Page 50

Jaz

We trudged our way back to the Stardrifter through the diminishing storm.

Zyair was fiercely strong, but with his muscles misfiring and cramping, he could barely walk. Add in the pulses of pure lust coursing through him to me, and we were a weaving, panting mess as we navigated the sand-blown streets.

With what was going on through the link, it was a small wonder we could walk at all. Rhodes and Xandros had decimated the manticores at street level, and taken the fight to the sky. Rhodes, in dragon form. But true to his intent, Xandros had snagged one of Brentoq’s shiny starhoppers.…

I’d sensed his joy as he used a manticore pilot—in less than pristine condition—to disable the security system before taking off in his ship. He was using its remote firing feature to happily shoot the crap out of anything that came at him…

The fighters tracked them both, no longer attempting to capture the Drakes alive. The murky sky lit up with phaser fire.

By leading the pursuit away from us, Rhodes and Xandros gave us a chance to make our way to the dockyard. By the time we got there, Zyair leaned so heavily on me that I could barely move.

Yani had the external sensors watching for us. The ramp lowered as soon as we approached.

The Drolgok embraced me with relief written all over her leathery features and a suspicious liquidity to her eyes. She pushed herself up beneath Zyair’s other shoulder, and as we staggered up the ramp, we outlined the plan.

Before we’d made it to the top, Rhodes landed just outside the Stardrifter . By the time we entered the hall, he was a large naked humanoid.

With what radiated from Zyair, I had a difficult time ignoring his unclothed state in such close proximity. I was relieved when Yani fetched the coveralls for him.

Zyair could barely stand. Rhodes helped us get him to the medbay, where Yani began to assess him. Meanwhile, Rhodes and I enacted Plan Red Herring.

We picked up some fruit and headed for the aft storage bay.

Kurt glared at us as we entered in apparent mid conversation.

“Are you sure they won’t follow us if we take that starship? I’d rather take the Stardrifter, ” I said.

“They are looking for the Stardrifter , now,” Rhodes growled. “We no longer have shields. Taking this other ship should mislead them, if not, we will at least have a chance of getting away.”

I screwed my face up in what I hoped resembled heavy contemplation. “Where did you guys put the ship down?”

“It is outside a warehouse two streets east of the dockyard,” Rhodes said. “We must depart as soon as Zyair is capable.”

“You aren’t leaving me here.” Kurt’s voice was a mix of desperation and belligerence.

I unlocked the chain and opened the door to hand him the plate of fruit. “I’ve brought enough food to hold you until they find you,” I said. “After what you’ve done, you aren’t coming with us. ”

Kurt lunged at me, but Rhodes shoved his fist into the human’s chest and sent him reeling backward.

“I wanted to terminate you,” he snarled at the human. “Be grateful Jaz stopped me.” To me, he said. “We have wasted enough time on him. We have to get Zyair healed, and get to the starship.”

Kurt had visibly paled and hugged the back bars. I pretended to struggle with the lock. “It’s not shutting properly,” I complained.

“Leave it,” Rhodes said. “We will secure the bay door.”

I dropped the lock, and we rushed out of the bay. As I activated the door, I tweaked a brow at Rhodes.

“Hope he remembers the override,” I murmured.

“If he does not, we can release it from the bridge,” he reminded me.

I stifled my guilt as we hurried there. Kurt’s fate was in his own hands, and after what he’d done, letting him go was more than he deserved.

Once on the bridge, I set the navcube back in its holder. Immediately, it lit the bridge up with its hologram—showing all the ships darting and diving above the city. Somewhere in the midst of that was Xandros.

Yani and Zyair joined us. The golden Drake didn’t look one iota better.

“You got the manacles off,” I noted with relief.

“Not a lock made that I cannot pick,” Rhodes stated calmly, but his expression remained tense.

“There was that one door… ” Zyair’s voice wasn’t more than a croak.

“I was using a toothpick,” Rhodes protested as he helped lower his brother into the navigator’s seat.

Zyair looked like hell, with sunken cheeks and flushed skin. I caught Yani’s eye, and she shook her head at me. “Nothing we have in the medbay will help with that venom once it has grabbed hold.”

“Many have tried to come up with an antidote,” Rhodes rumbled. “Each individual is unique in its properties. We have yet to find success.” His concern radiated through the link. “We need to get him to Amelia.”

“Amelia?” I asked, suddenly hopeful.

“Our elder brothers’ mate is a healer,” he replied. “Her talent is extraordinary. It saved Zyair last time.”

“Where is she?” Yani asked.

He answered, and my heart constricted. We were a long way from Earth.

The panel beeped, and a light shone above the aft bay marker. “He remembered,” I breathed, and reached for Xandros.

He was leading the pursuing landfighters through the storm. I envisioned him landing the ship in the appropriate spot, before returning to the Stardrifter . The pulse he sent me was a mixture of regret, and relief.

It was time to go.

Our scanners watched Kurt hurry down the ramp and head east of the dockyard.

“He might just run into the city,” Yani stated.

He might. But I didn’t think he would.

As soon as Kurt vanished into the gloom, Xandros’s dragon landed. He’d used the sandstorm to slip past the patrolling fighters and landed the ship in the right spot for Kurt to find. Within moments, he’d come up the ramp and into full view of the ship’s cameras.

Yani put a grumbling Sookie on the dash, leaned forward to activate the comm and demanded in a no-nonsense tone, “There are more coveralls in the lockers.”

As the ramp closed and locked behind him, Xandros froze in all his humanoid naked glory and glanced up to the camera. “I am not wearing more of those shaftzing coveralls. ”

“Well, we’re out of cloaks,” she reasoned. “So, it will have to be the coveralls.”

He lifted a lip off a lengthening canine. “I hate coveralls.”

“Nevertheless, you will put them on,” Yani insisted.

He glowered. Then he turned and headed for the lockers.

I took a deep breath. I could stare at Xandros all day, but as I warmed up Stardrifter’s engines, I acknowledged that I didn’t need the distraction.

“Clearly Drolgoks are more prudish than I believed,” Rhodes provided.

“It isn’t sensible to parade around naked,” Yani declared. “And we need Jaz focused on flying.”

Well, we did, actually. And I was so worried about Zyair that romance would have been the furthest thing from my mind—if it weren’t for the pulses of pure lust that kept radiating from him.

It was even making it hard to fucking breathe.

The Stardrifter vibrated as her powerful drive engines came online. All I wanted to do was lift off and blast for home. To get Zyair the help he needed…

We watched the navcube intently. The landfighters swarmed over the city like angry bees.

Xandros had done an excellent job of stirring them up, and then vacating.

They had to know we had a ship here, but with her new power core, the Stardrifter’s energy signature had blended with the Nirzk ships’ when she’d arrived.

And the docking authority hadn’t insisted on any identification…

By now, though, the Stardrifter’s description would be distributed.

The manticores had expected us to come after Zyair, and that meant they’d be looking for us.

Even as I contemplated that, the wind died just enough for the external cameras to show activity at the entrance to the dockyard. Nirzks, organizing search parties.

Then the wind picked up again. Disguising them, as well as us. My fingers twitched on the controls.

“Steady,” purred Rhodes as he folded long fingers over my shoulders. “Patience. Not long now. ”

I was quivering with the need to be gone. My eyes were glued to the navcube holograph.

“Anything yet?” Xandros appeared on the bridge, squeezed once more into coveralls. He hadn’t bothered with his upper half, though. He scooped Sookie up off the dash and danced fingers absently through her fur.

My rush of desire received an answering pulse from Zyair. Fucking hell. Distracting was an understatement.

I yanked my eyes away, and breathed, “Nothing yet.”

Then, thankfully, there was something. A blip rose from the city and banked abruptly, almost hitting a spire on a roof before hurtling away.

Thank you, idiot . The worst thing one could do when faced with a predator was run. If Kurt’d meandered slowly or even appeared to join in the search, he could have pulled off a gradual fade from the scene. Instead, the bastard did an all-out bolt for space.

The fighters oriented on him in an instant, abandoning their chaotic searches to race after him. The comm lit up with their demands. His ship signature was their own, but the behavior indicated otherwise.

“Perfect,” rumbled Rhodes. “Give them a few minutes to fully commit. Then we can go.”

“What if he tries to communicate or negotiate with them?” Yani asked.

“I might have messed up his communications grid after parking the ship,” Xandros admitted. Sookie was now purring.

“Good work, bro,” Zyair approved. His voice was a hoarse rendition of its usual self, and I winced at the combination of pain and lust coming off him.

A glance at the scanner revealed that the search parties near the entrance were hesitating, clearly having received the news that “we” had departed in the stolen starhopper.

In another moment, a large troop transport dropped into the docking bay.

The Nirzks jogged up the ramp, and the ship departed .

“Now.” Rhodes’s hands tightened on my shoulders. “Take a breath, and open a channel to dock control. We are just returning home after a trip to the market.”

I did so, and Zyair entered a dialogue with the distracted sounding Nirzk-speaking official at the other end. It took a bit of discussion—during which Zyair allowed some annoyance into his tone—before he signaled me to cut off the transmission.

“We are good to go,” he told me when I had done so. “They are under orders to hold all ships here. Now that the target has been flushed, I managed to negotiate our departure. Nice and easy. We are in no rush.”

I waited for the official to give us our flightpath off world before lifting the Stardrifter from the sand and pointing her for the sky. Meanwhile, the navcube tracked Kurt’s flight—trailed by too many dots to count. And overhead, the battlecruiser was moving to intercept.

If he was smart, he’d land the craft and surrender. But brains had never been on his list of attributes. I wasn’t surprised when he put the ship on a course destined to take it to the slipstream port we’d arrived through.

He’d never make it. Not with the battlecruiser about to cut off his path.

My mind raced. Until the Nirzks captured him, we had a chance to escape. But once they found out we weren’t on board that vessel, things would get more complicated.

Interstellar communications relied on a series of interconnected relay points, so its effectiveness varied across the cosmos. But any way you looked at it, the Nirzks could send messages ahead to their allies and cause us trouble.

Zyair glanced to Rhodes. “As soon as we get clear of the planet, set the course for the Nipslep slipstream port.”

I shot him a look. “It’s three hours farther.”

“The one we came through is too closely affiliated with the Nirzks,” Rhodes answered.

“Once they apprehend the imbecile human, they will try to catch us there. Nipslep is regulated by the Untriks, a very old and highly respected race. The Nirzks might have connections in its operation, but they do not have control.”

Three more hours. I refused to look at Zyair, but what radiated off him wasn’t good. Well, some of it was. But it was twisted by the pain component, and I wasn’t sure he had those extra three hours.

I had to know. I finally turned to him. His eyes gleamed emerald from dark circles, and his cheeks were alarmingly sunken.

“Will you make it?” I asked.

His lips twitched upward. “I am tougher than I look.”

Considering he was seven-muscled-feet of Drakonian goodness, that comment would ordinarily be reassuring. But at the moment, he didn’t look as though he could lift a kitten. “That isn’t what I asked.”

He looked away. “I do not know.”

“The male venom is destroying his blood cells and slowly liquifying his organs,” Yani said. “Nothing we have on board can stop it.”

Rhodes cleared his throat.

“Not entirely nothing,” Xandros said.

I looked to him. He handed Sookie back to Yani before rubbing a big hand over his face.

“We—we do not know if it would help,” Rhodes stated. “Plus, Zyair needs to conserve his strength.”

I looked from one to the other. “What are you talking about?”

“The Drakonian matebond can help heal.” Rhodes’s hands tightened on my shoulders, and released. “Manticore venom is extreme, though, and you are human. It may not work.”

I cast Xandros a look, and he raised a brow. “Told you,” he said.

Hope blossomed in my heart. “But if it does, it might give him the strength to hold on until we get to Amelia.”

Xandros’s eyes glowed sapphire. “That is my belief.”