by Layla Nash
Rowan twitched and gripped the arms of her seat. Jess glanced back at her, eyebrows arched, and the engineer’s face reddened. She didn’t look at anyone or say anything, though, and after a beat, Trazzak answered without inflection. “Quite a way from the main city. We’ll be in the middle of the desert.”
“Wonderful,” Mrax said. “And is there a resort of some kind? A hotel? Or are we all going to sleep in this craft?”
Jess laughed. “No, there’s a… well, you could maybe call it a cabin with half the building underground and half above ground. It’s not exactly comfortable, but it’s better than tents or the ship.”
A cabin. He didn’t like camping, even when he was back on Xarav and relied on the traditional tents, because life was so much more comfortable with a little luxury. Mrax rubbed his shoulder where a few of his scales had been removed by the Alliance during his years in prison, and watched the viewing screen as the fighter swooped low over the surface of Dablon and cruised along a flat, desert landscape. “How many ships are we supposed to come up with?”
“Half a dozen, if we can,” Trazzak said. “Fly at least one out, and have the others running so someone else can pick them up. We officially own the boneyard, although there’s a corporation nearby that does a lot of research into weapons and protective systems. They had some stealth technology we wanted to purchase, but it cost more than all of Xarav has.”
Jess sighed and rubbed her forehead. “Yeah. Creepy as fuck, they were.”
“Great.” Mrax could just imagine all the ways that a suspicious, arms-dealing corporation would handle a bunch of newcomers poking around in their backyard. Between that challenge and Rowan’s propensity for putting herself in life-threatening situations, he’d have his work cut out for him.
Before he could voice his displeasure, though, Rowan whispered, “Holy cow.”
Mrax didn’t know what that meant, since his grasp of Earther idioms was not strong even on a good day, but he glanced over to see whether the engineer was afraid, excited, discontent, or something else entirely.
It was joy. Sheer, unadulterated joy—pure and overwhelming. She leaned out of her seat to peer out a porthole at the ground below, her whole body practically vibrating with the need to move and explore. Mrax craned his neck to see what she saw, and held his breath as Trazzak slowed the ship and made a lazy circle around a patch of desert crowded with rusted metal lumps, twisted airframes, and various other bits of machinery.
So that was what made the engineer quiet and more intense than usual—the boneyard of dozens of spaceships, airplanes, surface-runners, and every other sort of machine imaginable. For a moment he was jealous of her enthusiasm, and the depth at which she loved machines and technology. Mrax didn’t really feel that about anything, not anymore.
Rowan pressed her fingers against the porthole, her forehead squeezed against the reinforced surface. “Wow. Is that…all for us?”
“All for me” was what she really wanted to say, he knew. Mrax couldn’t help himself; he started to smile, amused at her excitement, like a child waiting for a gift to be delivered. She could see it, it was so close, and yet she couldn’t touch it yet. Or perhaps... It reminded him of a popular Xarav saying: He looked like he saw the afterlife and it was bad.
Well, Rowan looked as though she’d seen the afterlife and it was good. Everything she wanted and more.
Rowan couldn’t be distracted from the boneyard as Trazzak guided the fighter through the tangle of wires and machinery to set down near what looked like a pile of discarded lumber. But Jess half-turned in her seat to say something and instead caught Mrax smiling as he watched Rowan. When Jess started grinning, on the verge of calling him out, Mrax scowled and folded his arms over his chest, wanting to dare her to say something. Jess chuckled and turned to face the front of the ship, reaching out to run her fingers along the back of Trazzak’s arm, and Mrax’s scowl deepened. It would be a long trip. It already felt like an eternity, and they hadn’t even gotten started.
Chapter 9
Rowan
Rowan had never seen anything as mesmerizing as the boneyard. She’d seen plenty of chopped-up ships of all stripes but never so many in one place, and all... all of them hers to explore. Hers to piece together and improve and modify. She shivered in excitement. There wasn’t much daylight left, but she could definitely get started cataloguing the different makes and models if she could figure them out.
She reached for her safety belt to unbuckle it but froze as Mrax leaned over and re-latched it. “Not yet.”
“It’s fine,” Rowan said under her breath. She tried to undo it again so she could jump into the back of the ship to watch as they descended. She wouldn’t get as good a view from anywhere else, and she needed to see where to start.
Mrax caught her hand and again refastened the belt. “I’m the medical officer here. It’s too dangerous to get up until we’ve landed. With the way Trazzak flies, you could end up paralyzed.”
She pulled away quickly, distracted by the friction of his scales against her skin, and moved to the very edge of her seat away from him, trying to focus on the ships. Soon she’d be able to run free through the empty boneyard, surrounded only by machines and scrap metal and her tools, and wouldn’t have to worry about making conversation with anyone or pretending like she could sit still for longer than half a second. She could burn as much energy as she wanted and there wouldn’t be anyone close enough to notice.
As long as Mrax didn’t insist on following her around the whole time.
Rowan ignored that stray thought as more energy and plans boiled up from her toes. There was so much she could do. So much to create and tear apart and learn from. She clenched her knees to try and still the urge to bounce her legs and launch right out of the seat. She didn’t know what the hell Mrax was talking about, because Trazzak was literally the slowest fighter pilot in the entire damn universe.
The ship descended with agonizing slowness near the abandoned wood which was apparently the “cabin” Jess had referred to. It definitely didn’t look anything like the hunting cabin she’d occasionally gone to with her brothers, or any of the fancy cabins that rich people owned.
It still felt like Christmas— the few times her family celebrated it together—as the abandoned ships grew closer. Waking up too early to leave her bed but almost late for chores, her stomach shivering with excitement over the possibility of a present with her name on it... Rowan shivered again in sympathy with the memory, feeling the anxiety and joy all the way to her toes, and gnawed on her lower lip as the ship finally touched down.
She ripped off her belt and launched to her feet, trying to jump over her seat so she could deploy the ramp and finally get after those beautiful machines. But instead she slammed into Mrax’s broad chest and he gripped her shoulders to keep her from getting anywhere. “Slow down.”
Rowan scowled at his chest and tried to twist free. “I don’t remember you being made captain of this mission. Let me go.”
“No, but I’m the captain,” Trazzak said in his deep voice. He adjusted some of the controls and then unbuckled his safety harness so he could get to his feet and loom over her. “And you will take it easy, Rowan.”
She vibrated with energy and the need to get out of that tiny damn ship. “I am. I’m taking it easy. I just need to get off this ship. This is why you brought me, right? Find the ships we can salvage. So let me get to work.”
“It’s almost dark,” Jess said. She picked up a few bags and deployed the ramp without looking at her mate or the other Xaravian. “We’re going to get the cabin livable and then turn in for the night so we can start fresh tomorrow morning. No adventures tonight, Rowan.”
She hated when people told her what to do—which was also why she’d been court-martialed more than once. Rowan clenched her jaw. “There’s plenty of light to—”
Jess slid her arm around Rowan’s waist and tugged her toward the ramp. “Maybe, but we need to fix stuff up inside the cabin. If I
remember correctly, the environmental controls were a bit finicky and needed some fine-tuning. It’s going to be hot as hell tomorrow, so we need to make sure we’ll be comfortable. Right?”
Rowan knew perfectly well when she was being placated, and instead of crawling down below the surface into a dingy cabin, she wanted to sprint. To fly. To race in circles until she sent all that energy back into the universe. But Jess squeezed her close and dragged her down the ramp.
As soon as her boots hit the dirt, Rowan craned her neck to check out the piles of scrap parts and twisted metal that created a privacy fence around the “cabin.” It was practically a mountain of possibilities...
“I swear, girl, you’re killing me.” Jess grinned to take the sting out of it as her arm tightened around Rowan the second she drifted toward the scrap, and led the way toward what turned out to be a door in the ground.
Inside, Jess flipped on some lights and tossed the bags in a corner, frowning as she looked around. Rowan’s nose wrinkled. Dust covered every visible inch of the place, there were still dirty dishes in the kitchen, and it definitely didn’t look big enough for four people. Rowan peered at the climate control system mounted to the wall near the door. “I, uh, can stay in the ship. I don’t mind.”
“We’re all staying here,” Trazzak said. His dark eyebrow arched. “Since we still need the fighter to fly back to the Galaxos.”
“I wouldn’t break it,” Rowan muttered. She retrieved some of her tools from the heavy bag that Mrax dragged in, and pried the panel off the climate exchange. “I fix stuff.”
Trazzak didn’t say anything about that but shook his head and shared a dark look with Jess. “You can get started on dinner.”
She gave him a dark look right back. “Oh really. I can? How thoughtful of you.”
“Mrax and I will clear out the bedrooms,” he said.
Rowan stayed still as she stared into the guts of the climate exchange. What if they started fighting? The door was pretty far away, and Mrax remained between her and freedom. No telling who he’d side with if things got dicey, other than against her. She held her breath and gripped her screwdriver tighter, waiting for Jess to make her move.
Chapter 10
Mrax
Mrax listened to the exchange between Trazzak and his mate with only a slight degree of interest, with more of his attention focused on the nervous engineer poking around in a mess of wires and coils in a box by the door, and he glanced into the back of the cabin to figure out how many bedrooms they’d have to clean out. He didn’t mind handling dinner instead of cleaning shit, so part of him didn’t care if Trazzak lost the argument.
But his senses heightened as he caught Rowan trembling. Trembling? Was the girl afraid of Trazzak or Jess or all of them? It was quite a change from the engineer who’d faced him down in the ship and challenged his orders. Asked who made him captain. His mouth twitched in a smile at the memory, along with the shocked expression on her face when he prevented her from racing onto a hostile planet without testing the atmosphere.
Trazzak and Jess argued about who would do what, until Mrax heaved a sigh. “I’ll cook. You two go clean.”
Trazzak frowned at him, about to start arguing again, but Jess said, “Great idea,” and dragged Trazzak into the back of the cabin. Mrax shook his head and hoped they at least closed the door before they started mating. It would make things unbelievably awkward if he and Rowan had to sit there and eat dinner while the other two moaned and screamed with passion.
Except Rowan stayed frozen near the box, her attention on where the two disappeared, with the screwdriver forgotten in her hand.
Mrax carefully moved around her to reach the kitchen, though she still jerked with surprise when he came within a few feet of her, and Mrax stuffed down a sudden aggressive growl that tried to surface. Her being so jumpy made him search for a threat, expecting danger around every corner; he’d get no rest at all unless the girl settled down.
He cast his mind back to the various medical training seminars he’d attended, and sorted through possible sedatives and other treatments to help her manage what appeared to be a hell of a lot of anxiety and fear.
But Mrax had to admit that when she focused and worked quietly, Rowan was a talented engineer. She fixed the ancient climate control system before he’d finished making dinner, and began to tinker with the lighting and security systems that operated from a panel across the room. It put her closer to him, though, and she shied away when he moved. He started to wonder whether she got that nervous around everyone or just him. He couldn’t remember the engineer being particularly jumpy around the rest of the crew, and certainly not around Adhz or Kolzz or Frrar.
He frowned as he dumped more grain into the pot of boiling water, needing something bland to balance the maelstrom of spiciness that accompanied the red paste he put on the meat, and ran through their previous interactions to see whether he’d perhaps given her reason to be anxious. Nothing stood out, but he couldn’t tell with the Earthers—or females in general—what would set them off.
Mrax glanced at her in his peripheral vision and caught her deep in concentration, the tip of her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth, as she pried off metal components and hauled wires and connectors out of the panel. The medical knowledge that always circulated in his head started to search for clues as to what might afflict her, since he couldn’t figure out an environmental or relational reason for her nervousness. Some kind of generalized anxiety might affect the Earthers more so than Xaravians, who tended to deal with anxiety with violence. He pondered trying to contact Maisy, since she clearly had more experience with treating Earthers in general and women in particular, but it would be difficult to explain why he needed to know.
Everyone knew he didn’t care for women and most assumed that was particular to the Earther women, and Mrax didn’t want to change that perception. Life was easier the way it was, and he didn’t want to invite the complication of a female into his life, whether that was as a colleague or friend or… something else entirely.
The memory of her skin and the fragility of her ribs as she lay unconscious surfaced quickly and distracted him from the food in front of him. For someone as tough and apparently unaware of physical danger, she was so damn fragile. Unprotected. He grumbled to himself and flipped some of the meat as it grilled, listening with half his attention to where Trazzak and Jess had disappeared. They’d been gone a while and yet the rooms were remarkably quiet for being cleaned and prepped for use. He shook his head. Unbelievable. If it wouldn’t have probably sent Rowan into a panic attack, he would have suggested that the mated couple stay in the ship so their noise wouldn’t disturb everyone else.
“You’re missing scales,” Rowan said abruptly.
Mrax raised his eyebrows as he glanced back at her. “Yes.”
He waited as she continued to look at him, and a hint of red traveled up her throat to her cheeks. When she wasn’t on the verge of panic, the nervousness was a very tiny bit enchanting. He liked thinking he made her nervous, if she wasn’t truly terrified of him.
Rowan cleared her throat and absently reached out to touch the spot on his shoulder and back where the scales were missing, and Mrax went very still. Her soft, small fingers drifted over the vulnerable skin and poked a bit at where the other scales overlapped. He got the feeling he’d turned into an engineering problem as she leaned closer, breathing against him as she studied the other scales. “Huh. How were they removed?”
He hardly breathed and definitely didn’t reach to do anything with dinner as she sidled closer and braced her other hand on his arm so she could move it and see how the scales adjusted with the tensing and relaxing of his muscles. “Torture.”
She blinked and looked up at him, eyebrows drawn together. “Huh?”
“I was held in an Alliance prison,” he said quietly. “They ripped out scales to get us to talk.”
“Oh.” Rowan blinked at him more with those miraculous brown eyes, so warm and w
ide, then went back to studying his scales. “What did they use?”
Mrax wanted to laugh at her lack of reaction; she couldn’t stand still when he moved, but she took his prison sentence and torture in stride with nothing more than a soft huff of comprehension. His mouth twitched but he maintained his composure. He didn’t want to scare her for real. “Tore them out. Pliers of some kind.”
Her head tilted and she tugged on one of the neighboring scales. “Does that hurt?”
On the contrary. Her touch sent shivers all the way through him and the edges of his scales swirled with purple. Lust. He had never been touched like that before, and certainly not in the scarred area where his scales had disappeared and never regrown. Most Xaravians were so horrified by the possibility of losing their scales that they wouldn’t even look at the barren patches. Only his crewmates never looked away or checked their own scales to make sure they were not similarly afflicted. He’d never thought a female would have the courage to touch the unprotected, very sensitive gray-blue skin.
Mrax cleared his throat a few times and shook his head. “No.”
He didn’t dare tell her that it made his hair stand on end in a very good way.
Rowan made a thoughtful sound and moved his shoulder, bending him over a touch so she could tilt his back into the light. She even clambered onto one of the rickety chairs so she could peer down at the missing scales from a different angle. Mrax remained hyperaware of her proximity, and the chair put her hips at the perfect height to be grabbed. Squeezed. Perhaps dragged closer so he could…
He bit the inside of his cheek until it bled. He couldn’t let his scales change, otherwise the girl would notice, and if Trazzak and Jess returned they would notice…
Rowan gnawed on her lip and leaned against his shoulder as she searched for another angle, lifting the adjacent scales to search for something, and the soft heft of her breasts rested against his arm and shoulder. She seemed completely unaware, totally focused on the project in front of her. He had a moment to be completely puzzled by the change in attitude before her head shot up and she sniffed the air. “Is something burning?”