Chapter 19
ALETTA
“Gark!” She grabbed his arm, shaking him. He looked at her, eyes glazed, then blinked and seemed to come back to himself. Whatever was going on with him, he needed to get his shit together. Now.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
He stared at her for a beat, then opened his mouth as if to answer, but his wrist comm beeped.
“Captain?” It was Vox.
“Yes.”
“The transport is on a path to collide with a moon.”
Aletta gasped.
“How much time do we have?” Gark frowned.
“Twelve minutes.”
“Arik?” He hadn’t lowered his wrist comm.
The mechanic answered the comm. “Yes, boss.”
“Change of plans. Can you slow the transport down?”
“No. I think they’ve—Lady’s tits! There’s a bomb! If we change course or speed, it’ll blow.” A series of curses came over the comm.
“Leave it. We need to get as many as we can onto The Lady, and get out of here before this ship blows.”
He hit the button again, and this time the door opened with a squeal of unoiled rollers.
The room beyond was in darkness, but she knew this was the one. Aletta’s eyes streamed as the smell of too many humans packed into too small a space hit her.
She was vaguely aware of footsteps behind her and a strong arm around her middle, stopping her from entering the fetid space.
“Computer, lights to half,” Gark ordered, stepping into the cargo hold.
There were exclamations and screams from the depths of the room.
“Fuck off, you alien bastards!”
“No, no, no, no.”
And sobbing.
Aletta took a deep breath to steel herself, gagging on the putrid air. She blinked to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim light.
“Eleven minutes.”
She wanted to smash that happy-sounding AI voice into pieces.
“Dylan?” she called out.
The hold was crammed full of cages, barely bigger in size than a double bed. The first ones were empty, doors hanging open, the floor strewn with discarded clothes. A bucket in one corner had been kicked over, spilling its contents. By the smell, the bucket had been a toilet.
Aletta dragged her eyes away, a hand held to her stomach.
At the far end of the hold, there were three cages still locked. Aletta rushed forward, heedless of what awaited her. It didn’t matter as long as she found Dylan. She just wanted her sister to be ok.
And if she wasn’t?
Well, then she’d help her back on her feet.
“Dylan?”
A hand stuck through the bars of the last cage. “Letty? Oh god, Letty!”
Tears streaming down her face, Aletta rushed forward and reached through the bars to embrace her sister.
Dylan’s formerly tidy, long blond hair was a mess of dirty, knotted locks.
One eye was purple and swollen shut, and her lip was split.
Dylan smiled, a bead of blood spilling down her chin as her lip split open again.
She didn’t seem to care.
“Letty, oh god. I never thought I’d see you again.” Dylan’s voice hitched, and a lone tear spilled down her cheek, clearing a path in the grime on her face. “When they took me, I was so scared. I saw that bug thing and thought you were dead.” She gripped Aletta’s hand tightly. “Are you real?”
“I’m real. And I’m here now,” she said. She smiled through her tears. Her worst fear hadn’t come to be; Dylan was still alive.
“How did you find me?” Dylan asked, eyes as wide as saucers.
Aletta looked over her shoulder at Gark and Arik, who were testing the lock on one of the other cages. “It’s a long story—”
“Ten minutes.”
Her voice lowered. “We have to get everyone out of here, and fast. I need your help.”
Dylan nodded. “What do you need me to do?”
Aletta swallowed as she pulled back from the rusty bars and looked over the rest of the women in the hold.
They were curled on the floor, some huddled together for warmth.
A few were standing defiantly as they eyed the crew of The Lady suspiciously.
To a woman, they were filthy. Some more so than others, but all hadn’t seen a shower in days or weeks.
Some had makeshift bandages covering their injuries; none appeared to have received medical care.
Aletta frowned, forcing herself to look past the women's suffering and focus.
“Aletta?” Gark’s voice at her shoulder had her turning her head. “We’re running out of time.”
She nodded, turning back to Dylan. “How do these cages open?”
They needed to get them out. Now. Every second that passed was a second closer to their death. Everyone’s death. And Aletta was not going to let these women die. Not today. Not while she could prevent it.
Dylan shook her head, more tears falling. “They took the keys.”
“There’s no electric lock?”
“No.”
Another voice piped up, a woman with mid-brown skin and black hair, a chaos of glossy ringlets, moved to stand next to Dylan. “No. The fuckers are old school, and they taunted us with the keys when they left. Took them with them, the assholes.”
Aletta looked up at Gark with stricken eyes. “What do we do?”
Gark ran a hand over his face. Then he gripped one of the cage’s bars in his hands, muscles straining against his shirt as he tested its strength. It gave a little under his hands. Gark smiled.
“Arik?” He barked, calling the muscular mechanic over.
They each took a bar and pulled it apart, teeth gritting and tendons straining in their necks. The weld where the bar was attached to the floor gave way with a snap of rusted metal, Gark taking a step backward. He bent it out of the way and gestured for the women inside to come out.
“Jesus Christ! I’m glad he’s on our side.” The woman next to Dylan exclaimed.
“Wait, he is on our side, right?” Dylan asked as she slid sideways through the gap between the bars. She grimaced as the metal scraped against her skin. “The others looked just like him.”
Aletta nodded. “Yeah, he’s on our side.” It was a foreign feeling, having someone other than Dylan at her back, but she pushed it away. No time to examine that, they needed to get these women free and get out of here.
Arik and Gark opened the remaining cages with brute force as Aletta calmed the women, helping them free themselves. She worked with Gark side by side, like they’d been a team forever.
“Six minutes.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
They were now down to the last cage. Gark and Arik pulled the bars open, and then the women rushed out, having watched the others escape.
Gark grabbed Aletta’s hand. “Let’s go!”
But something was niggling Aletta. She needed to make sure they had everyone. It had been a chaotic whirl of people being pulled free, and she needed to make sure nobody had been left behind.
“Let me check, I’ll be quick.” She tugged her hand away, running the length of the hold to peer into the cages.
She almost missed the figure huddled in the corner of one of the last cages, but a muffled sob drew her attention.
“Gark! There’s someone here!”
The woman looked up. Tear-filled brown eyes in a round face met hers.
“We’re here to help,” Aletta said, forcing herself to remain calm despite the urgency to escape.
“Five minutes.”
“It’s no use.” The woman stood, gesturing at herself. “I won’t fit. The space is too small for me.” She laughed bitterly.
Everyone else had fit through the space, but the woman was right. She was curvy in a way that none of the others were. Aletta pulled at the bars of the cage, but they didn’t budge.
Arik nudged Aletta to one side. “Go, I’ll get her out.”
The woman’s eyes widened as she caught sight of Arik. He wasted no time, gripping the bars and straining to pull them apart. His arms bulged, tendons straining at his neck as he used all his strength. The bar didn’t budge.
Gark grabbed Aletta’s hand, tugging her away.
“Wait! What about—“
“Arik will get her out. There’s nothing you can do here.”
Gark tossed her over his shoulder, then turned and ran after Klath and Jarden, who were leading the women back to The Lady. She braced herself on his back just like she had all those weeks before when he was saving her from the Xakul.
She wanted to wail and shout. Leaving even one woman behind felt like a waste of epic proportions.
Maybe that woman had family and friends who missed her like Aletta had missed Dylan.
Maybe she didn’t. Either way, one life wasn’t just one life.
A life was precious, and Aletta couldn’t live with herself if she were someone who thought otherwise.
But there was no time. None. And they’d die if they didn’t make it back to The Lady. And if The Lady didn’t leave, then it would all have been in vain because everyone would die anyway, tethered to the transport; it would have been for nothing.
“Four minutes.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she buried her face into Gark’s back, gripping his vest in her fists.
If this was how Gark felt being responsible for so many people, she couldn’t imagine how he could stand it.
Arik’s voice came over the comm. “Go! Don’t wait for us, we’ll—” Then static cut the comm. “—escape pod—safe—"
Gark threw himself through the airlock and onto the safety of The Lady, twisting in the air and pulling Aletta to his front.
They hit the deck with a thump, both groaning as Gark slid across the deck on his back, body curled protectively around Aletta.
Klath was waiting by the airlock, slamming it shut with a bang and disconnecting the boarding tunnel.
“Get us out of here, Vox!” Gark shouted into the comm.
The pilot didn’t reply, but the sudden thrust that brought surprised shouts from the women who slid across the floor was signal enough that he’d complied.
“Fuck!” Gark swore, arms tightening around Aletta. “Lady’s tits!”
Gark growled, curling around her more tightly. His skin was hot like he was feverish, and Aletta pulled back, bracing her hands on his chest to push up and look into his face. Gark’s nostrils flared, and he buried his nose into the crook of her neck, breathing deeply.
“Gark, you have to let me go.”
He growled, the sound rumbling in his chest. His eyes were dark purple, almost black, and a sheen of sweat covered his brow. The markings on the side of his face and neck had darkened to a deep bronze, and his breath came in pants.
“Gark, look at me.”
His eyes flew to hers, the pupils pulsing with his heartbeat. His nostrils flared with every breath.
What was wrong with him?
Klath approached and then pulled up short. “Aletta?”
She turned to look at him, and Gark growled again, but this time, instead of being a purr like rumble in his chest, it had a threatening tone to it. His arms tightened again, and he bounced to his feet while holding Aletta.
“Gark!” She smacked him on the shoulder. “Put me down. Now.”
He grumbled, but lowered her to her feet, one arm wrapped protectively around her, holding her to his side. It wasn’t lost on Aletta that he’d shielded her from Klath’s view.
And then he crumpled to the floor.
“There’s something wrong, Klath.” Aletta dropped to her knees next to Gark, feeling for his heartbeat. Surely it was too fast.
Klath nodded, eyes serious as he looked over Gark. “Yes.” He ran his portable medi-scanner over the twitching warrior.
“Oh, my god. Gark!” Her hands shook as she picked his up and held it in hers. “You know something. Tell me.”
Klath looked away, snapping the medi-scanner shut. “I’m sorry.”
Was Gark dying? What was he sorry about? If he didn’t say what was wrong, she was going to strangle him.
“Klath. Tell me.” She bit out, ready to do violence.
“The Gnaggarian side of his biology has been triggered into dominance by the mate bond.”
Aletta’s brows furrowed. Gark had mentioned mates, but that was just a marriage thing. A piece of paper. Wasn’t it?
“The mate bond.”
Gark’s eyelids fluttered, and his hand twitched in hers. His skin was flushed, a purple tint to it, sweat pouring from his brow. Aletta swallowed the lump in her throat. He’d tried to warn her, hadn’t he? That she was his mate. And she’d said what, exactly?
She flushed.
She’d rejected him. She’d thought he was trying to control her. What if he wasn’t?
“And it makes Gnaggarians like this.” She gestured to Gark with a nod of her head.
“No.” Klath shook his head.
“Explain.”
“What’s happening to Gark is what happens when the mate bond is rejected.”
She closed her eyes. “This isn’t the worst of it, is it?”
“No. There are so few documented cases of Gnaggarians finding their one mate, let alone those with mixed blood. And a rejected mate is very rare.” Klath paused, and she wanted to scream at him to tell her. No matter how bad the news, she needed to know.
He shook his head sadly. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m afraid that if the bond continues to be unreciprocated, he’ll go mad.”
An arm snaked around her shoulders as Dylan eased herself to her knees next to Aletta. Only then did she let the tears fall.