Chapter 1
Cristox
Five years later
I drummed my clawed fingers against the navigation console, watching stars streak past in a blue-white blur.
Behind me, in the passenger section of the shuttle Veridian Dawn, seventeen rescued humans huddled together, their voices a constant murmur of gratitude and questions I had neither the patience nor the inclination to answer.
I should have been with my crew on the Historia, tracking the human criminal Declan Hewes through the outer rim, closing in on the rogue Romvesian prince who'd sprung him en route to a prison planet.
Instead, I was playing shuttle service to Tau Ceti, delivering refugees to their new home while the real action happened light-years away.
"Short straw," I muttered, the words tasting bitter. It wasn't even a fair draw. Ixaka had palmed two long straws before the lot—I was sure of it, cheating fucker. But honor demanded that I accept the result, even when honor was inconvenient.
A sharp crack echoed through the hull, followed by a metallic shudder that rippled from stern to bow. The Veridian Dawn shimmied hard to port, and my hands flew to the stabilizers before my conscious mind registered the impact.
Behind me, the humans screamed in perfect, terrified unison.
"Debris strike," I announced, my voice cutting through their panic as I checked the hull integrity readouts. Green across the board, barely a scratch. "We're fine. Just a pebble."
But the screaming didn't stop immediately. It dissolved into ragged breathing, into whimpers and the sound of bodies pressing closer together. One man was sobbing. Another was praying in a language I didn't recognize.
I turned in my seat, taking in their faces. Wide eyes. Trembling hands clutching at each other. A young male had curled into a ball, arms wrapped around his knees.
These weren't just refugees. They were survivors.
The labor camp on Theta-9 had left its mark on more than just their bodies—the scars I could see, the ones I couldn't, the haunted looks that said they'd watched friends die in the dark.
Of course a simple hull strike would send them into hysterics.
When you'd lived through hell, every bump felt like the devil coming back for you.
"Hey." I softened my tone as much as my gravelly voice allowed. "You're safe. Nothing's getting through this hull, and nothing's getting to you while I'm around. Understood?"
A few heads nodded. A rust-haired woman managed a weak smile, though her hands still shook.
I turned back to the console but kept my ears angled toward the passenger section, listening as their breathing slowly returned to normal. Forty-seven minutes until we landed on Tau Ceti suddenly felt a lot longer.
"Captain Cristox?" That voice. That gods-damned twanging voice that made every syllable sound like it was being dragged through dirt and honey at the same time.
I didn't turn around. "Yes, Charlene."
"I was just thinkin'—and you can tell me if I'm bein' too forward now—but a big strong captain like yourself must get awful lonely out here in space.
" She leaned against the cockpit entrance, and I felt her eyes on me.
"Back in Kentucky, we know how to treat a man right.
Especially a man of... quality. You know what I mean? "
My claws tightened on the armrest. She wasn't bad-looking. Tall, lithe, a bit too skinny with short black hair and a smile that seemed just a little too big.
But she was too pushy, too eager, and I wasn't interested. Not in her. Not in any female, if I was being honest with myself.
There was only one female who occupied my thoughts, who haunted my dreams with a persistence that bordered on obsession. A female whose name I didn't even know. A female whose face I still saw clearly, whose presence lingered in my mind like a ghost I couldn't exorcise.
"I appreciate the sentiment," I said, keeping my voice level, "but I'm working."
"Oh, I know, I know. Just makin' conversation is all." She shifted her weight, and that twang got even thicker. "It's just that a woman notices things, you know? A man like you—"
"Charlene." I finally turned to look at her. "Your brother. Where is he?"
Her expression flickered, something like shame, quickly buried. "Peanut's in the back. He's fine."
"Check on him."
She opened her mouth to argue, then seemed to think better of it. "Yes, Captain."
I watched her go, then let out a slow breath through my nostrils.
I wanted to be angry with her, and part of me was, but then I caught sight of Peanut in the passenger section.
He was rocking slightly, one hand tracing the massive scar that ran from his hairline down the left side of his face.
The tissue was thick and ropy, the kind of damage that spoke of serious trauma.
But it was his eyes that told the real story—vacant, unfocused, the lights on but nobody at home.
A Garoot Healer could have fixed that. The machine could have repaired the neural damage, smoothed the scar tissue, and brought him back to himself.
But slaves didn't get Garoot Healers. Slaves got whatever kept them working, and if you couldn't work anymore, well.
.. Peanut was lucky his sister had kept him alive this long.
So yeah, Charlene annoyed the hell out of me with her transparent seduction attempts and that accent that sounded like someone strangling a musical instrument.
But she'd protected her brother through whatever nightmare they'd survived on Theta-9.
She was doing what she thought she had to do to secure their future.
I didn't have to like it. But I did respect it—at least part of me did. So I'd keep being civil, keep my irritation to myself, and get them both safely to Tau Ceti.
Forty-six minutes now.
I'd been in chains myself, not so long ago. A little over a year, if I was counting—and I tried not to count. The gladiator pits didn't leave the kind of memories you wanted to tally up and examine in the light.
Before that, I'd had a life. A purpose. Years as an operative for Asad Intelligence, working under my cousin Siemba's command.
The work had been dirty sometimes, dangerous always, but it mattered.
I'd been good at it. Infiltration, extraction, the kind of intelligence gathering that kept our organization three steps ahead of its rivals and the Alliance's enemies in the dark where they belonged.
Then the Kwado caught me and sold me to the highest bidder, and the Kerzak paid very, very well for gladiators.
Three years in the pits. Three years of blood and sand and the roar of crowds betting on whether I'd live to see another sunrise.
I'd killed beings whose names I never learned, fought beside those I'd watched die screaming.
The Kerzak didn't waste Garoot Healers on gladiators either.
You healed on your own, or you didn't heal at all.
I glanced back at Peanut, still rocking in his seat, and felt something twist in my chest. I knew exactly what Charlene was trying to prevent. I knew what happened when you had nothing, were nothing, in a galaxy that measured your worth by your utility and credits.
But unlike the humans who didn't have a choice in their abduction, I'd given myself willingly as a sacrifice.
For her.
I closed my eyes, and she was there. She was always there.
Hair the color of sunshine fell in waves past her shoulders, soft in a way nothing else in my life had ever been.
Gray-blue eyes flecked with gold and green had looked at me without fear, without disgust, just curiosity and something warmer I'd never dared name.
Her skin had been pale compared to mine, smooth where mine was pelted, but when she'd touched my cheek that last time, her fingers had been gentle. Reverent, almost.
She'd smiled at me, and in that moment, I'd known what it felt like to be truly seen. The only regret I had about our time together was that I hadn't learned her name.
My heart clenched at the memory. That single, perfect moment when her hand had lingered on my face, when our eyes had met, and the universe had narrowed to just the two of us.
I'd have given anything—everything—to know what she'd been thinking.
To know if she'd felt even a fraction of what had crashed through me like a tidal wave.
After the Alliance freed me from the pits, after I'd healed enough to think beyond survival, I'd made inquiries. I'd called in every favor I had left, contacted sources I'd thought long dead, traced shipping manifests and slave auction records until my eyes burned.
Since she hadn't been put through the Garoot Healer—a process that drastically extended the human lifespan—she'd had her mind wiped and been sent back to Earth.
Back home. She was lost to me. The distance between us wasn't measured in light-years but in impossibility.
She was home, probably with a mate and younglings by now, living a life that had no room for memories of an alien gladiator who'd loved her from the moment she'd touched his face.
But she was safe. That knowledge was bittersweet comfort, a knife that both wounded and soothed.
That was enough. It had to be enough.
I knew with certainty that there would never be another female for me.
Stranac mated once, if we were lucky enough to mate at all.
My heart had chosen, even if circumstances had stolen that choice away.
Some part of me would always belong to a female whose name I didn't know, whose touch I'd never feel again, whose smile haunted my dreams and waking hours with equal intensity.
There would be no one else. There could be no one else.
She was safe. That was all that mattered. Even if it meant spending the rest of my life alone, carrying this ache like a second heartbeat, it was worth it. She was worth it.
Forty-five minutes to Tau Ceti.
I could endure forty-five minutes of anything. I'd endured far worse for far less.