Heartless

by Kate Rudolph

  Oh, that wasn’t a good sign, but they didn’t have time to delay. She led him straight there, settling him into his seat before finding the first aid kit that was set up against the wall. Kayde moved sluggishly, powering up the ship and engaging the launch sequence. Quinn found an injector filled with painkiller and reached for Kayde’s arm, giving him the medicine without asking for permission.

  He growled at her and she had to suppress a smile. Of course he was a surly patient, she shouldn’t have expected anything less. “How bad is the bleeding?” she asked, digging around for bandages and regen gel. She let out a little shout of victory when she found an almost full tube.

  Kayde’s breath was shaky, but his hands on the controls were steady. “It will hold while I get us in the air.”

  She could see the blood seeping into his top and wanted to fix him up right then, but she had to trust her mate. They were his injuries, and he knew his body. She sat back in her seat and stashed the first aid kit between her legs before buckling up. The nav screen in front of them was clear and they weren’t far from the gate. They could catch up with the fleet in no time and this little setback would be no more than an unpleasant memory.

  They lifted off and Quinn finally got a look at the destruction all around them. The Detyen compound was gone, completely leveled. “What happened?” The words burst out, even as her mind scrambled to find an explanation.

  “Self destruct,” said Kayde, his focus completely on the controls in front of them. “Can’t leave anything behind.”

  “For who?” She still didn’t know why they’d evacuated, or what was going on.

  Kayde groaned and a shadow passed over head. “For them,” he said as a giant warship came into view, and Quinn’s heart sank.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  KAYDE WAS ON THE VERGE of passing out, and he’d had enough of battle to last him for the next several years. He’d spent days, weeks, in the trenches before and it had never been this bad. But he’d never had his mate at his side, and keeping her safe was more important than everything else.

  The first of the Oscavian ships broke through the atmosphere and Kayde reached forward, reprogramming their trajectory and turning around 180 degrees. They were the last ship on the moon and he wasn’t about to let them get captured. He punched the speed, going as fast as he could manage while still bound by the moon’s gravity. A warning alerted him that they’d been spotted, but the giant Oscavian ship was much too slow to catch them. It could have flattened the compound in a minute, but one little speeder could outrun it with room to spare.

  And he did.

  The second they broke atmo he made the jump to FTL, the maneuver similar to how they’d escaped Beznifa. They left the Oscavians behind with no trail to follow and Kayde slumped in his chair, the buzz of the painkiller simmering in his veins even as it felt like his guts were on fire.

  Quinn didn’t wait for his okay to scuttle out of her seat and start tending to him. She gasped when she revealed the blow that Denmen had dealt him, but she slathered on regen gel like a pro, giving him murmuring reassurances that everything would be okay. With her by his side, he could almost believe it.

  “Who was that attacking? How did Laurel get on the base? Why did we have to leave?” Now that they’d reached some modicum of safety, the questions poured out of her and Kayde was more than happy to answer, but when he opened his mouth, his brain gave out and he slumped in his chair as everything faded to black.

  He couldn’t have been out for long. Quinn’s hands were clamped tightly on his shoulders, but she didn’t shake him, too aware of his wounds to rattle him too much. Kayde sucked in a deep breath as the blood pounded hard in his veins. It felt like he’d been thrown out of a high-flying speeder and was about to plunge down onto hard land with no parachute. Something dropped out of Quinn’s hand, but he was too busy trying to breathe to look at it.

  “You’re okay,” she told him, her voice firm. “We’re safe. You protected me.” Her lips brushed against his forehead, heedless of the sweat and grime he’d accumulated in the fight. “You’re all bandaged up and I gave you a stimulant to keep you awake.”

  That must have been what fell out of her hand. Kayde managed a nod as his breathing evened. His heart still beat wildly, but that too was starting to get better. “I feel like I got kicked in the chest. By a fighting bot.”

  His ever so caring mate smiled at him, a laugh in her eyes. “That’s what you get for scaring me like that.” She leaned back, letting her hand slowly trail down one of his arms before letting go. “I don’t like seeing you injured.”

  “Believe me, denya, I do not like being injured. But I would take a hundred wounds every day to keep you safe.” It was only now truly setting in that they’d escaped. He’d been moving so fast since Druath and Laurel showed up that he hadn’t had time to sit down and think. Hadn’t had time to realize just how close he’d come to losing his mate and his life.

  Quinn’s eyes softened. “I love you. And I don’t want you to take a hundred wounds for me. Let’s just avoid the fights all together.”

  “I love you, too.” He might not have said it in so many words, but he tried to show it to her in his every action. “But there are many battles yet to come, the Oscavian ships that found our base will not be satisfied with a ruin. They will pursue us.”

  Quinn bit her lip and sighed. “Is the fight ever going to be over?”

  She’d only known battle for a year or so, while Kayde had lived it every moment of his life. But for the first time since he could remember, he had hope. “It will,” he promised, “and soon. The people who attacked us might be connected to Yormas of Wreet.” He told her all that had happened, from Dru and Laurel arriving on the planet, up through the battle, filling in the blanks of the last few hours.

  “You think that Laurel is Druath’s denya?” was Quinn’s first question.

  Kayde shrugged. The regen gel burned on his side, but the painkiller he’d been given when they first boarded was doing its job, and he was able to focus. “Perhaps,” he conceded. He could remember the fury in her voice when she’d denied Dru, but that passion had to come from somewhere. “She said she wasn’t his mate. But I don’t know where she would have gotten the idea that she was.”

  Quinn looked thoughtful. “I hope she figures it out. She’s been through so much, she shouldn’t need to suffer anymore.”

  So had his own mate, but she had found a core of inner strength, and even though she’d been put through all the hells she’d shown that she had the heart of a warrior. But even warriors needed rest. “You can go and sleep,” he offered. “It will be some time until we rendezvous with the fleet.”

  Quinn reached out and placed her hand over his. “I’d rather stay here.”

  Kayde couldn’t help his smile. “There’s no other place I want you to be.”

  “Where are we going? The fleet, I mean. You didn’t say.”

  There was only one place in the galaxy that they had a chance of making a stand, one place where they’d already begun to lay the groundwork of a life and a potential alliance that could save them all, and the planet that had the best chance of saving the young of the Legion from the Denya Price. Kayde squeezed his mate’s hand before leaning forward to program in the coordinates to find the fleet, then he turned to her. “We’re going home. To Earth.”

  She met his eyes and smiled. “Everything’s going to turn out alright now, isn’t it?” It was a question, but she asked it with confidence.

  And for the first time in a long time, Kayde felt the truth in his answer. He had his mate by his side and a real home on the horizon, a place where his people could be safe. “It is.”

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  I HOPE YOU LIKED READING about Kayde and Quinn. The story con
tinues when Dru and Laurel wake up in serious danger in Faultless.

  She’s injured, he’s imprisoned, and telling friend from foe is getting harder by the second. Will the denya bond be strong enough to overcome all the obstacles between a Detyen warrior and his human mate? Find out today.

  More Detyen Warriors

  Soulless

  Ruthless

  Heartless

  Faultless

  Endless

  Want more dreamy doomed Detyens? Go back to the beginning with Ruwen: Mated to the Alien and discover the first time a Detyen found his human denya.

  Mated to the Alien

  Ruwen

  Tyral

  Stoan

  Cyborg

  Krayter

  Kayleb

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  Also by Kate Rudolph

  SCI-FI ROMANCE

  Snowed in with the Alien Beast

  Crashed

  Mated on the Moon

  Red and the Wolf

  Mated to the Alien

  Ruwen

  Tyral

  Stoan

  Cyborg

  Krayter

  Kayleb

  Detyen Warriors

  Soulless

  Ruthless

  Heartless

  Faultless

  Endless

  Paranormal Romance

  Marked

  Bear in Mind

  Alpha’s Mercy

  Gemma’s Mate

  The Mate Bundle

  The Alpha Heist

  Entangled with the Thief

  In the Alpha’s Bed

  Find more by Kate Rudolph at www.katerudolph.net

  About Kate Rudolph

  KATE RUDOLPH IS AN ex-derby girl who lives in Indiana. She loves writing about kick butt heroines and the steamy heroes who love them. She's been devouring romance novels since she was too young to be reading them and had to hide her books so no one would take them away. She couldn't imagine a better job in this world than writing romances and sharing them with her fellow readers.

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  Preview Faultless by Kate Rudolph

  Chapter One

  LAUREL WOKE UP, A SCREAM lodged in her throat, tearing at her vocal chords and doing its damnedest to get out. But she couldn’t shout, couldn’t make a peep. She didn’t want them to hear her, they couldn’t know that she was awake.

  Them? Who were they?

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and winced at the scratchiness. It felt like she hadn’t talked in ages, but that couldn’t be right. Even in this hellhole, she still had conversations with the other girls. They kept each other sane when everything around them was hell.

  What other girls?

  She tried to shake her head to clear the cobwebs, to try and put her thoughts in order, but that only sparked the giant headache lurking at the edges of her consciousness. Laurel reached up and clutched the side of her skull, surprised to find that the hair on half of her head had been shaved clear off, leaving only soft stubble.

  Why had they done that?

  Despite the piercing pain of the headache, she managed to open her eyes, and for a moment she thought she’d been blinded. Everything was white, eye scorchingly white and bright and far too much for her battered vision to handle. She squeezed her eyes shut tight once more and it took another minute to convince herself to try and see again. The second time she opened her eyes it wasn’t as bad. The room around her was still far too bright, but her eyes adjusted enough that she could start to make out the edges of tiles in the ceiling and when she turned her head she saw a cabinet built into the wall.

  She wasn’t where she was supposed to be, but for once in her life that was a good thing.

  The past several weeks—months? Laurel wasn’t sure—were one giant blur of abuse and degradation, but never in all that time had she awoken in a pristinely clean room. Especially not unbound. There wasn’t even the faintest hint of suffering in the air. All she could smell was the telltale scent of recycled air and a faint whiff of a cleaning product. She’d never realized that something as simple as that might make her feel safe.

  Confused, but safe.

  The pain in her head pounded, but she forced herself to sit up and take stock of the room around her. There were no windows, so she had no clue where she was or the time of day, but she spotted a door in the opposite wall. The place looked a bit like a doctor’s office with computer panels in the walls and a medbot charging on a hook near the door.

  Laurel looked down at herself and found fading bruises along her arms and several bandages. She ached all over and her greatest desire was to lay back down and sleep for a week, but she couldn’t do that, not until she had some idea of what was going on. She raised her hands up to her head and found that only half of her hair had been shaved, the other half hung in stringy blond hanks down to her shoulder. Her hair, what was left of it, wasn’t clean, but it wasn’t as filthily dirty as it had been back when she’d been a captive. She must have been asleep for some time if they’d washed her after she’d been recovered from...

  From where? Where had she been? What was going on?

  Laurel’s last absolutely crystal clear memory was of getting in the taxi to go to her friend Andrea’s 21st birthday at a bar in Arlington. She had a vague recollection of the consumption of a lot of alcohol and then... and then things got dicey. There were other girls and too many men, men who used them and beat them and left them to rot. And every time Laurel tried to scream, tried to run away, something stopped her, froze her in place until she was nothing but a statue.

  How was that even possible? And how had she ended up here?

  The door opposite her bed slid open with a whisper and Laurel flinched, ready for an attack, but the alien who walked in kept more than an arm’s length between them and gave her a look that was probably meant to be non-threatening. He was tall and broad; if he was from Earth she would have guessed that he played football. His skin was dark purple and his eyes were so brightly blue that they looked like the summer sky. Dark hair was held back at the base of his neck and he wore a light gray coat over a black top and pants.

  Laurel had met a few aliens in her life, but she couldn’t identify where this one came from, and while she desperately hoped that he was a friend, she was scared to do anything to make him mad and have him prove otherwise.

  “I’m so glad to see that you’re awake,” her visitor said. “You’ve been asleep for several days since we recovered you.”

  “Re—recovered?” Laurel had to clear her throat halfway through the word, her voic
e scratchy from disuse. “What’s going on? Where am I?” She reached up and clutched at the shaved side of her head, silently asking what had been done to her.

  The alien moved towards one of the walls and Laurel tracked his every step. He touched a small panel and she tensed, waiting for something bad to happen, but all he did was release a small bench from storage and take a seat. She didn’t quite let out a relieved breath, but some of her muscles unclenched.

  “My name is Brakley Varrow,” the alien said. “I’m a researcher out of the Oscavian Empire. This is my vessel.” He made a vague gesture with his hand to encompass the ship they were sitting on. It was only then that Laurel realized that he was telling her that they weren’t on any planet, they were in space. “A week ago, my team discovered you unconscious and injured. There was a control chip implanted in your head.” He raised his hand to the side of his own head, a mirror of where Laurel was shaved. “Those are nasty beasts,” he shuddered, “and half the time they go critical and overheat, frying whoever had the misfortune of being implanted. Still, slavers usually use them in at least some of their stock to make sure they can maintain a certain level of control. It seems you were the unlucky victim.”

  Laurel’s skin pebbled, suddenly cold as she comprehended how close she’d come to dying and on the edge of that welling chasm of fear was the stomach turning sickness as she thought about what exactly a control chip could have made her do.

  “I don’t remember,” she said in barely a whisper, her teeth chattering as the words escaped.

  Varrow was suddenly on his feet and between one moment and the next had a bright pink blanket in hand. He gave it to her, helping her wrap it around her shoulders. It must have had some internal heat source from the way it began to warm her almost immediately.

  “They can play havoc on memories,” Varrow told her. “An initial scan showed some minor damage to the area where the chip was implanted.”