Chapter 1 #2
I turned on my heel and continued through the hallway to where the last power fluctuation had been not long ago.
He could follow, stare broodily at me from the shadows, and choke on his own darkness while he was at it.
I was going to do what I always did and pretend he wasn’t there.
He was harmless anyway, and I trusted him with my life if it came down to it.
He wouldn’t be on this ship, part of Asmoded’s crew, if he were a danger to me or anyone else.
As I turned into the right hallway a short while later, I wondered if that was true, though.
I’d seen the darkness in his eyes more than once when another crew member got a little too close to me for his liking.
He’d kill them in a heartbeat if he thought they were a threat to me, or even if they were just flirting harmlessly.
Everyone gave Thatcher a wide berth, just like they gave Solear space.
That wasn’t because these guys were all rainbows and flowers; they were deadly, and they lacked impulse control.
A few months ago, there’d been a pretty scary incident, in fact.
One of the temporary crew members the Varakartoom hired on a regular basis had decided to get cozy with me.
He’d barely walked away alive, and Asmoded had taken the male’s hazard pay out of Thatcher’s salary.
Thatcher himself had spent three weeks in the brig as punishment, right up until he’d been needed on the next mission.
I suppressed a shiver as I recalled those silent three weeks, because they’d been shockingly lonely—a fact I was pretending didn’t exist and kept thoroughly shoved to the back of my mind.
The man was a walking disaster and probably the least healthy dating material in existence.
As soon as I figured out how to get him to stop obsessing over me, I would.
I really would. Remember, he’d gone all feral the moment that Tarkan had tried to cup my back with his wing.
I’d never seen so much blood come from a Tarkan before.
Their stone-like skin protected them from pretty much anything, yet Thatcher had torn into him with his bare hands and somehow done more damage than a stampeding herd of hungry Fantreal would have.
I’d witnessed a hungry Fantreal herd tearing through a pasture of livestock when I was young, visiting family on a Sune world.
It had not been a pretty sight at all, and my family had huddled with me inside the barn, terrified for our lives.
I still got a little nauseated thinking back to the bloody cleanup afterward.
Thank the stars I hadn’t had to deal with that after Thatcher’s attack; the ship’s bots had taken care of it on their own.
Despite my best efforts to both ignore him and not remember that bloody moment from several months ago, my eyes dropped to his hands.
He was a couple dozen feet behind me, casually propped against a bulkhead—like we hadn’t been walking moments ago, and he’d been paused there long before I’d decided to stop walking and turn around to look at him.
He was uncanny, and he was human, but he didn’t move like one, and that made my brain hurt and my heart thump wildly in my chest.
Human hands, big, strong, calloused, but still only equipped with blunt nails.
Those were not the hands of someone who had shredded Tarkan skin like it was tissue paper.
Under my gaze, his fingers curled, tightening into fists, and the tattoos inked onto his knuckles pulled taut.
Symbols that meant nothing to me, but probably held meaning in human culture.
He hadn’t arrived with those two years ago.
All the ink had been added shortly after he’d finally recovered from his dreadful injuries.
I thought sometimes that Thatcher was like Solear, feral to the point of madness.
A male driven so far to the edge that his mind had splintered into a million pieces.
I didn’t know the details of his story, only that he’d been recovered on a mission to a mining planet owned by a crimelord.
That he’d been tortured so badly he’d barely been recognizable as human at all.
It was a testament to Dravion’s skills as a doctor that Thatcher was walking around at all.
When I thought of that, I felt all kinds of dangerous sympathy.
Swiftly turning away, I made myself focus again on the only task that mattered.
My scanner beeped in a steady rhythm as I checked each cable and circuit, each conduit that lined the hallway.
Nothing, not a blip, not so much as a hint that anything was wrong or had been wrong ten minutes ago.
How was that possible? It shouldn’t be. Everything I knew about these systems denied the possibility, and that terrified me.
“I’ll be damned if I let those uppity Strewn engineers figure this out for me,” I muttered, my scanner sliding past another conduit in pristine condition.
The Varakartoom was my baby; she was my pride and joy.
If I could, I’d emblazon her with my family mark, but I was pretty sure Asmoded would object to that.
It wasn’t possible anyway, but that was how close I felt to each bolt, nook, and cranny.
It felt like she was sick, and I was watching a loved one slowly bleed out and die.
Thatcher said nothing from behind me. He didn’t move, didn’t appear to even blink.
He never did, even when I chatted away or complained endlessly about the unsolvable problem.
He didn’t make a sound until the lights abruptly went out.
No, that wasn’t entirely true either. I didn’t hear him coming, just suddenly felt the heat of him as he pressed me into the nearest wall.
Caged by his big body, I was surrounded by muscle and the scent of leather and weapons oil, with a dark note beneath it that was all his, one that tempted me to turn my head and bury my nose against his chest.
I heard only the sound of his breathing, steady and certain, and the faint, slow thud of his heart.
The darkness caused by the blackout in this hallway lasted only ten seconds, but they were the longest ten seconds of my day.
I found myself cataloging each ridge of muscle I felt against my spine, memorizing the feel of his thigh against my legs and the way his arm felt pressed against my shoulders.
He’d done this before; he did it every damn time the power fluctuated, as if he thought something would come out in the dark and attack me.
Opening my mouth, I got ready to tell him to let me go the moment the lights came back on.
This was pointless and ridiculous, as much as I loved feeling all his muscles against me.
I would have had to be without a pulse not to appreciate that part, even if he drove me utterly mad with his hovering otherwise.
Except this time was different. For starters, he did not let me out from between him and the wall the moment the lights came back.
A low growl rumbled through the air and vibrated from his chest straight into my body.
I twisted my head but saw nothing suspicious in the sliver of hallway I could see from under his arm.
Then there was a thud, and Thatcher flowed away from me like liquid.
I spun, but I wasn’t fast enough to see what had happened.
He stood in the center of the hallway, half a dozen feet away from me, with his arms out at his sides but already lowering, like he was relaxing.
I saw absolutely no sign of anything that could be considered a threat.
Then he turned, and his fist unfurled, opening like a flower.
Blackness coated his fingertips—a thick, tar-like substance—and he offered it to me like it was a freaking gift.
“Does this help?” he asked, his head cocking to the side.
My mouth dropped open in surprise; did he just speak?
Actually speak? To me? I thought he’d firmly decided stalking was done in silence, but perhaps I was wrong.
My eyes lingered on his face for long moments, confused by what had just happened, before lowering back to the sludge dripping from his fingers.
I raised the scanner in my hand very slowly, like I was coming out of a trance.
Did this help? Was it what I thought it was?
Was this what was causing the Varakartoom to malfunction?