Authors: Laurie Roma
“You killed Officers Nolan and Prentice?” Serra felt her heart stutter as Eloise talked about killing someone with such vicious calm. It tore her to pieces inside to know that this crazy woman had killed Officer Ryans back in the suite, but to kill two other men that she had spent time with?
Eloise stared back at her with a mad gleam in her eyes that almost looked like pleasure. “They were fun while it lasted. It was easy to recruit them to work for me, but they had outlived their usefulness. Now, it will be awhile before we get close to Tartarus where we’re meeting my contact. You might as well get some sleep, since I doubt you will get much once you’re sold.”
“I’m going to enjoy gutting you and bathing in your blood,” Reva growled in a low animalistic rumble. Her eyes burned bright as she fought back the change, denying herself the shift into her cat form.
“That’s…graphic,” Skylar muttered. “But I think I might enjoy watching that. This crazy cunt needs killing.”
“Don’t you talk to me that way!” Eloise screeched out. “You can’t get out. There is an electrical field holding you in that cage that will fry you if you touch it.”
“Hey El, can’t we have a taste of them now?” the other man asked.
“These three are too valuable.” Eloise smiled at the women. “They killed the last woman I let them have. So, remember. Even if you did manage to get out, I have seven men working for me on this ship, all who are fully armed. Behave, or I just might let them have you.”
She turned to leave then stopped to look back at Serra. “Oh, and if you’re hoping for your big, bad, bonded to save you, think again. This vessel is now armed with the stealth tech you so graciously provided me with. We installed it yesterday. I win.”
“Later, kitty.” One of the men blew Reva a kiss, then chuckled as she bared her sharp teeth at him. Eloise laughed as the cocky bitch left the room with two men trailing behind her.
There was a beat of silence, then Skylar turned to Serra. “That fuckhead is not selling us. What’s your plan to get us out of here?”
“You heard the woman,” Reva said, looking at Skylar like she wasn’t too bright. “We cannot get past the electrical field.”
Skylar pointed at Serra. “Serra here is one of the smartest people in the universe, if not the smartest. She’ll think of a plan…she always has a plan.”
“Give me a minute. I’m thinking.”
“See? She’s thinking.” Skylar turned to look at the transparent field that held them in the cage while she gave Serra time to come up with something. Taking a credit out of her pocket, she tossed it at the center of the invisible barrier, and watched as the coin bounce off with a crackling sound. It fell to the ground, smoking from the contact. “Well, shit.”
Skylar frowned as she studied the transparent wall again. Holding up her hands a few inches away from the barrier, she tried to draw the electricity to her. Small blue streams of energy lifted from the barrier to dance along Skylar’s skin. Not enough to shut it down, but it gave her enough of a jolt to killed the last of the lethargy cause by the drug. Frustrated, she turned away and saw Reva staring at her with wide eyes.
“I’m a conduit,” Skylar explained holding her hands up again, showing the shifter the streams of energy racing over her skin. “I can manipulate energy, but it works better on people than shit like this.”
“Fascinating.”
“I think I have something.” Serra said
. “I need to get to the control panel on the other side of the cell wall. If we can access it from here, I can override the system and shut it down. I’ll need you to give me a few minutes to get to that data center so I can lock them out. We’re in a cargo bay of some kind, and I don’t like thinking they could just open the doors and suck us out into space.”
“Yeah, that would definitely suck. Reva and I can give you the time you need, but what the hell do we do after? We won’t be able to hold them off forever. Do we try for an escape pod?”
Serra’s fingers drummed against her thighs as she thought about the probabilities. She was terrified and knew their circumstances were dire, but she had to focus. Their lives were depending on her…on all of them working together. Serra knew without a doubt Jax and Archer were already coming for her. She just had to make sure she gave them time to find her. “No, we have the best chance of survival if we stay here and fortify our position until help comes.”
“But we have no clue when that will be,” Reva pointed out.
Serra shook her head. “Considering that we were served the coffee first, I believe it’s safe to assume that we consumed more of the drug and since our body masses are less than the men, they would have woken before we did, giving them more time to follow us.”
Skylar and Reva looked at each other, then Skylar said, “That’s great and all, but that still doesn’t help them find us.”
“Oh, but this will.” Serra smiled as she pulled out the necklace from under the collar of her shirt. “There is a tracker in here. We just have to hold out until they find us.”
A slow smile spread over Skylar’s face. “That’s pretty damn handy, even though it’s kind of creepy your bonded have you tagged. So, we need to break through the wall?”
“Yes. About right here,” Serra said placing her hand on the wall. “I noticed Eloise looking in this area as if making sure we were locked in. I’m guessing this is where the control panel is, but I could be wrong.”
“I trust you,” Skylar said, then frowned at Reva as she handed her the destroyed camera. “What? You want me to break through the wall with this?”
“No, I want you to give me a noisy distraction.”
Understanding lit up Skylar’s eyes, and she quickly moved over to the other side of the cage, away from Serra and Reva. Skylar stood at the ready with the broken camera in her hand. She gave a nod to Reva, who turned her hand into a claw and punched it through the wall at the same time Skylar threw the camera into the electric field. The camera snapped and sizzled before it fell to the ground in burnt pile of metal, creating enough noise to cover up what Reva was doing.
Reva pulled her hand out and moved across the cell to stand with Skylar as Serra reached into the opening in the wall so she was able to access the wires. The door to the cargo bay slid open and the two men rushed inside, brandishing their blasters.
“What the hell was that? You stupid cunts, are you trying to get yourselves fried?”
The men grinned at each other while they put away their weapons when Reva turned her back to them and took off her vest. “What are you doing?” Skylar hissed.
“I don’t want to ruin my clothes,” Reva replied softly as she began to unfasten her pants.
The men took another step toward the prison cell. “Damn, this bitch is hot for it. I say to hell with what Eloise says, I want to fuck one of them.”
“Hey, where’s the other one?”
Serra did her best to ignore the men as she hurried to reconnect the wires inside the wall. She saw the shimmering electrical field dissipate, leaving the entrance to their prison cell open, then let out a curse as the lights went out and an alarm started to sound. One of the men looked over and saw her just as the overhead emergency lights kicked on. The guard’s eyes widened as he reached for his blaster.
“Now!” Serra yelled.
Skylar rushed the man, reaching out to grip the arm holding the weapon as she wrapped her other hand around his neck. His body went rigid and he stared at her in horror as she ruthlessly drew his energy from him. At the same time, Reva spun around and shifted in one seamless motion, hitting the other man full force as a large, sleek jungle cat. She cut off the sound of his scream as the cat bit down on his neck, taking him down to the floor.
As soon as they were freed, Serra raced across the room and started hacking into the ship’s onboard system through the data console. Images of Eloise blasting them out into space had Serra pushing hard to lockdown the outer doors so they couldn’t be killed that way. Next, she cut off the controls to the cargo bay doors leading to the rest of the ship so the rest of the kidnappers couldn’t attack them.
It wouldn’t hold forever, but it would give them some time.
She tried to shut off the alarm, but couldn’t access that system from the cargo bay. Serra turned as she heard Skylar mutter something from behind her and froze in shock as she saw the two men sprawled out on the floor. One of the men’s eyes were wide with horror, as he lay dead on the ground while the other was a bloody, mangled mess. Reva in cat-form snarled and swiped at the dead body with its massive paw again. The cat was huge, and reminded Serra of the pictures she’d once seen of the ancient saber tooth tigers that had once roamed Earth. She felt a jolt of unease at the Helios turned its head and bared its long fangs in a triumphant growl.
“Okay, I never realized how fucking big those cats are,” Skylar whispered as she inched her way around Reva.
“They can crush a skull with one bite,” Serra said, making Skylar frown at her as she moved to her side.
“Thanks,” Skylar said dryly. “I really didn’t need to know that now that we’re stuck in here with it.” They turned as pounding sounded on the doors leading to the interior of the ship. Reva let out a vicious snarl towards the door as they heard men yelling. “We need weapons.”
Reva suddenly shifted back into her naked humanoid form, and held up a hand to stop Serra and Skylar from moving. “I hear fighting in the corridor outside.”
“I can’t hear shit over these alarms.”
“Shifters have very good hearing. You have a very impressive power,” she said to Skylar.
Skylar let out a little laugh. “I’d have to say turning into an eight hundred pound cat with claws as big as my fucking arm is more impressive.”
Reva’s smile froze then she let out a growl. “The men are breaking through. Stay behind me.” She shifted back to her cat-form and backed up so she was guarding Skylar and Serra.
The doors opened an inch and Serra heard Jax’s voice boom out her name.
“Jax! We’re in here!”
The men in the hallway pried open the heavy doors, and elite soldiers poured into the room, weapons at the ready. Serra let the tears come now as she ran to Jax, who tore off his helmet and dropped his weapon. He caught her up against him so tight she could barely breathe. The hard armor of his black uniform pressed against her painfully, but she didn’t care.
“Serra! Oh, God…I thought…”
She could feel him shaking against her and lifted her head to press kisses over his beloved face. He claimed her lips in a heated kiss, then she found herself yanked into Archer’s arms. He buried his face into her neck, whispering her name over and over in a tortured voice.
“You came for me,” she whispered softly.
“Always. We’ll always come for you.”
She sank into his kiss, feeling Jax move up behind her so she was surrounded by them. Comfort flooded her, and the relief of knowing she was finally safe made her tremble. They stayed like that, locked together as the other soldiers surveyed the carnage inside the cargo bay.
“Sirs. We have Eloise Greer in custody.”
“Good,” Jax mumbled between placing kisses on Serra’s neck.
“I think my friend here has a few things she wants to say to that bitch,” Skylar said with a laugh. Reva let out a savage snarl that had the elites casting wary glances at the large jungle cat.
Jax wiped at the tears falling on one side of Serra’s face while Sully kissed away the tears on her other cheek. “I just have one thing to ask both of you.”
“What’s that, sweetheart?”
She pulled back so she could look at both of her men and let out a little laugh. “What the hell took you so long?”
***
Epilogue
In the aftermath of their rescue, Serra thought she’d held it together pretty well.
She had pushed back her emotions, doing what needed to be done when they were back on New Vega. As they’d left that cargo bay, Serra had seen the swath of destruction that Jax and Sully had cut through to get to her. They had been ruthless as they’d boarded the kidnappers’ vessel, killing everyone in their path. Instead of being afraid of what they were capable of, she was glad that she had such powerful, driven men who would do anything in order to get to her. They didn’t kill indiscriminately, but they would to rescue her.
Eloise Greer was now on her way back to earth, along with Serra’s mother, guarded by a dozen hard-eyed elite soldiers. Serra’s fathers decided to accompany High Commander Newgate back. Cade had said he needed to see Tania locked in a cage where she would await trial with his own eyes.
Serra had been devastated when she had thought that Officer Cal Ryans had died, but he was slowly recovering from his stab wound in the medical unit. She’d demanded to stop by so she could see him, and found her assistant, Troy Takeshi, sitting next to Ryans’ bed, playing a video game with him to keep the injured man entertained.
Skylar had chosen to stay on New Vega, and after her debriefing had decided to spend some time with Reva and some of the other Helios from Reva’s tribe. It hadn’t surprised Serra that both Dom and Arik had also chosen to stay. The sedative had acted like poison to Arik instead of just putting him to sleep, but he’d fully recovered. Dom, Arik and Skylar would be returning to Earth with Serra and her bonded, but Sully had suggested they all stay for a few more days to rest and relax.
It wasn’t until they were in their new suite later that night that Serra had finally lost it. Curling up on the bed, her body had started to shake as she’d thought about everything that had happened. Jax and Sully hadn’t left her side from the moment they’d stormed into the cargo bay on the kidnappers’ ship. They had tracked her by using the signal in her necklace, and Sully had made her swear never to take it off again. She had made the promise, angering them again when she had thanked them for coming for her.
They would just have to get over the damn fact she had manners.
Exhausted, she’d fallen asleep surrounded by her two lovers, and was grateful when she’d dropped into a deep slumber where nightmares didn’t chase her.
Now, she woke alone.
She knew that there was still a lot they had to do, but she couldn’t seem to make herself move. It made her smile to see that they had left the lights on low so she wouldn’t wake in the dark. A slight sound coming from the corner of the room had her jolting up to a sitting position.