Page 29 of Relyn (Warriors of Etlon #6)

Relyn

“ W here’s Wendy?” Bright said immediately after they closed the hatch.

“Where’s Wendy? Where’s Wendy? What about where the fuck is Nora!? What the fuck were you thinking?” Relyn shouted, approaching Bright. He wasn’t considering pushing her out the airlock just yet, but he was nearly pissed enough to.

“I didn’t think that Alana would be on that ship! She knows better than to hurt Nora. The real question is what in that crate is so precious to her that she wants it so badly.”

“You are going to get us all killed. She would have killed Grom if she’d have seen him, and you would have let her,” Relyn growled. “I told you to hand off the information to a Mahdfel ship. You didn’t even contact them, did you?”

“They would have just gotten in the way,” Bright said as she walked away from him.

Relyn followed. This conversation was not over.

“Had I known that Alana was going to be on that ship, I wouldn’t have tried to make contact.

I thought it was just going to be a quick handshake and an exchange of some booze for information. ”

“You never told me she was Etlonian,” Relyn said.

“You never asked. It doesn’t make any difference, does it?”

Nearly all the Etlonian female that were left were all Mahdfel mothers. In fact, he couldn’t think of one that was not either a mate or a widow. They were the last of their species and there would be no new generations that were not Mahdfel.

“Nora will be fine,” Bright repeated as she settled into the pilot’s chair.

“As long as we figure out how to board a heavily armed ship and steal a crate from the Captain’s quarters,” Relyn said.

“You know where it is? That makes it easier.”

“The moment we step on that ship without Alana, one of us is going to die. It will probably be you,” Relyn said. Bright remained silent as she put some distance between them and the Adrastian ship.

“You know the coordinates?” Relyn asked.

“And the transponder code. In order to find him, he’ll be able to see us coming from an hour away.”

Relyn was going to have to think about this. But he too was beginning to wonder where Wendy was.

His first stop was Grom’s quarters. He punched in the door code and called in the all clear.

A ceiling panel popped open and a form way too big to be Grom’s mass alone slid down until it hit the ground and then began separating into two. Grom had pulled Wendy up into a panel to hide her somewhere she never could have managed to get to on her own. It was rather ingenious.

“You did well,” Relyn said. “Unfortunately Bright did not. Nora is going to be held in exchange for,” he looked at Grom and sighed, “the crate inside Rutra’s quarters. Alana wants it back.”

“You are going to double cross my uncle,” Grom stated simply.

“Your uncle is an ass,” Wendy said. “Clearly, this Alana wants nothing to do with him. Why the hell is he so obsessed?”

“She took everything from him,” Grom said.

“Everything? His ship? His crew? His money? All those fancy objects he’s got displayed in his quarters? What else is there?”

“I don’t know,” Grom said as he paused to think. “She took, she took-”

“His pride? His honor? She hurt his feelings?” Wendy asked.

“Yes,” Grom said.

“He needs to get over himself and move on. She’s not going to go back to him, not after all of this. Any man that goes after a woman, expecting her to come back needs to have his head examined.”

“There are some things that a man just cannot get over,” Grom said.

“A real man? Yes. A narcissistic self aggrandizing asshole? No,” Wendy said. “I mean seriously. He’s just looking for revenge, and that is petty.”

Grom was silent after that. Relyn wasn’t sure where his loyalties lie. They were going to need to account for that when figuring out how to get the crate.

“We’re going to need a plan,” Relyn said.

“I would give Rutra Alana if it meant keeping Nora safe, but I don’t think that is going to happen.

The moment she sees Rutra, we’re going to have an all out firestorm on our hands.

And I wouldn’t discount Rutra opening fire and blowing Alana’s ship all to hell with Nora aboard either. It’s best to keep them far apart.”

“What if there are two crates? A shell game?” Wendy said. “We tell Rutra that we’re delivering a crate full of explosives, so he takes his eyes off the prize and we can take the real crate, and then trade it for Nora, and then we can blow up a ship and make it look like Alana’s dead.”

“Except Alana is a Suhlik collaborator and deserves justice for her actions,” Relyn said.

“We could worry about that later. I mean, get Nora back, and then nothing else really matters,” Wendy said.

Wendy was right. It was the idea of a plan, but it would require much more finesse than she had laid out.

There was also the fact that she had laid it out in front of Grom, so that was what he was expecting.

He could easily tell Rutra the plan and the double cross, so they might need to triple cross.

He nodded and went back to Nora’s quarters.

This was going to require some thought. Relyn was also going to have to Bright-proof the plan.

Nora’s scent was everywhere. It was both comforting and disconcerting.

It was hard to focus without berating himself for the situation.

He should have checked on Bright. He should have not opened the door without proper preparation.

He should have hidden Nora like Grom had the sense to do with Wendy.

He took a deep breath, an action that calmed him, even though he didn’t need to actually breathe to survive.

His strength was in secrecy, in the fact that no one but Nora knew that he was not, in fact, a Sangrin. That was where he would find the answer.