Page 11

Roslyn

The night air is charged with tension and humming with the incessant drone of the four hovercams that follow Zandrel and I back to my bungalow.

Our bungalow.

I should have been quicker on my feet back there, able to sort through the jumbled mess of my thoughts and find some plausible excuse why he shouldn’t stay with me.

But my head still feels like it’s currently located at least three feet to the left of my body, and I’d have to be an idiot not to have noticed the way Marva was looking at us. Sharp, suspicious, like she didn’t buy our little act for a second.

Geeno’s got stars in his eyes and his head in the clouds, but it doesn’t take a genius to know who’s the real brains behind the operation. Marva’s not someone I want to fuck with, and pushing back any more seemed like it would have been a supremely stupid idea.

Yeah. Like any of this isn’t a supremely stupid idea.

None of it even feels real as we trudge silently through the sand, all the grains shifting beneath my feet, slipping so easily away like everything else in my life.

My plans. My sister. Any semblance of control I might have had here.

It’s all lost. Washed out to sea.

All of this has gotten so far away from me I might as well be a castaway floating in the open ocean, no sign of land anywhere on the horizon.

I’m still lost in the mire of those lovely thoughts when a touch from the mercenary beside me jerks me back into my body.

Zandrel grabs my hand and hauls me closer to his side. I almost lose my shit and throw what I’m sure would be a very ineffective punch before I remember.

Lovers. We’re supposed to be lovers.

We’re supposed to have fallen for each other so hard and so fast. We’re supposed to be in so deep that we couldn’t keep away from one another.

My stomach rolls, but I manage to keep myself from hurling into the sand. I lean lightly into his side and screw the corners of my lips up into what I hope is a dreamy half-smile.

My skin crawls in every place we’re touching.

Where his long, claw-tipped fingers twine with mine. Where my arm brushes against the cool, ominous rasp of his armored plates, a reminder of just how much physical advantage he has over me.

A physical advantage that was very much on display tonight when he yanked me down from that fence. I’ve known it since the moment I first saw him—how severely outmatched I am—and that was before I knew what he was.

Aux. Zandrel is fucking Aux.

News about the wider universe was scarce on Severin, but there was endless chatter about other planets’ militaries in the barracks and the passenger bays of transports when I was with the Sol Alliance. Whispers about where we might be stationed next or what kind of deals the Alliance cut that would send us light-years away from home.

The Aux was always somewhere in the orbit of those conversations.

A massive mercenary company with wide-ranging influence across the sector. Its soldiers, legendary. Its power, unrivaled, at least among fighting forces for hire.

And I’m about to shack up with one of those super-soldiers.

The surreality of it all hits me again, ricocheting up my arm from where Zandrel has my hand held tightly.

My lungs tighten, my heart races, and I wonder if he can hear it. I wonder if he’s glad to know he’s got me right where he wants me, what moves he’s already planning to make, what the hell possessed him to agree to any of this.

We make it back to the bungalow and he drops my hand, nodding toward the scanner on the door.

“I doubt they’ve had time to update it with my biometrics.”

Numbly, I step forward and lay my palm across the sensor to release the lock. As I do, he steps into the space just behind me, big body curling around mine and a hand settling on my hip.

“What are you—” I hiss, but don’t get to finish my question.

“We’ve still got eyes on us,” he murmurs, leaning even closer to speak the words into the sensitive skin just below my ear.

My stomach rolls at the proximity, the hint of arrogant teasing in his voice, but… he’s not wrong.

He’s not moving, either, shifting closer, pressing into me, and…

Fuck.

I don’t need the reminder.

I don’t need to remember what we did by the pool, the way I kissed him, let him touch me. The way he pulled me up against him and ran his hands over my hips, his fangs over my lip, his…

I swing open the door and step inside, hurrying to the other side of the room and waiting until he shuts it behind us before I open my mouth. To say what, I’m not sure. My brain hasn’t exactly worked itself that far ahead yet, but I don’t get the chance to speak.

Zandrel holds up a hand in a wordless command for silence. Choking back my indignation, I watch as he turns to the comms display beside the door.

With a few deft touches to the screen, then the band on his wrist, then the screen again, it lets out a series of quick metallic chirps. I can’t fully make out what he’s doing with his bulky frame in the way, but I catch glimpses of the commands he enters for the security system, the tech running the house, even a brief flash on the screen that looks to show the location of the nearest hovercams relative to where the bungalow is situated on the beach.

Watching him work, the clunky, rusted gears of my mind turn until a few more answers fall into place.

The cameras mysteriously disappearing and reappearing. The heavy black cuff he wears. The fact that of-fucking-course an Aux soldier would have access to tech like that.

A demoted Aux soldier, I remind myself, an Aux soldier who found himself on assignment far, far below his station.

Zandrel, finished with whatever it is he was doing to the comms screen, turns back to face me.

“You were controlling the cameras,” I say, not a question. “On the beach. And near the pool when I was trying to escape.”

“Yes.”

I should be surprised.

All I actually am is numb.

Why he’d do something like that, what was in it for him, I don’t know and I can’t care. Not now. Not when my brain is all scorched earth and shell-shock.

“And in here?”

He shakes his head. “There are no cameras in here, but I did program the sensors so they wouldn’t trip when you snuck out.”

Silver supernovas swirl in his black eyes as he watches me and waits for my response.

I have none.

Where there should be panic, or anger, or fear, there’s just… nothing. Dull static and exhaustion. A strange buoyant sense of surreality as I try to process the fact that I’m here, he’s here, that I’ve landed in a situation no amount of preparation and planning could have ever made me ready to face.

Somewhere, though, in the distant corner of my mind that’s still capable of feeling, a sharp kernel of grief breaks through that static.

Savvie is further away than ever.

If having a guard tailing me around the beach made leaving all but impossible, having that guard living with me is… catastrophic. Plan-ending. Game over.

I shouldn’t have agreed to this.

I should have thrown in the towel. Given up a lost cause. Accepted all of this was a doomed endeavor from the start.

I should have taken a knife to the last bit of hope still lingering in my chest that all of this was going to work out somehow. The hope that, even now, is tearing me up bit by bit and making me want to scream my frustration at the male in front of me.

But even in all that turmoil, a sliver of doubt.

Why did he do it? The lies. Manipulating the cameras. Keeping it all from the security team. Going to extra lengths even now to make sure we can keep up this deception.

He couldn’t have known where it would lead.

He couldn’t have known what Marva would offer him.

So why did he do it?

Or, maybe the better question, does it matter?

It’s probably just some kind of power trip. A game. Some way to amuse himself at my expense.

There’s no charity in the way he’s taken the situation in hand, no kindness. Nothing I can even remotely begin to understand.

Still, I can’t help but ask.

“Why?”

The single syllable isn’t anywhere near adequate to fully encompass the tangle of this mess, but Zandrel seems to understand at least partly what I mean.

“Because I know you’ve got some ulterior motive for being here on Eritin. Tonight proves that.”

I shake my head, those rusty gears knocking a bit more of my stupor loose and making room for anger and indignation to rear their heads again.

“That’s only half an answer.”

“Fine. Then maybe because I dislike the idea of the bottom-feeders on the Mate Match crew keeping too close a watch on you.”

A disbelieving, half-hysterical laugh slips out before I can stop it. “A bit of the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”

His brow furrows and his eyes drift slightly away from my face, narrowed in contemplation, like his translator is trying to make sense of the idiom for him.

“Hypocrisy,” I snap, not in the mood to be mistaken. “It means you're a goddamn hypocrite.”

His eyes find mine again, and silver swirls suspiciously. “Perhaps. But that still doesn’t change the fact that you’re… what? A liar? A criminal?”

A sister.

A fool.

A failure.

A hundred different things I might be, liar and criminal among them, but hell will freeze over before I’ll admit that to him.

“Turn me in, then, if you’re so convinced I was trying to do something wrong tonight.”

He lets out a short, exasperated breath. “That’s what I’m trying to avoid. Perhaps we can help each other. If you would only—”

“No.”

“Roslyn.”

He takes a half-step closer. I step back, ready to dart into my bedroom and lock the door behind me—like that would do a damn thing to stop him if he really wanted to come in—but he pauses mid-stride, halting his advance.

“We can help each other,” he says again, enunciating each word clearly. “You know what my aim is, regaining my position. Unless you’re here to start an interplanetary war or blow Eritin to bits or something equally stupid, then maybe I can help you achieve your aim as well. We can both leave with what we came for.”

“Noble of you. And you call me a criminal?”

He merely shrugs, and the casual nonchalance of it makes me want to scream. “Nobility always has a price. As a mercenary, I know that better than most. All that matters now is how high a price you’d name.”

No price.

There’s no price I wouldn’t pay.

But… trusting him? Working with him?

It feels like a bargain that’s doomed to fail.

I already made one bargain tonight, but agreeing to fake some sort of relationship with Zandrel—as convoluted as it is—seems so much more straightforward than… this.

I can’t let myself trust him.

This is all too precious, too precarious, too important.

Savvie is worth protecting at all costs. It’s what I’ve been trying to do since the moment I turned eighteen and enlisted.

Even before that, if I’m being honest, her safety has always been my number one priority. No one else in this whole wide universe was going to watch out for her like I could—our mother included—and the instinct to keep her as far from harm as possible beats as steady in my chest as a second heartbeat even now.

Too fierce, that beat, to trust this mercenary.

Despite a sharp, worming pulse of uncertainty, of doubt. Despite what I could almost mistake for sincerity in his tone. Despite the terrible whisper of temptation over what it would be like to have someone with his skill and resources in my corner, helping me find her.

I have too much to lose.

I retreat one step, then two, not giving him my back and never taking my eyes off him as I move toward my bedroom.

Mine. Not his. Not ours.

There are no cameras watching us here.

There’s no act, no pretense. We both know exactly where we stand in this bungalow, and he can fend for himself.

“Roslyn,” he says once more, but there’s a different note in it this time. Something lower and harsher, what I’d call a plea if I didn’t know better.

I don’t justify it with an answer, turning on my heel and retreating into the bedroom, shutting and locking the door behind me.