Chapter 8
Zane sat on the narrow bench, counting his breaths to keep the neuro-cuffs from detecting his mounting fury. Each inhale brought the stale recycled air that tasted of desperation and decay. Each exhale carried away another fragment of his carefully maintained control.
Mercy had been gone for hours. Cleaning. On her knees, scrubbing floors for pirates who were probably going to murder them.
The cuffs buzzed against his wrists, sensors tracking his neural patterns. One spike of aggression, one moment of lost control, and they'd scramble his brain into soup. He needed to keep his head clear.
He heard footsteps in the corridor, and his head snapped up. Too light for the guards. Too quick for casual patrol.
Mercy stumbled through the energy field when it dropped, and he took in every new injury in an instant. Scraped knees. Chemical burns on her fingers. Fresh bruises layering over old ones. But it was the expression on her face that made his dragon snarl against its chains.
She was pissed.
"These motherfuckers. Fucking assholes!" She whirled on him, green eyes blazing. "And you!"
"Me?" The word came out steadier than he felt. Already, the cuffs were warming, responding to his elevated heartrate.
"Just bide our time, just wait it out." Her voice cracked with bitter fury. "Guess what, Zane, we don't have time."
He forced his breathing to slow, forced his muscles to relax. The dragon wanted to grab her, shake answers from her, then burn the entire ship to ash for whatever had put that look in her eyes. But the cuffs would kill him before he could take a single step.
"What are you talking about?" He kept his voice level, conversational. Like discussing navigation routes over morning coffee. "What's changed?"
She paced the small cell, anger rolling off her in waves that made his skin prickle with awareness.
His mate in distress. His mate threatened.
And him sitting there, useless, trapped by technology designed to break creatures like him.
"I gave Horris some bullshit about my dad, and apparently, that satisfied him." The words tumbled out between ragged breaths. "They have a biolock from my father. A dead-man's biolock."
"What?"
The dragon surged forward before he could stop it. Heat flooded his system, fire racing through his veins. The cuffs sparked, warnings flashing across his vision.
Neural disruption imminent. Compliance required.
She didn't notice his struggle, too lost in her own horror. "It's exactly what it sounds like. They're going to drain every drop of blood from my body to unlock some tech of my fucking dead father’s."
No.
The word echoed through every fiber of his being. His mate would not die. Would not be bled dry by greedy pirates chasing legends and treasure. Not while he drew breath. Not while fire still burned in his heart.
The cuffs went from warm to hot. Electricity danced across his skin, preliminary warnings before the real punishment began. He closed his eyes, reached for every meditation technique his combat instructors had beaten into him.
Center. Breathe. Control.
"We're getting out of here." The words came out rough, barely human. "They won't touch you."
"How?" She stopped pacing, fixed him with those sharp eyes that saw too much. "You're still wearing those cuffs."
He needed to think past the rage, past the dragon demanding blood. Horris wanted treasure. The crew wanted wealth. Greed had always been humanity's most reliable weakness.
"I have a plan."
She studied him for a long moment, then dropped onto the bench beside him. Close enough that her thigh pressed against his, that her scent wrapped around him like silk. Sweat and industrial cleaner and, underneath it all, something that called to the deepest parts of him.
"It better be a good one," she said quietly. "Because I've got maybe seventy hours before they turn me into a blood bank."
Less than three days to get the cuffs off, get her to safety, and preferably leave Horris and his crew as smoking corpses in their wake. His grandfather would have called it a challenge. His brothers would have called it impossible.
Zane called it motivation.
The next morning came too slowly. He spent the night planning, weighing options while Mercy dozed fitfully against his shoulder.
In the morning, after Mercy had been taken away to do more work, the guards brought their usual protein ration, tossing it through the field with casual disdain.
Time to perform.
"You know," he said conversationally, loud enough to carry, "my family would pay quite handsomely for my safe return."
Stevn, the nervous one who'd cuffed him, paused at the field controls. "Sure they would."
"The Vemion Treasury makes most planetary budgets look like pocket change." He shifted, holding up his bound hands with calculated casualness. "The person who ensures my comfort … who perhaps removes these uncomfortable restraints … would find themselves very well compensated."
Greed flickered across Stevn's narrow face. Just a flash before suspicion replaced it. "Captain says you stay cuffed."
"The captain isn't here." Zane let aristocratic boredom color his tone. The spoiled lord who'd never been denied anything. "And the captain doesn't need to know about any private arrangements between gentlemen."
"You have no idea what the captain's after."
Perfect opening. Zane allowed himself a small smile. "And you're sure he's going to share it with you? Every credit? Every treasure? Pirates aren't exactly known for their generous profit-sharing."
"Captain's a fair man." The lie was so obvious even Stevn seemed to hear it. His gaze darted toward the corridor, checking for witnesses.
"Even small kindnesses don't go unrewarded," Zane continued. "Extra food, better accommodations. Little things that make captivity more bearable. My family values loyalty, even temporary loyalty. We remember our friends."
Stevn chewed his lip, torn between greed and fear. Greed won, but only partially. He returned with an extra protein ration but kept his hands well away from the cuff controls.
"That's all you get," he muttered, tossing the food through the field. "And don't ask for more."
Progress. Not enough, not nearly enough with time bleeding away, but progress. Zane made a show of grateful appreciation, playing the pampered lord pleased by scraps. Inside, the dragon counted hours.
When evening came, it brought Mercy back to him. She moved stiffly, new exhaustion layering over old. But her eyes held something different. Determination. Purpose. And clutched in her burned fingers, a small piece of metal.
She held it up once the field sealed behind her. A broken tool, narrow and sharp. The kind of thing that littered maintenance corridors on old ships.
"I might be able to destroy the mechanism on those." She nodded toward his cuffs. "I read about it once. But if I mess up—"
"You won't."
"If I do, they'll fry your brain." Her hands trembled slightly, exhaustion or fear or both. "Are you sure about this?"
He was sure about her.
Sure about the fire that had leaped to her command. Sure about the bond singing between them even if she couldn't feel it. Sure that he'd rather die trying to save her than live knowing he'd failed.
"Do it."
She knelt in front of him, taking his hands with a gentleness that surprised him.
This close, he could see every detail. The determined set of her jaw.
The way she caught her lower lip between her teeth when concentrating.
The steady focus that had kept a dying ship running for years through sheer will.
The metal slipped into the lock mechanism. The cuffs immediately responded, sparks dancing across the surface in warning.
"Hold still," she breathed. "The failsafe is right … there."
The cuffs went haywire.
Electricity arced between the metal bands, crawling up his arms in burning lines.
His vision whited out as the neural scrambler engaged, drilling into his brain with precision agony.
This was it. This was how he died. Not in battle, not protecting his mate, but writhing on the floor while his brain melted.
Then silence.
The cuffs fell away, dead metal clattering against the deck. He sucked in air, blinking away the afterimages burned across his retinas. Alive. Whole. Free.
Mercy stared at him, the broken tool still clutched in her hand. "Did I … are you …"
He wanted to kiss her. Wanted to pull her against him and show her exactly what she meant to him, what she'd always meant even before either of them knew it. But they didn't have a second to spare. Guards would come running. They needed to move.
Later. He'd tell her everything later, when they were safe.
Fire erupted from his palm, and he lobbed it at the control panel on the wall. The energy field died with a sharp crack and the acrid smell of burned circuitry. A localized alarm immediately started wailing, but only for the brig.
"Go, go, go!"
They sprinted through corridors, Mercy tugging him one way or another whenever they reached a branching hallway.
His fire cleared the path, quick bursts that dropped pirates before they could draw weapons.
Mercy snatched a blaster from the first body, covering his back with a competence that made his dragon purr with approval.
His mate was magnificent.
They encountered surprisingly little resistance. Most of the crew was elsewhere, probably counting their future wealth or maintaining the ship. The few pirates they met died too quickly to raise ship-wide alarms.
They burst into the small hangar that held Horris's own luxury short-range transport. Almost all ships of this size had smaller vessels for space to ground travel. It couldn't bounce between systems, and it wouldn't have an FTL drive, but it was something.
"Can you fly it?" he asked.
Mercy snorted out a laugh. "I can fly anything."
The certainty in her voice sent heat racing through him that had nothing to do with dragon fire. She meant it. His fierce, impossibly competent mate who could probably pilot a ship with her eyes closed.
The hangar spread before them, Horris's personal shuttle gleaming under harsh work lights. Sleek lines and oversized engines, built for speed rather than cargo capacity. Perfect for running from angry pirates.
Mercy dove for the pilot's seat while he sealed the hangar door with strategic fire. Molten metal was harder to break through than locks. The shuttle's engines roared to life as Zane joined her on the speeder, Mercy's hands dancing across controls like she'd been born to them.
"Hold on," she warned.
The shuttle lurched forward, and the blast door began to open. Mercy threaded the gap with inches to spare, metal screaming against their hull as they scraped through before anyone could realize they were leaving. Then open space embraced them, stars wheeling past as she pushed the engines hard.
But Horris wasn’t done with them yet.
The pirate ship's weapons came online, pulse cannons swiveling to track their escape.
Mercy threw the shuttle into a spiraling dive that made his stomach relocate somewhere around his knees. Plasma fire seared past, close enough to paint their shields with warning lights.
"Where are we going?" she asked, hands never pausing in their dance across the controls.
Good question. They needed somewhere safe, and close. He had no idea where they were or the range of this thing. He needed somewhere he could explain about mates and bonds and everything they could be to one another without her trying to shove him out the airlock.
"I think know a place," he said, and gave her the coordinates.