Page 5 of Pursued by the Dragon Alien (Zarux Dragon Brides #4)

FIVE

Lilas

Lilas stood beside the conveyor belt, hands on hips, watching unfamiliar objects slide past at a slow pace. Some looked valuable—metal plating, sleek weapons, strange glowing cylinders—while others looked like absolute junk. A pile of gold-threaded fabric drifted by, and she barely resisted the urge to snatch it up just to rip it apart. Gribna had built his entire life on stolen wealth—maybe shredding a few reminders of that would be cathartic.

The cargo bay was far more massive than she expected on a spaceship. Overhead lights illuminated the rows of sorted goods and the crew members working efficiently at their stations. They moved fast, inspecting items, scanning them with handheld devices, and marking what was worth keeping, what was to be disposed of, and what was getting sold.

Lilas, on the other hand, stood uselessly at her spot, waiting for someone to give her instructions. Waiting for Razion to show up and tell her what exactly she was supposed to do.

He hadn’t. Maybe she’d misheard him. Come to think of it, she couldn’t remember him saying that he’d be here at all today.

She ground her teeth as another crate rolled past. Had he changed his mind about keeping her on the crew? Decided she wasn’t worth the effort? Left her here to figure it out herself as some kind of test? If that was the case, he could shove his test straight out the nearest air lock.

She glanced at the others working. The crew was larger than the three she’d met on the previous cycle. It took many to run a ship like this, and fourteen, not including her, were spread out in the cargo hold. Most ignored her, focused on their tasks. A few side-eyed her like they weren’t sure if she belonged. That was fine. She didn’t need to be liked—she needed to know what the fek she was supposed to be doing.

Her fingers tapped against her hip as another weapon-shaped object slid past. If someone didn’t give her directions soon, she was going to start making up her own rules.

And Razion wasn’t going to like them. She grabbed the nearest item that looked remotely important—a sleek black device with blinking blue lights—and turned it over in her hands. No idea what it was. No idea if it was worth keeping, selling, or tossing straight into the scrap pile.

“Hey,” she called to the nearest crew member, a burly male with gray scales and a sour expression. “What exactly am I supposed to be doing here?”

The male barely glanced at her. “Sorting,” he said gruffly.

“Yeah, I gathered that much, thanks. Sorting how? ” She turned the device in her hands. “Is this something we keep? Sell? Blow up for amusement?”

The male snorted but didn’t look up from his work. “Scanner tells you. Green light means valuable. Red means junk. Blue means potential tracker—needs deeper inspection.”

Lilas looked around. “Scanner?”

The male sighed like explaining things to her was the greatest inconvenience of his life. He pointed at a handheld device laying on a storage container near the conveyor belt. “There.”

Lilas slid over to the unoccupied workstation and grabbed the scanner. The worker who’d left it didn’t complain, so she assumed this was fair game. She aimed the scanner at the object in her hand and pressed the button.

A red light blinked.

“Junk,” she muttered, tossing it onto a levitating skid with a red square on it. A small satisfaction curled in her gut. She had something to do now.

She grabbed another item—some kind of metallic sphere—and scanned it. Blue light.

Blue meant potential tracker. The gray guy said trackers needed deeper inspection. What did that mean?

Her grip tightened. Maybe she was supposed to look at it more closely.

She knew little of these things, but she knew enough to be aware that tracking devices could mean a whole lot of trouble if they weren’t neutralized quickly. She should put it aside and let someone else handle it. That was the smart thing to do.

But her frustration still simmered under her skin, and Razion was nowhere to be found to tell her otherwise. What if that device was tracking them right now? It would be her fault if a bunch of Axis ships showed up and attacked because she just ignored this thing.

Fek it.

Lilas pried at the seam of the sphere with her nails, found a small latch, and twisted it open. The inner panel slid away, revealing a mess of wires and a tiny blinking mechanism set deep in the core.

Seeing the internal working of this thing made her heart race. If she yanked out something wrong, she could trigger a distress signal—or worse, a self-destruct.

She exhaled sharply, fingers flexing. Mistakes weren’t an option. If she screwed this up, she wasn’t just proving she was useless—she was risking the crew. And whatever she thought about Razion and his ridiculous smirk, she wasn’t about to put them all in danger.

Lilas narrowed her eyes, studying the wiring. Back at the settlement, she’d spent more time fixing broken equipment than she had farming. Every piece of machinery they owned was outdated and held together by spare parts and sheer force of will. Which meant she knew one very important thing—everything had a weak spot.

She traced the thin copper wire connecting the blinking mechanism to the rest of the device. It was attached at three points—two held firm, one slightly looser. That was the weak link.

Carefully, she pinched the weak wire between her nails and twisted. The connector popped free. The blinking light flickered once more—then went dark.

She grinned, pleased with herself. Well, look at that.

Lilas put the disabled tracker into the discard bin and placed the now-safe sphere into the salvage pile. Her satisfaction lasted for all of three seconds before a deep voice rumbled behind her.

“What the fek do you think you’re doing?”

She turned slowly, already knowing who she would find.

Razion stood there, arms crossed, expression sharp. His storm-gray eyes weren’t full of their usual smug amusement. No, this time, he looked genuinely irritated.

Lilas set the scanner down, unbothered. “Sorting,” she said flatly. “Which is what you told me to do, isn’t it?”

His eyes flickered to the open sphere, then back to her. “You bypassed a tracker without verifying the model, without confirming it wasn’t rigged to send a secondary pulse, and without alerting anyone that you found it.”

Lilas arched a brow. “And yet…it’s fine.” She gestured to the device. “Disabled, no distress signals sent, no surprise explosions. Calm down, Captain.”

Razion’s jaw tightened. “You got lucky.”

Lilas crossed her arms. “I did what I had to do because you sent me here without a word of instruction. If you’d given me a fekking clue about what I was supposed to be doing, I wouldn’t have needed luck.”

Razion’s wings flared, then carefully folded against his back, probably from annoyance, but she wasn’t finished. “And before you tell me I should’ve read that handy little manual you sent to my room—” she tapped her temple, voice sharp—“remember how I can’t read? ”

Something flickered in his storm-gray eyes. Annoyance, maybe. Or something else. Guilt? She hoped so.

Razion exhaled, slow and measured. “I was going to show you how to do this job.”

Lilas’ belly tightened with doubt. “Well, I didn’t know that, did I? I showed up here like you told me to, after my first meal. Someone showed me how to use a scanner and I got to work.” To prove she was useful, but telling him that was out of the question. The last thing she wanted from this male was his pity.

His jaw was tight, but he didn’t snarl back at her. Instead, he plucked the deactivated tracker out of the discard bin, turning it over in his fingers. “You knew how to disarm this.” It wasn’t a question.

Lilas shrugged. “I know how to take apart ancient farming equipment and keep it running on spit and hope. Figuring this out wasn’t much different.”

Razion hummed, inspecting the device one last time before tossing it into the correct bin. Then he fixed his gaze on her, unreadable but assessing.

“Next time, ask .”

“Fine.” Lilas tilted her head. “Next time, teach .”

A long, tense beat passed between them before Razion let out a quiet huff. “Fine.”

“Good.” She let out a long breath. “Who do I ask, by the way? Is there a cargo hold manager down here?”

Razion pointed to a tall, slender being holding a clear screen near the disposal air lock. “Yig, over there, is a good one to ask. She can disarm anything.” He sighed and shook his head. “You know, you’re more trouble than I anticipated.”

Lilas matched his smirk. “Gribna thought so after I called him a compost heap.”

To her mild surprise, Razion laughed. It wasn’t loud, but it was real, low and rough in a way that sent an unexpected tingle down her spine. “Is that how you got that bruise?”

She touched her cheek, remembering the conversation that had earned her that blow. “No, that would be the time I insulted his lack of brain function.”

Razion let out a low whistle from between those really nice lips. “Come on, troublemaker,” he said, jerking his chin toward the workstation. “Let’s go over the actual way to handle salvage.”

Lilas stepped up beside him, rolling her shoulders. “Okay.”

She picked up the next device from the conveyor belt and scanned it. A green light blinked. “Valuable,” she muttered, placing it on its appropriate skid.

Razion nodded approvingly. “Good. Now, sometimes these items are not clearly valuable, but could hold some use. Take a look at this one.” He held up a small rectangular device, its surface etched with unfamiliar symbols.

She hesitated, then scanned it. The red light blinked. “Says it’s not valuable. Is it some sort of data storage?”

“Yes.” He pressed a button and the symbols flickered to life in a faint blue glow. “These markings tell you what kind of data it holds. Here—” He pointed at a string of characters. “These three symbols indicate encrypted trade logs. The first one means ‘record,’ the second means ‘restricted,’ and that last one means ‘logs’ in standard quadrant script. This says it’s encrypted trade records. And this—” his finger traced the lower symbol, “—means it’s outdated, so it’s probably junk unless Vedd can extract something useful. We set those aside for further inspection, just like potential tracking devices.”

Lilas narrowed her eyes, tracing the glowing marks with her gaze. The shapes and patterns had always seemed meaningless before—just a mess of strange lines—but now they held purpose. She could feel the knowledge beginning to root itself in her mind. “You really think I can learn this?” Her voice came out softer than she intended.

Razion smiled, but there was no teasing in it this time. “If you can rip apart a tracker without blowing us all up, you can learn to read.”

Something flickered in her chest. Not just warmth—something deeper, something she didn’t know how to name. She looked back at the device, forcing herself to focus instead of getting caught up in the way his voice slid over her skin like the low rumble of a distant storm. “Alright,” she said, clearing her throat. “What does this one say?”

He leaned in closer. The heat of his body brushed against her arm, making her far more aware of his big, gold body than was advisable. “That’s a designation code,” he murmured, pointing at a set of symbols near the bottom. “See this first character? Looks like a crescent split in half?”

Lilas nodded.

“That’s a designation code. It marks the owner of the device—who it originally belonged to. The one next to it—the three slashes with a dot—means it’s been re-registered, meaning someone else owned it before.”

She inhaled slowly, absorbing that. “So this thing has a history?”

“Everything does,” Razion said. His finger slid lower, tapping another symbol. “And this? This marks the sector it came from—5L-13, which is under Axis control.” His voice dipped slightly, hypnotic, and she found herself enjoying the lesson more than she expected.

Which was…not good. She couldn’t afford to get comfortable here. Couldn’t afford to like him. Because no matter how much he was helping her, how much he intrigued her, the truth remained—her friends were still out there, lost. And no matter what happened between her and Razion, she intended to find them, with or without him.

Lilas straightened her spine, pushing the thought down. She didn’t want to dwell on the way Razion’s voice sent a slow, simmering heat through her veins or how being this close to him made her pulse kick up in an unfamiliar rhythm. Trouble . That’s what this was. She couldn’t afford to be distracted—not by him, not by anything.

“Alright, Captain,” she said, her voice a little steadier than she felt. “Let’s keep going before I forget all this.”

Razion chuckled. The sound was low and warm. Approval flickered in his storm-gray eyes, and fek , that simple look did something to her. A strange heat curled in her belly, spreading like a fire she hadn’t meant to kindle.

“Good,” he said, his voice sending a shiver down her spine. “The Axis directors would be furious if they could see you right now.”

Lilas huffed a laugh, but it came out a little breathier than she intended. As she reached for the next object, she became acutely aware of the space between them—or rather, how little of it there was. The warmth of him, the scent of metal and something subtly him clinging to the air. Her fingers brushed his as they both reached for the same item, and a jolt of awareness shot up her arm.

She should pull back. Should step away.

She didn’t.

Instead, she glanced at him, and for just a moment, his gaze lingered on her, something unreadable—and entirely too reckless—shining there.

Stars help her. Because if she wasn’t careful, this wasn’t just going to be trouble.

It was going to be a disaster.