3013: Renegade (11 page)

She was a vision in silk and lace, her sun-kissed skin looking even darker against the cream folds of her robe. The lace beneath was sheer enough that he could make out the darker skin of her nipples and showed him ever swell and curve of her body. Her build was leaner than most women who had undergone enhancement, but Nikolai suspected that would change now that she had been claimed. A few weeks of proper meals and sleep was all it would take, and then he and Colin would be the ones not getting any sleep. Just the thought of another man looking at his chosen made his jaw tighten and his hands itch to hit something, or someone.

“As lovely as that bit of lace is, I think it’s time it came off,” he said. If she didn’t get it off fast enough, he’d be tempted to tear it off and buy her three more to replace it.

“I have to be naked to get relaxed?” She cocked a brow at him in challenge and he couldn’t help but grin. He loved it when she got sassy with him.

“Well, we were planning on giving you a massage. Those tend to work better when the recipient has their clothes off, minx.”

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had one,” she said as Colin started easing the robe off her shoulders and she shrugged out of it, revealing the rest of her lace-covered body.

For a second Nikolai’s brain was so foggy with lust he didn’t register what Alayna had said, but when it finally sunk in, he was stunned.

“You’ve never had a massage?” He knew he sounded like a brain damaged parrot but he was too surprised to say much else. Who the hell went through their entire life without enjoying at least one massage? From a friend, a lover, someone? Stars, his family had a trained masseur on staff. He caught Colin’s gaze and the two of them nodded to each other in understanding. It was time to show their chosen another of the perks that were part of her new life.

Alayna just laughed, shaking her head as she stripped off her lingerie. “I’ve never had a massage, or lived in a place that stocked real coffee. I’ve never owned anything made of lace before either. Or silk for that matter. You don’t find many luxuries out in the badlands. In fact, you don’t even find the things the Alliance promises to send, like food or medicine. Someday, I want to take you out there and show you. Then maybe you’ll understand,
Nik. And Colin, maybe you’ll remember.”

“Any time you want to take us there, we’ll go. We’re under orders to fix what’s broken with the distribution system. I think you’re the best guide we could have,” Nikolai said and was pleased when her mouth softened into a smile.

“You’d really let me take you out there and show you everything?”

“We really would.
Griz is right. You’re the best guide we could possibly have. If we can figure out how best to help everyone, then maybe we can put that bastard Wraith out of business.”

It was the smallest of changes, but Nikolai caught it. The moment Colin spoke the name of the area’s most notorious thief, Alayna’s smile flickered and the light in her eyes dimmed. It was only for a split second, but it was enough. Their little thief had some connection to the man whose career they had been ordered to end, by any means necessary.

Well, isn’t this fucking perfect.

He shook off the storm of dark thoughts that threatened to ruin this moment and put the matter aside for now. Right now, they needed to focus on making Alayna happy. She’d tell them the truth when she was ready. At least, he hoped she would. “Hop up on the bed, face down. It’s time to show you what you’ve been missing.”

She climbed into bed and Nikolai followed her, settling himself at her feet as Colin claimed a spot on the other side, near her shoulders. Nik produced the bottle of body lotion he’d snagged from her bathroom counter, and the two men got to work.

Alayna had never been so pampered in her life. Colin had started by giving her a slow, gentle scalp massage while
Nik had taken one of her feet in his big hands and began working his way up her body, starting at her toes. It felt deliciously decadent to have the attentions of both men focused entirely on her. It didn’t take long for the tension to start falling away, and soon her muscles were looser and her limbs heavy, like her entire body was slowly being filled with warm sand.

She was almost asleep when they finished, both of them working together to massage the last spots of tension out of her lower back. “Thank you,” she mumbled, not even bothering to lift her head from the pillow.

“You’re very welcome,” Nikolai told her.

“Would you like us to leave you alone now? Or will you let us stay with you for the rest of the night?”

Warm, contented and on the verge of sleep, Alayna couldn’t muster the will to send away the two men who had just made her feel so incredibly good. “Stay with me.”

She heard both men rumble in pleasure at her words, and within a few minutes she was nestled between their two big bodies.
Nik’s hand was on her thigh, Colin had his arm draped over her stomach as she tumbled into sleep at last, safe between her bonded.

***

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It had taken a bit of creative juggling, but Colin had found a way to rework their schedules so that he and Nikolai could spend time with Alayna, while still managing to keep the base running smoothly. It was common for newly bonded trios to have time off from work at the beginning of their new relationship, but the two of them were new to their duties, so that wasn’t entirely possible.

Still, they’d managed to stretch out their weekend by another two days, giving themselves a bit more time with Alayna before they had gone back to work. They would both work through the morning, and then each afternoon one of them would head home so that Alayna wouldn’t be left alone all day while she was adjusting to her new life.

Today was Colin’s turn to work a full day, and he was wading through a digital sea of documents, inventories, bills of lading, and other data looking for some hint as to where in the goddamned galaxy their inventory was disappearing to. There had been another theft reported this morning. This time it was immunity boosters that were slated for transport to a village in the badlands. They were worth a small fortune on the black market, but why the hell would Wraith steal something that was supposed to be going to the people he was supposed to be protecting? It didn’t make any sense. Fuck, none of it did.

There was no sign of anyone on the surveillance tapes, but the goods were gone. That was the pattern. Inventory came in, got unloaded, and then vanished. When a transport was hit by thieves or rebels, the loss was easy to track, but one of the first things he and
Griz had done when they had taken over was to order a complete inventory review. The numbers were staggering. It didn’t seem possible that one thief could have stolen it all. The whole mess was giving him a headache.

Not that
Griz was having a great day either. Today Alayna was addressing what she called their “pathetically inadequate” security set up. She had ordered an array of parts, and according to the last update Griz had sent via their wrist units, she was now happily reworking their entire security system. Judging by the pictures Nikolai had included, the process included gutting the old system, which was now sitting in piles of tangled old wires and dusty processors at various locations throughout their house. Both he and Griz had quietly agreed that she could tear the house apart if she wanted to. What mattered was that Alayna was thinking about their place as her
home
.

When his wrist unit beeped again, he expected another status update from Nikolai. What he got instead was a vision of his partner staring into the view screen, his eyes glittering with barely repressed fury. “You need to get back here.
Now.”

“Middle of the work day,
Griz. I can’t cut out of here for another hour or two unless it’s an emergency.”

“Get your ass home, Ghost. My fucking parents are here and it’s going to get ugly, fast.”

“Fuck! I’ll be there as soon as I can. Don’t kill anyone.”

Nikolai’s grin turned feral. “It’s not me you need to be worried about right now. It’s Alayna.” With that, he signed off, leaving Colin to scramble around his office as he shouted orders to his staff and grabbed his keys out of his desk. If Nikolai’s parents were making a surprise visit, then it could only mean one thing. They’d found out about Alayna and were coming to inspect their son’s chosen.

There was no way this was going to go well.

Nikolai had been rebelling against his controlling and judgmental parents for his entire life, a life that Colin had been a part of since they had met at the age of ten. More than twenty years later,
Griz and his family had settled into an uneasy truce. Nikolai didn’t contact them, and they left their eldest son alone to live his life. At least, that had been the deal up until now.

As Colin drove, he snapped off a series of inquiries and commands into his wrist unit. Nikolai’s family had to have come by private shuttle, but he needed to know where they’d landed. If they had used the base’s airfield without Colin being alerted, he was going hand out demotions and punishments. This was his base, in the city he’d been tasked to protect, and he was getting very fucking tired of not knowing what the hell was going on.

* * * *

Alayna’s day had been going really well, right up to the moment someone knocked on their front door. She and
Nik had made a day of reworking their outdated security system. He had been keenly interested in how she had gotten around the system they had, asking questions and discussing various elements with her as they’d dismantled the old set up and started installing the new one.

It was the first time she’d been so open about her skills, and she was relieved when Nikolai showed nothing but curiosity about what she was doing, and why. Things were going so well she had been considering how to steer their conversation toward the one topic she’d been avoiding. Alayna wanted to tell them the truth about what she was doing in their house that night, and who Wraith really was. She wanted to do it before they held the ceremony that would mark them as hers.

Over the last few days and nights, she had come to accept that while the Alliance was an imperfect system, not everyone within it was corrupt, or uncaring. She was starting to hope that maybe she could use her experiences to help Nik and Colin find a new way to connect with the renegades and the people they protected. But before she could do that, she needed to be honest with them.

All those plans had gone sideways the moment their guests arrived.

Nikolai had gone to answer it, leaving her to finish up the last few tweaks on the central control panel. It had only taken a few seconds for her to catch the curt tone to his words of greeting, and then she’d heard several voices speaking at once, none of them sounding at all friendly.

I’m not going to hide here while
Nik has to deal with whoever that is by himself.

She dusted the worst of the grime off her hands and headed for the front door, with the voices getting louder and more insistent the closer she got.

“Why are you even here?” Nikolai demanded of their guests, who were gathered at the threshold of the front door. All conversation stopped as she appeared, and Alayna found herself the focus of three people that all shared a single, pained expression. Before she could say a word, Nik slipped an arm around her waist and tugged her against his side. “Mother, Fathers, may I present Alayna Grekov-Neilson, our chosen. Alayna, may I present to you my mother, Janice Grekov-Burrows, my fathers, Carl Burrows and Petr Grekov, and my youngest sister, Sonja. They were just leaving.”

Nik’s
fathers were both tall and well-built, and if it weren’t a few lines around their eyes and the gray in their hair she would never have imagined they were old enough to be parents to a full grown man. Nikolai clearly favored his biological father, Petr. They shared the same big build, dark eyes and swarthy complexion. Carl was fairer, with only a trace of darker hair left among the gray. Neither of them was smiling.

“We came all this way to see you, son. The least you could do is invite us in for a few minutes before throwing us back out the door,” Petr said, taking a step inside.

“I didn’t invite you to come at all.” Nik pointed out, standing his ground. Alayna could feel the anger coming off him in waves.

“You claimed a woman and didn’t even bother to tell us. Of course we came as soon as we found out,” Janice chimed on.

“And how the fuck did you find out about Alayna?”

“Language, Nikolai!” Janice scolded her son with a haughty tone that grated on every one of Alayna’s nerves.

“I’ll speak however I like in my own damned home, mother. If you don’t like it, I suggest you leave. In fact, I’ve already suggested that. Twice. So why are you still here?”

“We’re not leaving until we’ve gotten to know your chosen,” she replied, raking her ice-blue eyes over Alayna in clear disapproval. Nikolai’s mother was statuesque, her blonde hair touched with silver, and Alayna decided she disliked the woman immensely. That didn’t mean that she was going to let
Nik throw them out. Whatever they had come all this way to say, it was likely best that they be allowed to speak their piece before being shown the door.

“Let them come in,
Nik. This is your family, and I would like to meet them.” She paused and gave Janice a saccharine smile before adding, “Even if this visit has come as something of a surprise.”

“It’s your decision, Alayna. This is your home too, and I’ll respect your wishes.”

“Thank you, Nik.”

He lowered his head and murmured in her ear. “Don’t thank me yet.” Then he straightened up and spoke in a clear voice. “My chosen has invited you into our home. The first whisper of an insult, and I will throw you all right back out again.”

“I raised you to have better manners than this, Nikolai. No wonder you had to settle for—” Janice cut herself off before Nikolai could take offense, but the look she gave Alayna made it perfectly clear what she meant. “Perhaps you should take a moment to go wash yourself up, Alayna. I cannot imagine what you could have been doing to get yourself quite so…grubby.”

It took every bit of Alayna’s self-control to bite back the first retort that popped into her head, and almost as much to reject the second and third comments that followed. “I do apologize for not being dressed to your standards. I was in the middle of installing a new security system when you arrived. If we had known you were coming, I would have done my best to finish the installation quicker.”

She was already regretting letting them in the door.

The last thing Nikolai wanted to do was to spend time with his parents, and he most certainly did not want them spending time with Alayna. They didn’t deserve the pleasure of her company. Alayna was nothing like the cosseted, simpering women that his family would have preferred. If his mother was here to put her new daughter-in-law in line, then she was in for the surprise of her life. He didn’t care what they thought. He knew Alayna was the right woman for him, and that was the end of it. He settled his hand more firmly on Alayna’s hip and moved forward, putting himself slightly in front of his chosen as he rumbled a soft warning.

“Remember, this is my home, and Alayna is my chosen. My fathers would never allow someone to enter their home and insult
you
, mother. Don’t expect me to act any differently than they would.”

His fathers both stiffened, but before they could say anything Sonja bounded out from her spot near the door and launched herself into his arms.
“Hey, big brother! I’ve missed you.”

“Hey, yourself.”
He grinned down at his little sister and felt a pang as he saw how much she had grown up since he’d last seen her. It had been six years now, and the gangly girl he’d hugged goodbye before heading off on his last tour had grown into a beautiful woman. “You grew up on me, sprite. I barely recognized you.”

“You were gone a long time,” she replied and hugged him again, harder this time. He gave her one last squeeze and then coaxed her to let go of him, feeling more than a little guilty that he hadn’t made time to see her before they’d left the capital. Sonja was the one member of his family that he truly liked. She was a ray of sunshine in an otherwise somber, uptight family. Despite being a scroll, his family had so far managed to prevent her from being claimed. He had no doubt that she would remain unclaimed until they could find a suitably profitable match for her. Well, profitable for the family. He doubted their parents would give Sonja’s preferences much consideration.

Sonja bounced past him and threw her arms around Alayna. “I’m so happy Nikolai and Colin finally found their chosen! Were you really installing a security system? Who taught you how to do that?”

“
Sonja, that is not how we raised you to behave. Do try to have a little decorum.”

Alayna could feel Sonja tense at her mother’s words, and she deliberately hugged the girl back to prolong the encounter. Sonja seemed nice enough, which was more than could be said for her mother.

“I was really installing the new panels, yes. My foster father taught how.”

“So it’s true then, you don’t know your parentage.” Carl sighed and shook his head, clearly displeased with that information.

“I was found in the badlands surrounded by twisted metal and dead bodies. No one stopped to check for a pedigree, no.”

“We’re just grateful that someone found her,”
Nik stated and then leaned down to kiss her brow. In a lower voice he added. “Head upstairs and clean up if you want, but don’t take long.” She shot him an appreciative smile. “I’ll be back shortly. Then your family can say whatever they came all this way to tell us,” she said, grateful for the chance to organize her thoughts before facing these vile people again.

I will not be the one to start the fight
. I will not be the one to start the fight.

She kept repeating those words like a mantra as she headed up the stairs. She only got halfway before Janice asked a question in a voice pitched loud enough for Alayna to hear perfectly.

“Where
did
you find her, Nikolai?”

“They caught me breaking into their house and decided to keep me,” Alayna announced, the words tripping off her tongue before she could slap a muzzle on mouth. She bolted for her room, already feeling guilty for leaving Nikolai to deal with the fallout of her outburst, but damn it, the woman was so
rude
!