Chapter 5

Havik:

The day had been a complete waste of time, and now he was stuck in a hospital with the most useless Terran he had ever met.

Frustrated, he slapped his palm against the cinderblock wall.

The Terran jumped. “I said I don’t know!”

“You know something,” Havik said.

“I don’t know anything.”

“That I believe.” Havik stretched his neck and rolled his shoulders. His tail slapped against the wall, a loud crack echoing through the room.

The color drained from his face, which was a feat as bruises mottled it. “You swore you wouldn’t hurt me.”

The day had started promising enough. He and Ren traveled to Sangrin to liaise with a local warlord, Paax, who had rescued several females abducted by smugglers. The assignment fit the mission they received on Earth, to seek out the females who had gone missing and bring justice to those responsible.

If the assignment went well, Havik knew that Ren hoped for a place in the warlord’s clan. Though they had each other for the last few years, Ren needed people. Havik was content to be alone, but Ren suffered in isolation. His friend would never admit it, but Havik knew. Ren vibrated with excitement when they arrived at a new station or port and spent every available moment talking to as many strangers as possible.

Havik would rather gnaw off his tail than converse with a stranger. Joining a clan filled with strangers rubbed him like sand under his armor—not a pleasant experience—but he would do this for his friend.

By accident, he spotted his mate—former mate—in the crowd. Three years had passed since he last saw her, and her hair was styled differently. In his mind, her belly was still round with their child and her face puffy. That she had changed in their time apart sent ripples of dissonance through him.

He had changed, surely. He was no longer the spoiled son of the warlord, selfish, and short-sighted. But for Vanessa to change, without him, felt wrong.

He followed her. Having spotted her in the Sangrin station, long after he gave up hope of finding her in the wilderness of stars, he would not let her vanish again.

Even if she walked with another Mahdfel warrior.

And smiled at him.

And kissed him.

The male was not completely useless. Occasionally he paused, as if alerted to Havik’s pursuit, and scanned the crowd. He spotted Havik several times, as he should because Havik knew he was the opposite of stealthy, but his gaze always slid over Havik. If the male registered Havik’s presence at all, it was as a non-threat.

Foolish male.

No one could be trusted, especially another Mahdfel warrior.

Of course, he noticed the Mahdfel warrior beside her but paid the male little mind. Vanessa would be glad he found her. When he told her to return home with him, she would run to his arms, thankful their years of separation had come to an end.

It did not happen that way.

They went to the surface. Havik followed. They ordered a meal. Havik invited himself to their table.

Sitting across from Vanessa, he took in all the subtle changes to her person. Her eyes were harder, as were her words. The years apart forged her into a survivor. If she had such a fighting spirit when they were mated, his father might have respected her and not poured poisoned lies in her ears to drive her away. Perhaps she had always been so, but he failed to notice.

Selfish, just as Ren said.

Whatever he had hoped to achieve from intruding on Vanessa and that foolish male—Jaxar, what a ridiculous name—he did not expect to gain a fledgling friendship with Vanessa and her engineer. Nor did he expect to feel relief when she refused to return to him.

She informed him she had a new mate and zero interest in returning to their empty marriage. Her response confused him, but he explained Kaos’ lie. Surely that would settle the matter.

It did not.

He had found his mate and lost her again. She wanted to be friends. He did not know how that would even be possible when a grinning fool with horns—Horns! How preposterous! —stood beside her.

Then he spotted a suspect smuggler on the street. Wanting to prove himself more capable than the grinning fool, he roped them into following the suspect.

That ended poorly when they were captured by the smugglers and thrown into a holding cell with the Terran male he now wanted to shake until his teeth rattled in his empty head.

“I said I would bring you to a medic. I made no promises about keeping you from harm,” Havik said, moving toward the male, menace in his every step.

The male scuttled behind the examination table, pressing himself into a corner. “Va-Vanessa won’t like it if you hurt me. She paid good money for me. I’m her investment.”

The male—Teddy, that was his name—had been a colleague of his ex-mate but they were hardly friends. In fact, the male antagonized and insulted Vanessa in front of two Mahdfel warriors, proving the male’s idiocy.

Vanessa was too kindhearted. She ignored the insults and paid a disgusting amount of credits to buy the male’s debt from smugglers.

A waste of credits, in Havik’s opinion. Perhaps if Teddy had paid the slightest bit of attention to his captors and had information regarding their recent ports of call, contacts, or even their next destination, he would have been worth the money.

Havik ran a background check on the male and discovered several outstanding warrants from Earth. Teddy was a common criminal, running from the consequences of his actions.

“They’re not going to care about me. I’m small-time,” the male said, a sneer on his face.

“True. Your offenses are nonviolent, but criminals apprehended by a Mahdfel warrior receive particular attention,” Havik said, baring his teeth in what he knew was not a reassuring smile. Menacing. Threatening. Disturbing as fuck. Vanessa had once claimed his smile was all those things.

Color drained from the male’s face. Terrans were too easily intimidated.

A lost mate found and lost again, accompanied by a lead that went nowhere.

At least the day would not be an entire waste. Justice would find one criminal.

Thalia:

Alien beer tasted weird. Not bad, simply different enough that Thalia almost forgot she was drinking at a bar filled with aliens, floating in space with nothing separating her from the black void but a few inches of metal and goodwill.

Thalia took another disappointing sip, the taste sour and floral on her tongue, which seemed like the perfect beverage for her lousy day.

First, being betrayed by the person who took her off the streets when she was thirteen should not have been a shocker. Nicky was not what anyone would call stable or a good guy. He was a small-time criminal, teaching kids the fine art of burglary and pickpocketing, then pimping them out when they got too old to climb through teeny-tiny windows.

Not a good guy. Thalia knew that. But auctioned to aliens? Who does that?

Second, after being sold for an insultingly low price, she was not a fan of being shoved into what was essentially a giant freezer for three fucking years. She had been twenty-three when she went in, so did that make her twenty-six now? Or was she still twenty-three? Thalia had legitimate time travel questions and no one to ask except aliens.

Third, she might have screamed a little bit when she woke up from the deep freeze, surrounded by aliens. They looked about as excited to see her as she was to see them. Their grumpiness wasn’t a reflection on her or the panicked screaming. They were aliens, gibbering away in another language. Panic was a reasonable response.

Slapping at the alien doctor and knocking over a tray full of suspicious-looking syringes and chemicals? The dude should have known better. At least there was a human nurse on staff who talked Thalia through the panic and confusion of being thawed out from a three-year stint in a stasis chamber. Pro tip: people aren’t meant to be in stasis that long. The chemicals build up and have a weird effect on the brain.

They were Mahdfel, at least. While she had never seen a real Mahdfel alien in person, she assumed they were better than some random alien off the street. Er, out of the sky? Anyway, Doc approved of them, begrudgingly.

Which was point four, being tossed out on her ass by the aliens who rescued her from the slavers. Sure, being rescued was great. Hooray. Being shipped back to Earth little more than a week after waking from stasis? Not cool.

Thalia had no money, a newly registered identity chip, and she still felt foggy in her head from the stasis. She wasn’t fit to go back to Earth, not that she wanted to go back to Earth, but the aliens didn’t care. They made it perfectly clear that she couldn’t stay on their ship.

Returning to Earth wasn’t an option. Nicky might find her, and he probably wouldn’t be so generous as to auction her off again. With no friends or family to tie her down, she had little reason to return to the same city. Returning to familiar territory would be a mistake. She’d have to start over somewhere new, with no marketable skills and no cash.

So, to summarize, everything sucked.

Well, not everything. The Mahdfel implanted a translation ship in her head and gave her new clothes and enough credits to sit at a bar and drink while feeling sorry for herself. They took Thalia and the five other women rescued from the slavers to the local authorities.

The local police—space police? —were nice enough, but when Thalia couldn’t tell them anything useful about the auction or her purchaser, they bought her a ticket back to Earth and considered it a job well done.

Okay, there were positives to the situation. Thalia idly shredded a paper napkin, making a list in her head.

Pro: the Sangrin space police didn’t care where she went. She could go anywhere if she could afford a ticket. Or even stay at the station. Money opened a lot of possibilities.

Con: she was broke with limited options to not be broke.

Pro: she wasn’t the property of the shadowy alien who bought her. Huge pro. Double plus good.

Con: the shadowy alien might come looking for her. Not good. So not good.

Pro: she was a human in an alien bar, but no one was looking at her like she was that unusual, which meant she could blend in.

She would also have to get over calling all the purple-skinned, horned people “aliens” because this was their turf, and she was the alien here.

Pro: That afternoon, she picked up a bottle of hair dye. Twisting the dial on the container changed the color. She could finally get rid of the terrible green and go for something more ordinary.

Pro: at least she had her health.

Thalia snickered at another nugget of her mother’s wisdom, not that her mother had been particularly healthy. She enjoyed cigarettes too much for that. But the point remained. Thalia did not have brain damage from her extended time in the freezer, and all the scans the Mahdfel did proved that she did not have a parasite living inside her. There were so many bright sides to her situation that Thalia felt like a fucking ray of sunshine.

The mangled remains of the napkin fell to the counter and she smirked. There was nothing wrong with her sense of sarcasm.

“You gonna finish that or you are happy making eyes at it?” the bartender said.

“I might be more enthusiastic if the glass wasn’t dirty,” she replied. The glass was clean enough, but it was the principle of the thing. Never take unnecessary sass.

He huffed, amused. The light caught the silver caps he wore on the tips of his horns. “Clean costs extra.”

“Or you could hire someone to wash the dishes who doesn’t mind working under the table.” Or for a surly dick, she thought but kept to herself.

“You got a work permit?”

“That’s not what ‘under the table’ means.” Of course she didn’t have a permit. Finding a temporary job would go a long way to her money issue, but it wasn’t happening there.

Giving the bartender her best side-eye, she drained the mug and left.

Havik:

He noticed the female as she moved through the crowd, her fingers reaching into pockets and pilfering unguarded credits. She was small, even for a Terran, and her hair looked diseased, as if it had been dipped in toxic sludge. It reminded him of the fetid sludge found at the bottom of a tainted well. Her pinkish-beige complexion looked sallow and unhealthy, likely from lack of sun, and her figure of lean lines held little interest to him.

Still, he could not take his eyes off the ridiculous female. She had a way of moving, of pulling her shoulders in, that made her seem insignificant, forgettable, but the grace and purpose of motion could not be overlooked. She bumped into a target, stammering an apology, distracting with one hand while the other reached into an unguarded pocket. Then it was done, over before the target knew they had been robbed.

No movement was wasted. Each gesture had intention. The female was a tiny, drab-looking predator stalking through her hunting grounds.

Intrigued, he was thankful that Ren did not accompany him. Havik did not need to hear his friend’s mocking humor when he caught Havik watching the Terran female. He was done with females, especially Terran females.

If Ren caught him staring after this drab-colored female…

She dipped into a shop and emerged wearing nondescript black clothing. Outside the shop’s entrance, she paused, scanned the crowd, and her eyes rested on him for ten full seconds.

The corners of her lips twitched into a nearly unnoticeable smile.