Page 3 of Savagely Mated (Shared Mates #1)

I sneak down the river a ways, moving through what remains of the rushes, and then into the city proper.

I go up fire stairs and onto the roofs of the nearby buildings.

I have to be careful here, because there’s a lot of academy surveillance around.

The more I move away from the castle and the academy and into the more commercial areas of town, the safer I feel.

I like to think I blend in with the locals in a way most academy students don’t. A lot of the time they go in wearing their uniforms, because they’re proud of them. And half the time, even if they’re in casual dress, you can still pick them out a mile away because of their short haircuts.

My hair hasn’t been cut short; it sits asymmetrically around shoulder length.

They let me get away with that because I can tie it up.

Because I’ve been sneaking into the city since I was about seven years old, I’ve developed a sense of style, kind of a mish-mash of various street trends.

I don’t want to be too easily identifiable as one thing or another.

I also want to be able to get away quickly if I need to, and I need something that hides my weapons.

That means I’m wearing tactical pants, which are not uncommon in Eclipse. Everybody here needs a lot of pockets, including some long enough to put an entire bottle of wine in. Ask me how I know.

I’m also wearing an oversized jacket with a hood that extends far enough out to hide my face from surveillance drones and hardwired cameras. Eclipse City rule #1: Don’t Look Up.

Unless you want to be immediately fed into a network of machines and databases that will track your every move, of course.

My favorite thing to do in the city is steal.

That sounds bad, but everybody does it, and it’s pretty much a pastime at this point.

Nile drones deliver cargo throughout Eclipse.

If they don’t get to their delivery target on time, or at all, the customer gets a full refund and a re-delivery.

So people don’t even mind when the drones are attacked.

The Nile Corporation minds quite a lot, of course. That’s why their delivery drones are now always flanked with armored offensive drones.

I spot a small airborne contingent of three.

One decent-sized delivery drone, and two guard drones.

They’re traveling low over the city, and they haven’t spotted me.

I guess there haven’t been too many raids on the drones lately.

It costs a lot more to have deliveries escorted. Anyway. Their mistake.

I pull my sidearm. Contraband at the academy, but mandatory for self-defense in the city. It’s a purple electric bolt unit with the capacity to drop a grown man, and completely fry the circuitry of any given drone.

I snug my mask up over my face, take aim, and fire.

The satisfaction of seeing a drone lose control and slam into a city building is honestly impossible to describe. The way they sort of cartwheel across the top of the concrete roofs, spitting bits of plastic and circuitry as they go, and dropping packages everywhere is great.

This time, though, I’ve fucked things up a bit. Instead of the drone crashing on the roof, it loses altitude a little too fast and smashes into the wall of the building, showering the ground below with all kinds of goodies. Looks like it was carrying a whole bunch of snacks. Delicious.

I poke my head over the edge of the building and watch as down below, a bunch of people without homes, or ways to get homes, scrabble for the contents of the drone.

It’s very hero coded, really. Very Robin Hood. Very stealing from the monolith and giving to the masses. I’m proud of myself.

‘ Target Acquired ’

A bolt shoots past my head as one of the two guard drones that was with the packages locks onto me.

I let out a little squeal of excitement and start running.

I’d almost forgotten about this part of the game.

The part where the Nile is actually authorized to kill me now because theft and looting are punishable by death.

I’m not worried. Drones are actually easy to lose because there are all sorts of limitations on where they can go. They can’t go into private residences, and they don’t operate well in confined spaces. Their rotors get all messed up by the air currents and they have a tendency to crash.

I rush for the fire escape and half-tumble, half-slide down it, looking for an interior window that’s open.

Pew! Pew!

The glass next to my head smashes, giving me the opening I was looking for. I throw myself into what proves to be someone’s kitchen.

A woman screams.

“Log a support ticket!” I cry out. “It’s a Nile drone!”

More fire is being sprayed through the window, smashing cups and saucers and various other homewares. The AI should know not to open fire in enclosed domestic spaces, but drones are fucking stupid.

This opinion is reinforced a moment later when the bolt ricochets off the window somehow and ends up hitting the drone. It crashes into the stairs and proceeds to burst into flames.

I’m already at the apartment door when that happens.

“I’m so sorry! You’re definitely going to be eligible for compensation!”

I hit the landing outside and go down the stairs. There’s a chance the other drone will be waiting for me outside, so I once again opt for the back exit. That leads into an alley pretty full of trash, and a wall, which I vault over.

The other side turns out to be a drop that’s a lot further than I thought it was. Eclipse wasn’t built on flat land. It’s sort of undulating in its geography and occasionally that means ground level on one side of a wall isn’t ground level on the other side.

I am falling a lot further than I intended to. Not far enough to die, probably, but far enough to give me time to think about how badly I’ve fucked up.

Fortunately, I don’t take the brunt of the impact alone.

Instead, I find myself cannonballing into the torso of a guy big enough to break my fall perfectly.

I hit hard flesh softened by clothing and cape.

He’s got to be wearing light armor, or maybe he’s just got a softer build over harder muscle.

Whatever it is, he’s about three times my size.

I hit him at an angle, knocking him onto his ass as he reflexively catches me.

“Thank you,” I say, getting up to run. I’ve lost the drone, but it won’t hurt to put some distance between me and it, just in case it circles around the building and picks me up again.

“Watch where you’re going, boy!”

I swing around because my arm has been caught by the guy who seems to have a problem with what just happened. This means I have to look at him properly.

He’s tall, broad, and he has the kind of handsomeness you see in violent men.

Something about the construction of his face is nature’s way of telling everybody who looks at him that he’s capable of being incredibly dangerous.

It’s in the square set of his jaw, the thickness of his brow, the way his cheekbones are high and flat as if made to deflect blows.

More superficially, he has well-cut, mid-length dark russet hair that is just starting to blond and gray at his temples. Matched with flashing green eyes, he’s a very striking man. He looks faintly familiar for some reason, too. Like I’ve maybe run into him before, or stolen from him before, or…

He’s narrowing those eyes at me too, as we share a mutual silent moment of wondering if we know each other from somewhere. I don’t think so, though. I might have done a crime to him at some point, but he’s way too old for me to know him socially. He’s got to be more than twice my age.

He’s also more than twice my size, which makes his mistake make sense.

He’s huge, and he’s used to being huge. Mature males are bigger than females by a long way, but I bet he’s so used to towering over other men he’s immediately not even thinking I could be a woman.

Instead, he thinks I’m just a young guy.

I’m used to being mistaken for a boy, even when I’m not in disguise one way or another. Right now I could definitely pass for a boy.

It’s even possible I’ve picked up a lot of male mannerisms over the years.

I’m surrounded by guys at the academy. Most of the faculty are male, too.

The King’s Guard doesn’t explicitly ban women from joining; it just suggests they might like to do something else instead, like have a nice little lie down.

Of course, every rule has an exception, and I’m proof that they take girls under very specific circumstances, when nobody else can, or will, and when the girl has certain talents, traits, or bloodlines.

But most of the time, girls aren’t abandoned by their families. If they’re orphaned, someone else generally takes them in, or they’re raised by another family who wants them to be a wife for one of their sons one day.

I was lucky. Nobody wanted me.

That does mean I’m pretty much treated like one of the guys, because nobody there has any idea how to treat a girl, and even if they did know how to treat a girl, I wouldn’t want them to. I’ve heard the way they talk about women. It’s enough to make my skin crawl.

All this means I’m not scared of this guy, and I’m definitely not going to correct him. My hood is still up, and my mask is still on. As long as those elements stay in place, I’ll be safe enough.

“I didn’t mean to bump into you. I just didn’t see you there. Chill.”

“Chill?” He rumbles the word like it’s a deadly insult.

“Yeah. It means relax, old man. Don’t freak out.”

“I am not freaking out, you little shit,” he growls. “You need a lesson in manners.”

“Oh, yeah? Who is going to give me one?”

What he doesn’t know about me, aside from the fact that I’m a girl, is the other fact—I love a good argument. Sure, I could apologize, but fuck that. I don’t like his tone, so I can’t resist mouthing off to him.