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My eyes flick down to my HUD and comms-link readings. They’re both dead – and no matter how fast I pilot away from the Toad Mothership, I can’t seem to get enough distance to get those systems working again.

The Toad mothership behind us might be an ungainly beast, but it’s one of the few Orb-powered ships in the Toad fleet. The hulking, green vessel might fade from our vision but every time I think I’m making a hundred meters of distance between us and them, I’m still not rewarded by the communications array firing back up, or the HUD relighting.

The Toads must be diverting an unbelievable amount of power to their signal jammers and Bond disrupter as they approach The Instigator, knowing that the element of surprise will become ever more crucial with every second they remain undetected.

Gods – I totally judged the Toad strategy wrong. So, too, did Captain Aelon.

I’d thought they’d attack the mining camps to distract Aelon and force him to commit resources to defending the humans.

Instead, they’re just going to use brute force. They’re going to descend on The Instigator in unbelievable numbers – using overwhelming firepower to rip open The Instigator like she’s a tin can of beans. The Toads might not even bother with landing parties – since Aurelians are fearsome in hand-to-hand combat. Instead, they’ll just raze that ancient warship to dust and collect the near-indestructible Orbs as they float among the wreckage and frozen, mangled bodies.

Aelon won’t stand a chance, but even in the face of such overwhelming odds, hestillwon’t turn tail and run. Iknowthe brutal man. Iknowhe’s aching for his blaze of glory, and he’ll die before running; and take every member of his crew with him.

Not that they’d object. Vinicus will follow Aelon into hell itself. Iunia will swallow his pride and draw his Orb-Blade even if he knows such actions are akin to suicide.

The thrusters are at maximum velocity, and yet I can’t shake the Toads pursuing us. They might have faded from our vision in the distance, but their disrupters are still preventing me from warning the Aurelians, or giving us a third option of simply alerting them and fleeing.

Now, I might have just moments to warn Aelon of the attack before it hits. The irony is that I’d spent the last few hours doing everything I could to block the Bond from my mind – and now I’m focused desperately on reconnecting with the three men, trying frantically to bring them back into my mind.

But there’s nothing...

It’s suddenly as if I was never Bonded in the first place. You never think about how lonely it is to have only yourself in your mind. All humans are alone compared to Aurelians. That noble species can feel each other, with their battle-brothers inside their brain at all times; offering them reassurance and support even if they don’t say anything out loud.

I glance behind me. Theme’s got his hands white-knuckled on the triggers of his Orb-Beam. If I shared a Bond with him, I feel like his aura would be that of a nervous rabbit being chased down by dogs. I just hope the feeling of the triggers in his hands is reassuring him a little, because otherwise he’ll be useless in a fight.

Sawoot suddenly speaks up.

“Dammit, I was scared you wouldn’t do this, Tasha. I wasn’t going to be able to let you just leave them. I couldn’t let Garrick die for nothing. When we warn him, he’ll take his triad and escape.”

“You know he won’t. That man is loyal, Sawoot.”

She shrugs. I can see her in my periphery. “He is loyal. He even thought he might be Bonded to me.”

I don’t let up on the accelerator. I’m pushing the ship to its very limits, but it doesn’t whine or shake like my old, barely-held-together Wayward Scythe did.

This alien technology is designed for moments of intense pressure like this. None of us might have wanted to go to war, but we’re in no better vessel to face it in.

I think back to what Sawoot just told me. “So, you weren’t Bonded. That must have broken him.”

The poor man. Once Sawoot left, he’d known she wasn’t his Fated Mate. More than that, he’d known she’d betrayed him.

Then, Sawoot breathes raggedly. She shakes her head.

“Tasha… I couldn’t take my own advice. I distracted them, but I couldn’t go through with…it.”

It?

Oh – she meanssex.

Which means she didn’t have sex with Garrick or his triad, which means…

“I couldn’t do it, Tasha” Sawoot almost sounds apologetic. “I know if I did – and if I found out I was Bonded to them… Well, I couldn’t have left him – not even for you guys.”

I tighten my grip on the controls. I’m not angry with Sawoot for saying that, because I was plagued with the same dilemma. The only difference was that I’d known I was Bonded to Aelon, Vinnicus and Iunia – and I betrayed and abandoned them anyway.

“I thought once we’d got you two to safety,” Sawoot continues, “I could go back later, if I still wanted to. But I just kept thinking about my friend from that harem – who’d wanted so desperately to be Bonded to her Aurelian triad, and then just ended up another woman in their harem.” She takes a deep, ragged breath. “I didn’t want to feel that.”

I realize now that Sawoot might be Bonded to Garrick, but she’d chosen not to find out for sure, because that way she knew she’d be able to choose to help Theme and I escape. She understood the dilemma – of having to choose between your Fated Mates and your most trusted mates.