by Presley Hall
When I jump onto the shelf of the corridor, one of the raiders drops Charlotte as they all turn to face me.
I don’t bristle.
I don’t roar.
I just start shooting.
Two men collapse, dead before they hit the floor, and two disappear over the torn side of the ship, scrambling back down to the clearing below. One chases after Charlotte as she runs down the corridor, and one squares off with me.
He is in my way, stopping me from reaching my mate, and for that, I have no mercy.
We fire our weapons at the same time. I can feel the blaster bolt from his weapon slice through the skin somewhere in my shoulder, but I feel no pain.
My aim was better, and he staggers backward as a hole appears in his chest.
As his body goes down, I step past him and race down the hallway. Something mingles with my battle rage, something that tastes like fear. The scream that echoes through the chamber only makes it worse.
When I storm the captain’s cabin, it’s all I can do to control my urge for bloodletting. The raider has Charlotte at the point of a knife, and she’s pressed into the floor, staring up wide-eyed at her tormenter. There’s a very precise cut running down her cheek, another on her arm. It almost looks surgical.
Red fury fills my vision.
There are men on this planet who are truly monsters, and the raider in front of me is one of them.
The man looks up just as I fly at him and tackle him off of Charlotte. We land heavily, and he fights against me as I pin him down, hissing like a wild animal. He swipes at me with his knife, but I dodge the blow and grapple into a new position, straddling his body. I aim my blaster at his head, but he swings wildly again, catching my forearm with the blade and knocking my weapon off-target. My blaster bolt slices through the floor beside his head.
Pain flares in my arm, but I ignore it, dodging his next attack as my blaster charges and then aiming again.
This time, I don’t miss.
But neither does he.
Just as I fire the shot that ends his miserable life, the raider drives his blade into my stomach.
26
Charlotte
Two bodies go limp in front of me, and my heart freezes. Droth topples off the raider, the man’s blade sliding from his stomach.
The raider is dead, smoke rising from a hole in his forehead. Droth’s body sprawls on the floor, and my hands shake as I bend down to touch him. His chest rises and falls slowly, but he’s bleeding from his stomach.
I’m not a doctor, but even I can tell this is bad. Very bad. He’s losing too much blood.
I check his hip sling, my fingers desperately scrabbling inside it, but there isn’t a single one of those syringes inside.
Shit. I have to get him out of here. He needs help. I have to get him to Elizabeth.
Droth is a very heavy man. In fact, he may be the heaviest thing I’ve ever picked up, but I force my muscles to cooperate, ignoring the way my legs shake.
I sling his arm over my shoulders and half carry, half drag him to the corridor. I need Elizabeth, or one of his men. Anyone who can feasibly help. I don’t care who it is. I just know that I can’t let Droth die.
Dragging air into my lungs, I focus on my breath—because if I don’t, I’ll start crying. And now is not the time for that, even though nausea is crawling up my throat and my entire body is shaking.
He can’t die. He can’t die.
Please, please don’t leave me, Droth.
I stop at the opening of the ship. The scene below is drastically different from the chaos I saw only a few minutes ago.
The remaining raiders are running away, but they’ve got one of the women with them. Some of Droth’s men are chasing them down, and the women as well. Gunshots crack and fire, but only a few of the raiders get hit, and just like that, the battlefield stills. The raiders have stopped at the tree line, but they don’t move any farther than that. Our forces have stopped at the mid-way point between the ship and the forest.
“Now, is all of this really necessary?”
A voice like grating metal draws the attention of the entire battlefield. I narrow my eyes and search the tree line, but I don’t see the owner of the voice until he steps boldly out from behind one of the trees and into the clearing.
Below me, two of Droth’s men stand frozen below the ship. “Churbac,” one of them mutters, his angry voice floating up to me.
“I thought he was dead,” the other man replies, his tone hard.
They know this raider, obviously. Maybe they’ve faced off with him before? I remember what Droth told me about the other inhabitants of this planet, and a chill goes down my spine.
Whoever this man is, I have a feeling he’s awful.
Churbac stands as tall as any of the Voxeran men, broad shouldered and so white that his skin is almost transparent. His hairless head slicks back into a bony fringe over his eyes, and mandibles clack together when his face spreads into a slick smirk.
“Droth? Is that you?”
His voice is full of false cheer and familiarity. He raises one of his four arms to shield his eyes and peer at us from all the way across the flattened field. I grip Droth’s sagging body tighter, shielding him as best as I can from the alien’s probing gaze.
“Oh, I see.” Churbac laughs. “A pity! Who will parlay with me now?”
Raina is among those closest to the trees. She steps forward, her chin jutting out. I don’t know what this girl has been through in her life, but it’s obviously toughened her up. She must be scared—I’m scared—but she doesn’t act like it.
“Give us back Gemma,” she tells him. “And I won’t hunt you down and flay you alive later. How about that?”
“Oh, come now, girlie.” The alien raider waggles his tongue in a lascivious gesture. “All we want is your weapons and your ship. No need to be so aggressive. I think we can come to an arrangement that makes everyone happy.”
Churbac holds one of his hands out, and the girl his fellow raiders captured is shoved toward him. He grabs her by the arm, pulling her in front of him with a grin. Clearly deciding he’s done with Raina, he turns to Kaide, who’s standing closest to the edge of the clearing.
“Give us the weapons, the ship, and most of your females, and we’ll call it a fair trade. In fact, since I like you, you can keep a few of the women for yourself. I may even let you keep a blaster.”
Shit. This will end badly. I know it will.
Kaide is glaring at Churbac, and after a long moment of silence, I know he’s given an answer even without speaking.
No deal.
Churbac chuckles and shrugs. “Oh, well. I tried to be reasonable.”
Two of his four hands wrap around the girl’s jaw, and time seems to slow down as I realize he’s about to snap her neck.
Oh, God. He really is a monster.
Some of the women scream. I grab onto Droth as tight as I can, but I don’t look away. I can’t.
But before Churbac can complete the action, before he can end the poor girl’s life, a thick wooden spear buries itself into his shoulder, so fast that it’s almost like it simply appeared out of thin air.
He roars, dropping his hold on her to clutch at the spear, and the girl reacts quickly. She twists in his arms and pulls the blaster from his waist, shooting at the raiders who converge on her. Others start running toward the girl, hopping over the few remaining mines and pounding over the ground, the tall grass whipping against their feet.
The girl is running backward, shooting at the raiders who charge toward her.
But before they can reach her, Kzuri leaps forward. He catches Gemma around the waist, holding her against his body with one arm as the other wields a double-edged spear faster than I’ve ever seen anyone move. He kills two raiders before the others even reach them, and a second later, blaster fire erupts from the area near the base of the ship again.
Now that Churbac has no hostage, the women have opened fire again.
&nb
sp; I don’t think Churbac is dead. The spear went all the way through his shoulder, but the way he held Gemma in front of him made it impossible for whoever threw the weapon to pierce his heart without hitting the girl too.
Still, with their leader injured, the raiders don’t even bother fighting back. Kzuri deals a vicious blow to one more of them before they all turn to retreat. They grab the sagging body of their captain and disappear into the forest like vermin.
Silence falls, so sudden and complete that it’s almost eerie.
It’s done. We won. We’re safe.
But Droth isn’t.
My heart lurches in my chest, bile rising up my throat as a shout tears from my lips.
“Elizabeth, help me! Droth’s been stabbed!”
I look around wildly for her. She’s on the ground, not too far away, and when she glances up at me, her eyes go wide.
A Voxeran man is shielding her, but she steps past him wordlessly and hurries toward me. Others look to see where Elizabeth is sprinting, and when Droth’s men realize that their leader is hurt, they abandon their posts and rush to the ship as well.
I pray that one of them can help him.
The next several hours are agonizing. I don’t leave the makeshift med bay once, and even though I’m being a nuisance, Elizabeth doesn’t chase me out. The same can’t be said for Droth’s men, who get scolded for hovering several times.
The only one who’s allowed to stay is Kaide, and that’s because he understands the alien medical tech better than any of us.
According to Elizabeth, the actual med bay was probably on the part of the ship that broke apart from this half. Luckily, after the bird carried me off, she and the other women found a storage room on the mid-level that houses some extra pieces of equipment. Not all of it was salvageable, but what she found should be enough to heal Droth’s injuries.
I don’t know quite what they’re doing to him as they patch up his wounds. Some of what Elizabeth says makes sense to me—words I recognize from watching medical dramas on TV back home. But Kaide’s words are completely foreign, despite his translator chip.
Honestly, I don’t care.
I don’t give a shit how they do it, I just want them to keep Droth alive. To bring him back to me.
After a while, Elizabeth and Kaide share a nod. My friend walks over to me and rests a hand on my shoulder.
“He’ll be okay,” she says quietly. “He should be, anyway. This tech is…” She shakes her head, looking awed and a little shaken. “It’s pretty incredible. It was a little bit of the blind leading the blind, but Kaide helped me through it, and I think we did everything right. Now he just needs to rest.”
“Thank you.” I swallow, and she nods.
“I could tell you cared about him.” Her gray eyes soften. “I just didn’t realize how much.”
Me neither.
I don’t say the words out loud, but Elizabeth must see the emotions clouding my face, because she pulls me in for a hug. “I’m going to go make sure everyone else is okay. Kaide said the rest of the injuries are minor, but I’ll see if anyone needs patching up.”
“Okay. Can I…”
She smiles. “You stay here. I’ve got this.”
After she leaves the room, I pull up a chair so I can sit right beside the bed where Droth lies. He looks peaceful, his features relaxed and his breath easy, and that gives me a small rush of hope.
At some point, I doze next to the bed, holding Droth’s hand. I’m not even aware of falling asleep until something wakes me. My head snaps up at the feel of his thumb brushing over mine.
When I glance at the bed, Droth is sitting up and smiling at me. It’s lopsided, sweet, and I want to kiss him so much that it’s a fight to remember not to give in to the urge. I don’t want to jostle him and set back his healing.
God, what would I have done if he didn’t pull through? What would life be like? Would it even be a life at all without him there?
“My kira. I dreamed of you,” he says, his voice raspy from sleep.
“Tell me about it.” I’m still holding his other hand, and he brushes his fingers across my knuckles.
“We were on Vox. My home. We were on the mountain, watching the sun rise over the valley. You didn’t like the sand between your toes.”
“Well, I suppose that’s how you know it’s a dream.” Carefully, I stand and slip onto the bed beside him, needing to feel his body against mine. “I’m one of those weirdoes who likes sand between my toes.”
“Weirdos?”
I laugh because it’s the most accurate way to describe me and him—the Earth woman who wants to be with an alien, and the alien man who keeps putting himself in danger to save me. “Yes. It means an odd person, or people, like you.”
“Me?” He frowns, and his sleepy smile drops into the one he wears when he’s confused. I love his smiles. I wonder how many he has, and how long it will take me to count them all. “I’ve never been called odd in my life.”
I cock a challenging eyebrow. “That, in itself, is odd. I would think that plenty of people would think you’re strange, considering how much you like to throw yourself in front of lethal threats.”
He snorts a quiet laugh, but I prop myself up on one elbow and lean over him, tears burning my eyes. “Droth, I mean it. You’ve got to stop taking such huge risks on my account. I hate seeing you get hurt because of me.”
“There’s almost nothing you could ask me for that I wouldn’t give you, but I’m afraid that’s a command I’ll have to ignore,” he murmurs quietly. “If protecting you means throwing myself in front of things that want to kill you, I’ll never stop. As long as I draw breath, I will protect you, and even after that, my spirit will always shield you.”
His face is set in an even, serious expression that I’ve only seen him wear a few times. There’s deep conviction in his voice. Meaning and promise. I know he means what he says—and even if he didn’t say it, I would know by the actions he takes. He is a remarkable man, and inside of him there is the most valiant spirit I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.
I know I’m not supposed to kiss him. I’m not supposed to believe in the fated bond between us.
But I can’t help myself.
And in this moment, I don’t care whether the bond is real or not. Because my feelings are real. I know my heart. And this is what it wants.
Leaning forward to press my lips to his, I tell myself that it will only be a small kiss.
It’s not.
Not even close, and that’s entirely my fault. The moment our lips meet, I pour everything into that connection. My gratitude, my relief, my admiration, and all of the things that I’ve left unsaid between us.
He kisses me back just as deeply, and I hold on to him like he might disappear if I don’t. As our tongues slide against each other, I close my eyes and listen to what my beating heart is telling me: that I wouldn’t have wanted to live in a world where this man doesn’t exist.
That I’ve never met someone so perfect.
That I’ve never wanted someone so badly in my life.
That I need him as much as I need air, and that all of this—mate bond or no—is real.
And if Droth is right, if there is some sort of higher power that pushed us together, then it’s because we were made for one another.
We are a perfect fit.
27
Droth
Charlotte sleeps beside me on the small bed, refusing to leave my side.
I have no complaints about that. When the tall one—Elizabeth—comes back to check on my injuries, she explains that Kaide helped her utilize some of the advanced tech on the ship to heal my wounds.
Even on Vox, where our medical science is fairly advanced, we don’t have technology like this. By the time I wake up in the morning, the wound in my stomach is almost entirely healed. All that’s left is a scar.
As soon as I’m able, I leave the small med bay area and head outside, Charlotte sticking close by me. I reg
ret not having been able to oversee the aftermath of the fight. Some of the women are still suspicious of us, and I wish I could’ve been there to make sure things went smoothly.
But as it turns out, having the men and the women join forces as they have has fostered some good will. We’ve shared a battlefield together, and no matter where one comes from, that always brings a certain camaraderie. A bond.
None of the raiders have shown up again. Kzuri’s spear will have taken care of that for a while. I didn’t see his attack on Churbac, but I know it’s a story my men will be telling for quite some time.
I know he’s angry at himself for not managing to kill Churbac, but it’s no matter. Our paths have crossed with the leader of the Sentiri Raiders before, and I’m sure it won’t be the last we see of him.
Next time, we’ll end him for good.
However, Churbac’s men aren’t the only raiders out there. There are other roving groups who are just as dangerous. If we want to avoid another bloody fight, we can’t stay here for too long.
Outside the ship, the morning sun is already casting its glow over the open area of the crash site. The bodies have been cleared out, and several of my men are showing the women how to strip the ship for materials. Elizabeth calls Charlotte over, and she squeezes my hand before going to speak to her friend.
The tall woman is not the commander of this group, as I once assumed. As Charlotte explained to me last night, they have no official leader, although the women look to her and Elizabeth for guidance and help.
“We won’t be able to carry all of this back by ourselves.” I turn to Jaro, gesturing to the people stripping the spacecraft. “After we reach the village, I’ll send back more hands.”
I doubt Churbac or his men will attack again. But however remote the possibility, there might be raiders in the forest, lying in wait. I won’t send a single person into the trees unless all of us are going at the same time. Anything else would be too risky.
Jaro grunts and folds his arms. “Are you planning on asking the females to help us move the scrap? If you do that, then they’ll know where our village is.”