Chapter One #2
A smaller alien rushes into the room behind him, this one also horned and dark-skinned but leaner, with short white hair and sharp eyes. A healer, maybe, based on the glowing instruments strapped across her chest.
“Warlord,” she says carefully, in accented but clear human Standard. “We need to leave. Now.”
The big one keeps staring at me.
The healer sees my wrists. “She requires medical care.”
“I require pants,” I say.
The healer blinks.
The warlord says one word.
The translator clipped near the healer’s throat crackles.
“Covering.”
The healer pulls a dark cloak from her boarding kit and approaches me slowly, hands visible.
I let her because the alternative is standing here wrapped in a dead scientist’s napkin while a seven-foot warlord watches me bleed.
The cloak is warm. Heavy. It smells faintly like smoke and spice.
The ship rocks again.
This time, the lights go black for half a second.
When they return, the warlord is already moving. He catches my arm—not hard, but firm enough to make it clear he expects me to come with him.
I jerk back.
His hand opens at once.
The healer makes a sharp sound under her breath. “Human, this vessel is destabilizing. If you stay, you die.”
“And if I go with him?”
Neither of them answers.
I laugh once. It sounds awful.
“Right.”
The warlord says something. The translator crackles again, struggling with the depth of his voice.
“Not cage.”
He seems to search for the next word. His gaze drops briefly to my torn wrist, then returns to my face.
“Protection.”
My skin crawls.
“That’s what everyone calls it.”
Another explosion shakes the deck.
The healer grabs the wall. I grab the pod. The warlord does not move at all.
Show-off.
A horrible tearing sound rolls through the ceiling. The air pressure shifts.
The healer’s calm finally cracks. “Rhazek.”
He reaches for me.
I slap his hand away.
“Listen,” I say, backing up and almost tripping over the cloak. “I am not your prisoner, I am not your breeding asset, and I am not going anywhere unless—”
The ceiling splits.
A chunk of burning metal crashes down above me.
Rhazek moves faster than thought.
One moment, I am standing.
The next, I am against his chest, his arm locked around me, his body turned over mine as the metal slams into his back.
He grunts.
Just once.
The impact drives him to one knee.
Heat blasts over us. Sparks scatter across his shoulders. His tail coils around my legs, shielding them from debris. His body cages me completely.
Then he lifts his head.
His face is inches from mine.
There is a fresh cut along his cheek. Black blood wells there, glossy and dark.
His eyes lock on my mouth, then jerk back to my eyes. I think he is going to kiss me in a burning chamber, blood on his face, my bare legs around nothing but smoke. I hate that I want to know what that mouth does.
I shove at his chest. “Move.”
He does.
The healer is already at his side, scanning the wound across his back. “You are injured.”
“It is nothing,” the translator clips out.
“Obviously,” I mutter. “All giant horned warlords get crushed by ceilings for fun.”
Rhazek rises to his full height. The movement should be difficult. It is not. A smoking piece of metal slides off his back and hits the floor.
He turns to the healer. “Evacuation route.”
The translator catches that one cleanly.
The healer nods and gestures toward the broken doorway. “Docking bridge still attached. Maybe three minutes before collapse.”
Rhazek looks at me.
I look at the burning ceiling. “Fine. But I walk.”
Rhazek’s gaze drops to my shaking legs.
I straighten through sheer spite.
The healer leads us out. Rhazek follows behind me, close enough that the heat of him brushes my back every time the ship lurches.
The corridor outside is worse than the room.
Smoke. Flickering lights. Dead aliens. Torn panels. Gravity hiccuping under my bare feet. The whole ship groans like a dying animal.
We pass another containment chamber. I slow beside a row of pods, some empty, some broken.
One holds a small body under glass. Human, maybe. Too still. An adult curled small by death or stasis or fear. I can’t tell.
Rhazek says something behind me.
The translator turns it into, “Move.”
I spin on him. “There were others.”
His jaw tightens.
The healer’s voice is quieter. “Most were dead when we boarded.”
“Were they from my ship?” No one answers.
The Mercy Ark was falling apart before the distress beacon went out. We had children in hydroponics because it was the warmest section. Three pregnant women, one working incubator, and a captain who promised the rescue signal had been answered.
My knees buckle.
Rhazek offers his hand. I ignore it and force myself forward.
The docking bridge is a narrow tunnel of black metal punched through the enemy hull. Beyond it hangs a ship like a piece of night given shape: dark living metal and sharp curves, lit from within by veins of dim gold. It looks less built than grown around a weapon.
The healer crosses first.
I step onto the bridge.
It warms beneath my bare feet.
That is so unsettling I almost stop.
Behind us, something explodes deep inside the enemy ship. The bridge jerks. I grab the rail, but my bloody wrist slips.
I fall sideways.
Rhazek catches me by the waist.
His hand spans too much of me.
The contact punches heat through my body so fast I gasp. It is not fear. It is worse. My nipples tighten under his cloak. His hand on my waist feels like it has found a switch I did not agree to install.
He goes rigid behind me.
His fingers flex once, then loosen.
I look over my shoulder.
His face is carved from control, but his eyes are burning.
The translator does not speak, but his mouth forms a word in his own language. Low. Rough. Almost unwilling.
The bridge screams.
The healer shouts from the other side. “Now!”
Rhazek lifts me.
I curse and shove at him, but he is already running.
The docking bridge collapses behind us.
For one terrifying second, there is no floor beneath his last step. His tail snaps around a railing inside his ship and yanks us forward. We crash onto the deck, me against his chest, him taking the impact under both of us.
Air slams out of my lungs.
The bridge tears away.
Beyond the open hatch, the enemy vessel splits apart in a bloom of fire and silent light.
Then the hatch seals.
The scream of alarms cuts off.
I am lying on top of Rhazek.
I push myself up.
He lets me.
A ring of armed soldiers surrounds us, horned and dark-skinned like him.
Slowly, Rhazek removes his hand from my hip.
The healer steps forward, scanner raised. “Warlord, she needs immediate medical care.”
“She needs clothing,” he says through the translator.
“And a room with no locks.”
I pull the cloak tighter around me and force myself onto my feet. My legs shake, but they hold.
Rhazek rises in front of me, endless and dark and impossible.
The soldiers lower their heads.
I lift my chin because it is the only weapon I have left.
“Where are you taking me?”
His voice comes without the translator, deep enough to vibrate in my teeth.
“Human.”
His markings pulse with dark gold light.
Around us, the soldiers go utterly still.
Then the translator at his collar catches the next words, broken and rough.
“Why does your scent know me?”