Page 24

“Seen them. Have not given a descriptor to them. Actually, kitten suits you. Small, furry, and cute.”

“They also have very pointy claws,” I stated. “But Jazminite is better. More potential for mayhem.”

“Very well.” He exhaled a laugh and rose with me still in his arms. He set me back into the navigator’s seat and bent to retrieve my tee shirt.

As he helped me slide it back on, his eyes focused on my forehead.

“Does not look too bad. You were knocked chilly . We have to inspect it.” He looked toward the viewscreen. “We—we were lucky.”

Lucky.

Everything came back in a rush, and my gut and my heart twisted all at once. Because if he was right, he was now much more than just the guy I’d decided to shag in a heated moment.

I took a deep breath, shoved that aside, and made a grab for my sanity. “Is everyone else okay?” I asked.

“Everyone else is alive,” rumbled a deep voice as Xandros strode into the bridge. “Even the dratsab Senaik.” His brows dropped. “Shaftz, bro. That was your worst landing ever .” He scanned me. “Is—is she—good?”

“Does she look—good?” Rhodes pushed past Xandros to glare at Zyair. “She looks not good.”

“‘She’ does not appreciate being spoken of rather than to ,” I protested. “And you should never tell a girl she doesn’t look good.”

That seemed to flummox them. Xandros and Zyair exchanged glances, and Rhodes finally looked at me. He only had a darkening bruise along one side of his face, but Xandros’s shoulder was bloody.

My response to that was to blurt out, “Are you okay?”

The big Drake seemed confused by my comment. Then he followed my horrified gaze to his shoulder.

“No issue,” he rumbled.

Conscious of their stares, I pressed my knees together to hide the ripped-out crotch of my pants, and used my foot to encourage the bra a little more beneath the instrument panel. With any luck, no one would notice.

“What about Yani? Is she okay?” My heart constricted.

“I’m here.” The Drolgok pushed between the Drakes, waving the cellular regenerator. Her crocheted sweater seemed to have acquired a new hole, and her striped hat was askew.

Her concerned orange eyes replaced Zyair’s as she shoved him out of the way. To my relief, I saw Sookie’s little face peering out from her pocket pouch.

“Let’s have a look at that head,” Yani said.

I glanced beyond her to Zyair, who now stood with his brothers. “How long was I out?”

“Not long,” he said. “A few minutes.” He swallowed. “You scared the shaftz out of me.”

I met his gaze, and read within it the true depth of his fear. Maybe riding his pulsing shaft while dodging rocks the size of houses had something to do with it. Even the memory had my breath hitching.

It had been pretty damned spectacular. Everything except the mating part, anyway.

Mated.

The panicked flutter in my gut did not match my pulsing heart. If I wanted to be free, I had to seize control of that traitorous organ.

Okay. Maybe it was technically a muscle. I couldn’t remember my physiology. Whatever.

“You call that a landing? What were you blockheads doing?” The shrill voice came from somewhere beyond the wall of Drakes surrounding me.

Damn. It seemed that Kurt had also survived our crash landing.

Xandros spun and growled at him. Actually growled, with a full revealing of teeth that turned it into a snarl.

Rhodes barely glanced toward Kurt. “I suggest you go back to your quarters, before my brother decides to eat you.” His tone could have frozen hell itself.

Silence. Then, footsteps retreated down the passageway.

The regenerator hummed as it worked. Yani looked from me, to Zyair, and back again, her gaze filled with questions that I couldn’t answer.

Xandros turned back to us, and then, he sniffed. Loudly and deliberately. Several times. He regarded Zyair through narrowed eyes. “You were not exclusively focused on piloting the ship.”

Rhodes pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and said in Drakonian, “Anyone with a nose can determine that was not the case.”

At least, I was pretty sure that was what he said. The dark Drake met my eyes, and my attempt to retain a stoic expression was completely ruined by my face flushing a brilliant shade of crimson.

Xandros was now glaring at Zyair. “That is why we ended up in a shaftzing swamp?”

Zyair hadn’t taken his intense regard off me. “We were crashing anyway.”

“If you would have used the shaftzing courtesans, you would not be so easily distracted,” Xandros snarled.

One instant Zyair was towering over me, the next he was facing up to his taller and bigger brother with fire in his green eyes.

“She is our mate .” His voice was low, but the intensity vibrated through the space. “Nothing else matters. Not this ship. Not this swamp. Not the Nirzks looking for us. Nothing .”

Silence. And then, Xandros dropped his gaze and took a step back.

Wait a minute. Our? The warmth that flushed through me was almost all-consuming, but the panicked flutter had become an earthquake.

Fuck.

Yani’s eyes were like saucers, but she kept going with the regenerator. I decided that I had a point or two to make. I cleared my throat .

“I have something to say.”

All focus immediately turned to me. All three Drakes’ eyes were glowing . Garnet, sapphire, emerald. They had never looked more terrifyingly alien.

And yet, I wasn’t afraid of them. Instead, my heart did an odd double flip. But I got a grip on that traitorous muscle—er, organ—lifted my chin to meet Zyair’s eyes, and went for it.

“I refuse to be forced into some mating arrangement based on being injected by an aphrodisiac serum designed, it seems, to make me into a Drake whore.”

Silence. Then, Zyair blinked.

It was, however, Xandros who spoke. “What does she talk about?”

Rhodes had gone from pinching the bridge of his nose to rubbing a long-fingered hand over his face. “This is what comes from inadequate information exchange.”

Again, in Drakonian. But I understood it fully, this time. And agreed wholeheartedly with the assessment.

“And from inserting one’s cock where it does not belong,” Xandros growled. “Yet, anyway.”

With a blast of supersonic air, something flashed by overhead. Everyone crouched, including me. But it kept going, and didn’t return.

“We need an external damage assessment,” Zyair stated. “And cover the ship in vegetation, or they will spot us from the air.”

“Right.” Rhodes cursed and vanished down the hall.

“Can you two be trusted if we leave you alone?” Xandros growled.

Zyair stiffened. “Not your concern.”

“Yes,” I interjected.

The big Drake offered his brother one final glare, and then stalked after Rhodes.

Yani sighed as she finished with the regenerator. “I’ve stopped the concussion and sealed the wound, but try not to get any more head knocks.” She shut the device off and stood, regarding Zyair. “I need to see to Xandros’s shoulder.”

“I will check him,” Zyair acknowledged.

Yani’s expression was grim. “The Stardrifter’s internal damage is extensive. I will get you a report, but we won’t be going anywhere like this. I will need you in the bridge while we do a system’s check.” Her gaze moved to me. “I could use your help in the engine room.”

Zyair exhaled hard. “I have to talk to Princess Jazmin Jaz.”

“It’s just Jaz,” I corrected.

His glowing emerald eyes locked on mine. “Jaz.” He almost growled it, and it sent a traitorous flush of heat straight through me.

Dammit. He didn’t even have to be using his Drake eye powers to mesmerize me.

Thankfully, Yani interrupted. “Your discussion will have to wait. Unless you want the Nirzks to find us lying here like a crippled bird?”

His expression was so filled with emotion that I couldn’t possibly begin to untangle it all. One hand raised, as though he wanted to touch me, but then he read my gaze, and it lowered again.

He’d said I was their mate. Plural, as if I belonged not just to him, but to all three of them. And then he’d said that nothing else mattered.

Could I really stay with them? Because I hadn’t exactly chosen them on my own free will.

Had I?

I needed space. Time to think.

My head still ached, but I faced up to the tall Drake with my chin determinedly elevated. “We will talk. But first, we have to survive.”

I saw regret and frustration suffuse his features. “That we must,” he said softly. And then his eyes glowed. “What I said, I meant with my entire heart.”

Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. “I know.” It was the best I could do. For him, it hadn’t been a casual thing.

It didn’t feel casual to me, either. But I hadn’t agreed to be mated to him, let along all three of them .

And that mattered. A lot.

Yani tugged on my arm, and I let her lead me off the bridge and down the hall.

Yani didn’t say anything as we stopped at my quarters so I could exchange my compromised leggings for a new pair and don another bra. I’d have to retrieve the one from the bridge—once the embarrassment eased up.

I didn’t know when that would be.

We walked along the hall. From here, you couldn’t tell there was anything wrong with the Stardrifter . But then Yani stopped near a door, and tapped in a code.

The door opened—and then another, heavier one slid upward. I stared across our starboard storage area—and out at the dense green foliage of the swamp.

It was visible through a tear in the ship’s outer skin that measured about ten feet in length and four feet in height.

Everything not strapped in had been sucked out through the hole.

I inhaled air that smelled of rotting vegetation and dampness.

At least we could breathe it… as planet refuges went, it could have been worse.

I swallowed. The gun port that Xandros had been in was only a few feet and one interior wall from the breach. It had been far too close.

Yani grunted, a curiously expressive sound, before continuing along the hall to the engine room. Once there, she shut the door behind us, fished Sookie out of her pocket, and handed her to me.