buy her or something?”