Chapter 1
CHAPTER
ONE
Planet Mitan
He was having a nightmare about Ungrich space . . .
Aled Price reminded himself that it wasn’t real, and that if he just woke up, all would be well. He’d be tucked up in bed with Kai Mexr, who would be hard, naked, and more than willing to start the new day with some lazy lovemaking.
He forced his eyes open.
And screamed.
“Rehz . . . just hold up a minute.”
Ignoring Kai Mexr—because damn, he had to get to Anna before anyone hurt her—Rehz Akran increased his speed and charged out into the street, scaring several pedestrians as he turned to find his vehicle.
The alarms inside the military admin building were still wailing, but no one had followed them out.
They were probably all still fussing over fucking Palk.
He really wished Kai hadn’t laid Palk out with a single punch, because he’d wanted to deal with the bastard himself.
A few hours earlier he’d returned home from buying groceries to find the door of his apartment blasted off and signs of a struggle.
It hadn’t taken him long to realize that Anna must have been taken, and exactly who had taken her and why.
He’d decided to start searching at the military hospital and had run into Kai, who was searching for Aled.
“Rehz !” Kai grabbed his arm and hauled him to a stop, dragging him around a corner into a less populated street and slamming him against the wall. “This isn’t going to work. We need to slow down and think about what we’re doing here.”
He tried to shrug off Kai’s hold. “Anna is in fucking Ungrich space. That’s all the fuck I need to know. I’m going in there and fucking destroying it.”
Kai shoved his hands flat on Rehz’s chest. “If you go in like that, you know they’ll kill you. This isn’t like you. Think .”
“Better to die together than let those fucking bastards touch my woman!” Rehz snarled. He didn’t feel like himself anymore, didn’t care how much damage he did as long as he got to Anna.
“That’s fucking stupid,” Kai said patiently. “I want to get Aled out as much as you want Anna, but I don’t intend to be a martyr.”
Rehz gave a deep, shuddering breath. “Okay. Okay . What are you suggesting we do? Turn up and knock at the door with a bunch of fricking flowers?”
“I think they’d let us in. They know us. They let us live twice.” Kai swallowed hard. “We’re going to have to use our wits rather than our fists, agreed?”
Rehz scowled at his best friend. “I’ll try it your way first, but I still prefer mine.”
Kai exhaled. “Good. Now we need to find out whether my security clearance for the Tribute facility still works.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I have a few friends who still work there. If they won’t let me in, I’ll threaten to kill them. But first I suggest we pay our good friend General Palk another visit.” Kai’s smile was lethal. “I bet he can tell us exactly what’s going on.”
Less than an hour later, he and Kai were back inside the military medical center, where everything seemed to have calmed down. Kai had used his tech skills to get them in the door and find out exactly where Palk was being treated.
“Floor thirteen. We’ll use the stairs.” Kai severed the link into the main data center. “I’ve turned off the alarms in that sector. They won’t be expecting us back here.”
“Because they’ll assume we’re at the training facility.” He cut Kai a frigid look. “Which is where we fucking should be.”
“Palk knows something.” Kai kept climbing the stairs, his breathing easy, his weapon ready. “He took Aled right out of here and no one stopped him. That either means the government is complicit in his actions or he’s fooling everyone.”
They paused on the thirteenth level, and Rehz took a quick recce of the white hallway. “He’s got to be in the room with the two guards stationed outside.”
“You think?” Kai raised his weapon. “I’ll stun them. We won’t be there for long.”
Even as Kai fired the second tranquilizer shot, Rehz raced toward the two men. He removed both their weapons, propped one of the guys on the chair beside the door to make it look like business as usual, and searched the other.
“Door’s not alarmed. Neither are the men.”
“Then let’s go and see Palk.”
Rehz opened the door, and Kai dragged the unconscious guard in with him and dumped him unceremoniously on the floor to keep the door jammed shut.
Palk lay half-upright in bed, surrounded by several machines. When Rehz smiled at him, he made a strange gurgling sound and his pupils dilated. His fingers groped for the call button that Rehz had already disabled.
Rehz tutted. “Did you break his jaw? Nice job, Kai—except now he can’t speak too well.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage to get the information you want out of him somehow.” Kai fixed his attention on the hallway. “Just hurry the fuck up.”
“Palk.” He strolled toward the man in the bed. “How are you feeling?”
The machines around the bed registered the increase in the patient’s heartbeat and started to flash various alarms. Rehz shook his head.
“Get a grip or we’ll have the whole medical staff in here to watch you die.” He pressed his weapon to the injured side of Palk’s scalp. “And you are going to die if you don’t start giving me some answers. You put Anna and Aled back into Ungrich space, didn’t you?”
Palk stared straight ahead.
Rehz wrapped his hand around the man’s throat. “I asked you a question.”
“Had no choice,” Palk wheezed.
“Fucking liar. You gave them up. But for what?”
Palk licked his swollen, bloodied lips, like something scaly from the desert.
“For what, Palk?”
“Security.”
“They’re not coming.”
“My security,” Palk whispered.
“You traded my mate to protect yourself? From fucking what ?”
“Rehz.” Kai spoke from the door. “There are more guards approaching.”
Rehz’s fingers tightened, and Palk gave a ghastly smile, then slipped into unconsciousness. For a second, Rehz contemplated intensifying his grip even more and breaking the bastard’s neck. But that could wait. Being a Tribute trainer had taught him a lot about delayed gratification.
With a curse he shoved Palk back onto his pillow and went toward Kai. “Can we get out of here?”
“If we leave now.”
“Then let’s go.”
The journey out to the training facility was accomplished with such ease that Rehz was suspicious.
Palk must know that he and Kai would be coming after their trainees.
Or was Palk stupid enough not to have noticed the bonds that had been formed?
Perhaps he was planning an ambush at the base, or there was some other reason he was willing to let them get so far.
Rehz glanced over at Kai, who was checking his weapons.
They’d both donned full body armor under their clothes and had locked and loaded every single firearm they possessed.
It was taking too long to get to her. He wanted to fight something so badly now, wanted the smell of blood and the sound of someone else’s pain . . .
The doors of the transporter slid open; he and Kai remained concealed to either side. There were no hurrying feet or guns being charged. A female voice intoned the name of the facility. He risked a quick peek and saw nothing unusual.
As the current training season had recently concluded, the place was quiet and shouldn’t come back up to strength for several months. But it always paid to be careful.
“Cover me.”
Kai stepped forward, his weapon shouldered and at the ready, and stopped the doors from closing as Rehz sprinted for the first piece of cover.
Still nothing. He beckoned Kai to join him, and they stayed hidden as the transporter moved on down the track and into a tunnel.
Kai raised his eyebrows and Rehz shrugged.
“Nothing. Not even the usual guard.”
“Let’s keep moving.”
Eventually they reached the “welcome” center, where the new Tributes were unloaded, medically examined, and processed into the program. The lights were on, and Kai had no difficulty using his codes to access the system to allow them entry.
The place felt strange now that he’d been out of the program for a cycle. He’d thought he was free from the horror of it all—thought Anna was too, but fucking Palk had interfered again. Palk had always had a thing for him, and an unholy fascination with Anna.
Unsettled by the silence, he grumbled at Kai. “If Aled Price did blab about the human DNA, I’m going to kill him.”
Kai squared off with him, his green eyes blazing. “You are fucking not going to touch him. He’s mine. We either do this together and get them both out, or we don’t do it at all.”
He met Kai’s determined gaze. “All bloody right.”
“Palk didn’t say where he’d gotten the information from. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d already known and had specifically hooked Aled into the program because of his DNA.”
“Still trying to protect your lover’s ass?”
To his annoyance, Kai grinned. “It’s a damn fine ass. But think about it, Rehz. Two Tributes with human DNA in two consecutive cycles? That’s one hell of a coincidence when we’ve all been told that planet is a myth.”
“That reminds me: let’s access the medical records first.”
Kai started moving again, his gaze alert and his attention on the silent, empty, gleaming halls ahead of them. It was downright eerie. Rehz shook off his sense of unease and followed.
The antiseptic smell of the medical treatment room made him shudder with too many bad memories. As a Tribute—and later as a trainer—he’d spent too many hours there being patched up or watching trainees be pieced back together.
Kai placed his weapon on the table and imprinted his thumb on the pad beside the screen, which immediately came to life. “What do you want first?”
“Anna’s records.”
“Specifically?”
“Her last medical after she returned from the Ungrich .”
“Hold on.”
He kept his gaze on the open doorway as Kai clicked away at the keyboard.
“Here you go.” Kai hesitated. “Maybe you’d better read it.”
“No, go ahead.”