Rogue Starfighter (Starfighter Training Academy: Second Wave #1)

Prologue

Lieutenant Vesh, Velerion Deep Reconnaissance, Moon Base Arturri

The Elite Starfighter notification hit my encrypted comm unit on day three of a five-day scouting mission. I was deep inside enemy territory, my ship tucked into a rocky cave close enough to monitor the enemy base and far enough away to run if one of their patrols picked up my signal.

Probably not far enough to escape, but I liked to pretend. My ship was built for speed and stealth, not battle. If the enemy found me, I was dead. Which was why no communication should have reached me out here. Not from Arturri. Not from anyone. The message flashed across my screen.

Pair bond confirmed. Elite Starfighter candidate matched. Reconnaissance designation: Scout. Return to base ASAP. I read it twice. Then a third time because, apparently I had forgotten how to fucking read.

“No.” This couldn't be happening. Wasn't real. I neither wanted nor needed a partner.

The orange notification light continued to blink. The message was on eternal repeat, taunting me.

“No. What if I refuse?” Rhetorical question. I'd be ridiculed for stupidity—we needed every single skilled fighter we could get our hands on, especially Elite Starfighters. After that, I'd most likely be thrown in the brig for insubordination.

Command did not care about my personal feelings on the matter.

Shocking. The light flashed again, demanding acknowledgment and painting the wet stone walls of the cave an irritating shade of orange.

I checked the security feed. No movement outside.

No Scythe patrols. No ground troops. Nothing waiting to kill me.

Yet. Then I opened the message again. Pair bond confirmed.

“Fuck.”

That did not improve the situation, either. I placed my palm against the comm panel. The sharp sting of nanotech entering my bloodstream traveled up my arm and settled at the base of my skull. Heat followed, concentrating on the back of my neck as the black Starfighter mark formed beneath my skin.

There would be no pretending the message had never arrived now. The system had marked me.

I had flown alone for six years. I liked it that way. A scout who worked alone never had to wonder if his partner was fast enough, quiet enough, or smart enough to survive. He never had to compensate for someone else’s mistakes. And he never had to watch another partner die.

The Elite Starfighter program had just assigned me a wingman. No. Not merely a wingman.

A mate.

From Earth.

Of course she was from Earth. That technologically primitive little planet had already sent Velerion three of the most reckless females in the entire war. General Aryk praised them. Half the base worshipped them. The rest had learned to get out of their way. Apparently, I was getting one of my own.

“Absolutely not.”

The mark on my neck pulsed as if laughing at me. I ignored it and opened an appeal form.

Captain Wroxxon would approve my request. Denying me anything I wanted was the man’s favorite hobby. He would probably sign the rejection of my pair bond before I finished submitting it, then call me into his office so he could enjoy the moment in person. For once, we would have agreed.

I completed the first field. Name. Rank. Current assignment. My finger hovered over the section requesting the reason for my appeal.

I could have typed that I worked alone. That a second scout would compromise my missions. That I had no interest in taking responsibility for an untested recruit from a planet that still considered interstellar travel impossible. All true. Instead, I closed the form and pulled up her file.

Due diligence. That was all. Before I rejected the match, I needed to know exactly what kind of problem the program had tried to hand me.

Her profile loaded. Priya Anand. Late twenties.

Phoenix, Arizona, United States. Earth. The image appeared a moment later, and every coherent thought in my head vanished.

She was beautiful.

Not the polished, manufactured beauty common in official profiles.

This female looked directly into the camera as if she had something more important to do and was waiting for whoever held it to hurry the hell up.

Long black hair fell over one shoulder in a glossy wave.

Her skin was a warm shade of light brown.

High cheekbones. Full lips. Dark eyes that looked calm, intelligent, and entirely too capable of seeing through a male’s lies.

Especially the lies he told himself. I leaned closer to the screen before I realized I had moved. That irritated me, so I sat back. My gaze returned to her mouth. I ordered myself to look away. Failed miserably.

My body reacted to her before my mind caught up. My pulse accelerated. My mouth went dry. My cock hardened beneath my uniform like it had been waiting years for this specific female to appear.

“Traitor,” I muttered.

Beautiful females were trouble. I knew that. Every male with functioning eyes and half a brain knew that. But beauty was not the real problem. Priya looked strong. Steady. She looked like the kind of female who would ask questions I did not want to answer and refuse to accept silence in return.

The mark on my neck warmed again. Mine. She was already mine.

“No.”

My body remained unconvinced. I forced myself to stop staring at her face and read the rest of the file.

She was an air traffic controller. Her job involved guiding primitive aircraft through crowded airspace and preventing them from colliding with one another.

Useful skills, but they did not make her a scout.

The designation bothered me more than the pair bond.

Nobody volunteered for reconnaissance. Scouts entered enemy territory without a fleet at their backs or command whispering instructions into their ears.

We survived on instinct, training, and the ability to make a decision before anyone else realized there was one to make.

Many excellent pilots could not do it. This Earth female believed she had been playing a game.

What could she possibly know about flying alone into hostile space?

I opened her training records, ready to confirm the system had made a monumental fucking mistake.

Then I stopped breathing. I reviewed her final flight log twice.

Watched the simulation. Forgot to breathe.

No. That could not be right. I opened the complete mission history and started at the beginning. She had been impatient at first. Too dependent on established flight paths. Too cautious when the enemy behaved unpredictably. Then she adapted.

Mission by mission, Priya stopped waiting for the correct route to appear. She learned to find openings that did not exist until the instant she needed them. Her final corridor run should have killed her. I had flown a similar route once and survived with damage to half my ship.

She had flown it without a scratch.

“How?”

The numbers did not answer. I replayed the simulation. Her avatar sat at the controls of the Wraith with my training construct seated beside her. She moved too fast. Cut too close to the debris. Ignored the safe route and rolled through a gap I would have sworn was too narrow. It was reckless.

It was insane. It was perfect. I watched the entire flight again.

Priya Anand was better than I was.

Not more experienced. Not better with Velerion technology.

But she had the skills no instructor could teach.

Instinct. Courage. She felt the correct path before it opened.

A weak partner would have been easy to reject.

I could have sent her back to Earth, told myself she was safer there, and returned to my missions alone.

Priya was not weak. She was exactly what the reconnaissance program needed. Worse, she was exactly what I needed in a pilot to fly the Wraith. I hated that realization almost as much as I hated how beautiful she was.

The screen returned to her profile image when the replay ended. Those dark eyes stared at me again. Calm. Patient. Waiting. Fucking daring me to go get her.

Years ago, I had obeyed the order requiring every eligible Elite Starfighter to register with the training program.

I submitted my records, completed the evaluations, and ignored every update after that.

Other fighters checked on their potential recruits.

Watched their mission logs. Recorded new voice samples with updates and advice as they progressed through their 'game.

' Waited for a match. I had wanted no part of it.

My last partnership had taught me exactly what caring cost. I had survived because someone I cared about had not. I would not make that mistake again. A mate would expect trust. Affection. Perhaps even love. I had none of those things left to give her.

Priya deserved a male who could welcome her instead of studying her file as if she were an enemy weapon.

She deserved better than me. Unfortunately, Velerion needed every Elite Starfighter the program could find.

And I had just watched her fly. She was good.

If I didn’t claim her, someone else would.

There was no chance in hell I was allowing another scout to claim her. I closed the appeal without submitting it. The mark on the back of my neck pulsed once, as if satisfied.

“Do not start with me,” I warned it.

I recalled my surveillance drones and wiped every trace of my presence from the cave. The Wraith powered up around me, engines kept low to avoid detection while I plotted a route back to Moon Base Arturri. From there, I would request the next Gate opening to Earth.

I looked at Priya’s image one last time before closing the file.

“You had better be worth the trouble, female.”