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His much darker brother was staring at a navcube holograph, tapping various locations to zoom in. As I entered, he grunted in a rather frustrated manner and turned to me.

“Was that Givnia?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I am looking for another location, but this entire sector is Nirzk territory. We need to leave it, if we are going to find you a suitable place.

I frowned. “Suitable for what?”

“For you and Yani.”

It was like getting hoofed in the gut. I was aware of Xandros watching me closely, and the air in the bridge was suddenly charged.

I had said that. Told Zyair to drop us off and fly away. And now Rhodes seemed to be willing to do just that.

But things had changed. I’d bonded with Xandros and Zyair.

I met Xandros’s gaze. It was guarded, with every possible mental wall up between me and him. Rhodes must have known that we’d bonded. His brother was testing us.

Testing me .

This was it. The moment where I decided my future. Only I knew now that it wasn’t just my future. Not anymore.

I straightened, and held Xandros’s gaze. “Set a course for Givnia,” I ordered.

Xandros’s eyes flared sapphire, and I smiled.

Deciding we were rescuing Zyair was, of course, not the same thing as actually accomplishing it.

First, we had to get off this world without the Nirzks seeing us do it.

“This planet is not security shielded, but the traffic anywhere close to a settlement will be,” Rhodes stated from the pilot’s seat.

“Are we planning on flying back into the asteroid belt?” I asked, pushing damp hair off my face.

One dark brow tweaked upward. “It is called a belt for a reason,” he said. “Other than the shipping lane, which is kept clear, it surrounds the planet. Every craft entering the lane will be monitored.”

I leaned over to adjust the settings on the now fully functioning navcube.

“The belt is thinner in spots,” I said. “There’s one such spot about a two hours’ flight from here.

” When I straightened again, I caught Xandros staring at my butt.

It was rather tightly outlined in Yani’s coveralls, but seriously…

Despite my worry for Zyair, a flush of heat rushed through me. “Hey. My eyes are up here.”

His gleamed at me. “You have a very nice ass.”

“For fuck’s sake, Xandros,” Rhodes exclaimed in Drakonian, except he actually used the word fuck’s . “Keep your mind on the task at hand.”

Xandros’s hands opened and closed, as if handling was something he’d been considering. “You are jealous you have not yet touched it,” he replied in the same language.

I cleared my throat and said in English, “Neither of you will be touching it if you don’t stop discussing me as if I’m not here.”

Xandros froze. Rhodes’s eyebrows rose. “You understand Drakonian?”

Neither of them had been there when Zyair and I had used it. I decided to go for the stretch. “Yes.” And I could. Mostly. “Now get out of the pilot’s seat. Because the only way we are getting through that belt intact is if I get us there.”

Rhodes stared at me. Something glimmered deep in his dark eyes.

“I am fully capable of flying,” he stated in English.

“How do you define fully capable?” Xandros asked.

“Moving forward. Avoiding asteroids.” His gaze narrowed. “Keeping my mind on the task at hand.”

Okay, he had me at the last one.

Xandros snorted a laugh. “You pilot like you fly—in straight lines. Asteroids do not follow those rules. You will be too slow to avoid them.”

The dark eyes ignited. “Nothing about me is slow.”

My pulse did a funny little jump. But I sensed a brotherly debate brewing. “Up,” I repeated, gesturing emphatically. “Out.”

Rhodes’s chin lifted as he silently met my challenge.

He was the darkest brother in more than just coloring, and intimidating as hell. Or he should have been. But something inside me rose to it. “ Stardrifter is my ship. And I plan to fly her.”

Rhodes held my gaze, but he spoke to his brother. “She is strong minded.”

“Bossy,” Xandros corrected with an upward twitch of his lips. “She is also accurate. You are not as good as Zyair, brother.”

“Depends on what you are referring to.” I’d never heard that tone in Rhodes’s voice. Almost a growly purr. But he rose, and with a dramatic gesture, offered me the seat.

“It is all yours, little Draka,” he stated.

I slid past him into the pilot’s seat, trying to ignore the waft of musky scent that drifted in his wake as I strapped myself in. “Everyone better hold onto something.”

Rhodes took the navigator’s seat, but Xandros merely extended his toe talons straight into the metal floor.

I looked down. “Hey, you’re leaving holes!”

He shrugged and did not look one bit repentant. “Consider them necessary modifications.”

I shot him a glare before opening a comm channel to Yani. “Are we set?”

“Depends,” she hedged, “on where we are going.”

“Givnia,” I stated.

I thought I heard a sigh. Then, “Let me get strapped in. Engines are a go. Please remember that our shields are barely functioning.”

Right. Damaged actuator. I began flicking switches, and a reassuring vibration ran through the hull.

“Stay low over the trees to minimize detection by Dangos’s spaceport,” Rhodes stated.

“Then anyone out for a stroll will see us by just looking up,” Xandros countered.

“Not many strollers out here,” Rhodes growled.

I cut the argument off before it could get started. “I’ll stay low and fast. We’ll be past anyone on the ground so quickly they won’t get a good look.”

That stopped their discussion, but now Rhodes eyed me. “Flying fast over terrain requires precision as well as experience.”

He didn’t go so far as to express his doubts about me as a pilot, but it was there, all right.

“Too bad, then, that I have neither,” I replied lightly.

To my surprise, he snorted a laugh as he strapped himself in.

“Chart us a course from that spot through the belt to Givnia,” I told him, and fired the engines.

The swamp was reluctant to let us go. The silt at the bottom of the lake bogged down our landing struts, but the repulsors managed, finally, to break us free. The murky water streamed off the Stardrifter’s sides as we rose to just above the trees.

And then I started to fly.

My love of flying had led to me often sneaking off in our landhopper to go joyriding over the fields and forests around Winnipeg. So I did have experience hugging the ground.

Only it had never been at night in the middle of a storm…

As Rhodes sat rigid in the navigator’s seat, and Xandros loomed behind us, I kept one eye on the holographic image the navcube showed me, and the other on the treetops, while I reached for my new inner talent.

It saved us three times in the first minute, showing me the odd, lone monstrous tree that stuck up above the canopy just in time for me to avoid a collision The navcube detected them, but wasn’t fast enough to call the alert.

I was peripherally aware of Xandros standing with arms crossed, his big body anchored by his toe talons and the cloak rucked up as he braced his wings against the wall.

He swayed with the ship’s movements, and only his twitching tail betrayed his uneasiness.

But what I sensed from him was warmth and the desire to help me succeed, rather than doubt.

The manner in which Rhodes clenched his fingers around the arm rests indicated nothing but the latter. He’d cut slits in his cloak so that his wings arched over him, as though they could carry him away in time if we crashed.

Then the navcube lit up with green dots. Green? That usually represented a friendly, not a foe.

“It is reading them as the same energy signature as our power core,” Rhodes said. “We will show up the same to them, so long as they do not get a visual.”

“Even then, they might assume Stardrifter is a captured and retrofitted ship for the Nirzks,” Xandros stated.

“Once we are free from the planet, yes. There are a lot of these old Drakonian starhoppers around. Here, they will be looking for us,” growled Rhodes.

“Well, we’ll just have to make sure they don’t get a visual, then,” I said, and dodged a rock outcropping that extended above the canopy.

“Did you see that, or did you sense it?” Rhodes asked through gritted teeth.

“Does it matter?” I responded.

“No,” he admitted.

I ducked a tree, and his fingers whitened on the armrests as his wings twitched. My lips quirked. And I dodged another, with a little more swerve than was strictly required.

His dark eyes flicked my way. “Are you taking pleasure in this?”

“Yes, actually.”

He arched a brow and peeled hands off the armrests to apply himself to the navigation monitor in front of him, tapping away as I ducked and swerved.

After a few moments, he said in Drakonian, “I know of a route that will get us to Givnia before Brentoq’s battleship.

The most direct course is through this nebula.

They will avoid it.” Then he added in English, “Did you understand?”

“Yes.” I had, actually. My command of Drakonian had improved radically since I screwed his brothers. Perhaps I’d absorbed it along with…

Focus, Jaz. The chaos of gas and radiation inside some nebulae meant that they were often avoided. In the battleship’s case, it would wreak an unacceptable level of havoc with their systems. “Our shields are compromised,” I reminded him. “We should be avoiding it too.”

Instead of answering, Rhodes opened a channel to Yani. “Can you focus the remaining shields as a radiation screen?”

“Why?” She drawled the word.

“We need to take a shortcut through a nebula,” I stated as I dodged a clump of massive trees.

“Through a nebula.” It was a statement filled with astonishment. “With a damaged shield actuator.” A long pause, and then she said, “I might be able to channel some power from the core to them. It will fry the actuator. Whether it will hold long enough is anyone’s guess.”

Rhodes glanced my way. “It is the only way to get to Givnia ahead of the battleship carrying Zyair. Presuming, of course, that we survive this next hour.”

“Get it set up,” I told Yani. “You have just over an hour.”

“Plenty of time.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

To Rhodes, I said, “When we get to Givnia, we will need to acquire an actuator. Or we’ll be running from the Nirzks, without shields.”

“Givnia is an international hub,” Xandros rumbled from behind us. “We can blend in there.”

I swerved the ship around another outcropping. “Do their usual visitors include Drakes?”

A hesitation. Then, “No.”

Yani was clearly listening in. “Get us to a market, and I’ll track down an actuator,” she said. “I have a feeling you guys will be busy with other things.”

I glanced to the green dots on the navcube. A few of them seemed to be falling in far behind us.

“They are suspicious,” Rhodes confirmed.

I eyed the asteroid belt the device had laid out. The thinner spot was getting closer. “Not long now.”

Rhodes was examining the belt as well. “Is there not a human saying about frying pans and fire…”