Metal pressed hard against her temple, though she could barely feel it through the piercing pain coming from her wings. It wasn’t sharp like the knife had been. Then she heard the click by her ear.
Gun
. “Stop, Draeken scum,” the human ordered. “Come any closer, and the whore dies!”
Her brother didn’t come closer. Instead, he leaped to the side and grabbed the third soldier who was still groggily overcoming the nasty case of vertigo Talla had given him. Laze grabbed the man who feebly batted at him in a choke-hold.
“Let my sister go now,
human
,” Laze gritted out through clenched teeth. “This is your one and only chance. Do you know me?”
She felt the gun quiver against her temple, which she suspected was sign enough the soldier was quite aware of Laze’s reputation.
“I will see that you are tortured more than any other human before,” Laze said as he came to his full seven feet, pulling the whimpering soldier up with him as a shield, the human’s feet dangling above ground. “I will take you apart, one piece at a time, starting with your teeth, then your ears. I wonder … how many pieces a human can lose before he dies?”
“We — we can work something out,” the soldier stuttered out.
Glass crunched, and Talla tried to turn her head enough to see if friend or foe came. When he came into view, she realized that he was neither and so much more than both. Her Leash had arrived.
“Captain Jerrick!” the soldier with the gun exclaimed. “Thank God! These dragons attacked us!” He waved his gun wildly at Laze. “That one killed Sergeant Thompson!”
Jerrick — who his friends called Jax — seemed uninterested in the fact that Laze could kill the human he held in a heartbeat. Instead, his gaze fell first on Talla. His look was hard, betraying no emotion. She knew that look well. He’d been assigned to her when she had first been captured by the humans. He’d spent endless days and nights watching her in silence, with that same look that never changed. He was truly unreadable. She’d never seen another human like him.
That had been over two years ago. Little had changed. He was still assigned to her. And, unlike most Leashes, and he was much more than her Leash. Jax was her Shadow. The human soldier with haunted eyes crossed her path every day. Was it strange that she found comfort in his presence, that she craved seeing him, a
human
, each day?
Even more strange, she sensed that she brought the same reaction in him. He might be her enemy, but still her heart calmed at his arrival.
As Jax scanned her body, his eyes narrowed and his lips soured. He glanced back up at the soldier above her. “She attacked you with her pants undone?”
“I had nothing to do with it,” the man stammered in a rush.
“Then get off her wings,” Jax replied drily.
The soldier pointed at Laze. “But — but that one threatened to kill me!”
“Based on what you did to his sister, I’m not surprised,” Jax said. “Let her go. That’s an order.” He glanced at Laze. “Same goes for you. Let the corporal go.”
Laze didn’t move. “They must be punished.”
Jax nodded ever so slightly. “Agreed. But you fucked up tonight by killing an officer. Don’t make things worse than they already are. You got a kid at home. Don’t leave him without a dad.”
Scowling, Laze looked from Jax to Talla before dropping the man to his knees, then kicking him away. Similar to human anatomy, Draeken males were much stronger than their female counterparts. Where Talla was as strong as many human males, Laze could crush bones in his grip. The human scraped across the ground for several feet before unsteadily pulling himself back up and moving closer to the captain.
When the excruciating weight finally disappeared from her wings, Talla came to her feet and lunged into Laze’s strong arms. He held her in his safe embrace, one hand on her back, the other cradling her head. “
Sheescaten, ta deitan
,” he repeated in a soothing voice.
You are safe, sister.
And she knew his words were true, even if for only that moment.
“It’s not going to matter after tomorrow!” the one soldier yelled.
She knew, too, that her and Laze were doomed. A human was dead. She turned to Jax. He had the control now.
Jax watched her but spoke to Laze. “Get out of here, Kohlm. Both of you.”
The captain’s face was hard, set in uncompromising lines. She’d learned many times over that once that particular man set his mind to something, a mouse would have an easier time moving a boulder than sway his will.
“We’ll talk at
early
breakfast,” Jax added before turning his attention back to the two soldiers.
With a frown, she glanced at Laze, who looked just as confused. The Sephians took breakfast early, before the sun rose and hurt their sensitive eyes. Since the two races didn’t exactly get along, her people waited for the second, later breakfast. Perhaps it was Jax’s way of warning her that they’d be coming for them early tomorrow.
Shrugging, she tugged on her brother’s shirt. “Let’s go,” she whispered. She knew Laze craved to kill those two humans as badly as she did. But he was also smart. And as long as they were confined to the Etzee, they were forced to put logic before emotion. With her brother’s arm around her, they walked past the soldiers.
“You’re going to die,” one of her attackers taunted.
“We all die sometime,” she said without looking back. Just kept on walking. Whatever Jax had planned, he was waiting for her to leave.
Laze and she didn’t speak once during the ten-minute walk back to their small trailers. There was nothing to say. Their fate was already sealed. They had only to wait now.
Killing a human was a death sentence for them both.
0500 hours, the following morning
Talla discovered she and Laze weren’t the only Draeken in the food line for early breakfast.
Laze nodded as she approached, and the two Draeken with him turned.
The taller guardsman smiled. “Morning, Talla. You’re looking ravishing as usual.”
Talla knew not to let Wync’s flattery go to her head. His interest had more to do with Draeken males outnumbering females by nearly twenty to one than anything. His eyes twinkled with humor, so very different from the black ice in the
fregees’
gawking stares last night. A shiver went across her skin before she forced a smile. “Good morning, Wync. What brings you and Qan out so early this morning?”
They shot each other a quick look. Shy Qan stammered, then started to say something. Wync nudged him, and the shorter man clamped his mouth shut.
“Just doing something for Roden,” Wync said.
She frowned, glancing at Laze who shrugged in response. Laze and she were Roden’s primary guardsmen. If there was something going on, they always knew about it. Then again, after last night, she wasn’t going to complain. She wasn’t feeling at full mental speed yet this morning.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Peering into the shadows, she found Captain Jax Jerrick leaning against a trailer. Even though the sun hadn’t risen, he was wearing sunglasses so it was impossible to see where his gaze fell, but she knew it was her he watched. He never approached her, always maintained a cool distance. To any passerby, he was just another soldier on break, his arms crossed over a muscled chest. Her heart sped up, and she inhaled the cool morning air to calm herself. Parts of her instantly heated when she saw the confident man in fatigues. But a warning followed in her mind.
What will happen to Laze and me?
Reminding herself that Jax was a human first and foremost helped her maintain her composure. No human could be trusted. Two years ago, she was his prisoner. A year ago, she was “freed” and moved to the Etzee with all the others, only to have him assigned as her Leash, perhaps to punish, perhaps to see when she’d screw up. Perhaps he’d volunteered simply because he found her intriguing. She couldn’t read him, but she believed he watched her to protect her, though it made no sense. Whatever went on in that head of his didn’t matter. She couldn’t make him stop, and she didn’t want to.
She’d stayed at Laze’s last night, waiting to be taken. But the door hadn’t been broken down, and soldiers hadn’t come to take them away. She’d awoken after only a few hours’ sleep, and everything seemed no different. As she stood in line, there were no rumors about a human being killed, though Sephians tended to not talk much around Draeken.
To say the two races barely put up with each other was an understatement. The Sephians here had chosen to stay behind, some to start a new life on a planet that hadn’t been ravaged by war. Most clearly stayed behind because they didn’t trust the Draeken and were looking forward to decimating them the first chance they got.
Did Jax watch her because he didn’t trust her? What had Jax done with those soldiers after they’d left? No matter, Talla was now in a human’s debt. A debt that might be more than she could afford.
A murmur of voices brought her back. “They say millions dead in China already,” she overheard Wync say.
“And it’s spreading,” Qan replied.
“What’s happened?” Talla asked.
Wync wrapped his arm around her, leaning closer than what was proper. Laze smirked, and she rolled her eyes. Draeken propriety had suffered since they were forced from their home planet. “Remember those rumors that the humans have contracted a nasty plague?” he whispered in her ear. “Well, they’re true. Evidently, it all started nearly three weeks ago. We’re just finding out now. It’s hit several major cities in Asia already. Who knows how many lives it’ll claim.” Humor interlaced the words.
Like Wync, Talla had no love for humans, not after being forced onto the Etzee to live side-by-side with the Sephians, the race they’d been at war with for over two decades. Like nearly every other Draeken, she also had no love for the gold-skins they were forced to cohabitate with now. The Sephians had obliterated her people and thrust what few remained from Sephia, the planet they’d shared in relative peace for centuries.
“Yeah, nearly a hundred percent death rate within three days of contracting it. Humans drown in their own blood.” Wync gave her a toothy grin. “Karma’s a bitch, huh. If we’re lucky, this will clear the humans out. Then we can finally be free from this prison camp and everyone on the core ships can join us.”
Talla simply nodded in response. She knew better than to speak of such things the humans may consider “inappropriate.” Microphones and video cameras were hidden across the Etzee. She even suspected the tracers implanted on all of Etzee’s inhabitants were more than simple GPS chips. Simply put, there was no escape from the Etzee.
Lord Commander Roden Zyll, her people’s leader and Etzee powerhouse now that the Sephian Apolo had returned to Sephia, could’ve called in the three core ships under his command — the
Striga
,
Artox
, and the
Evo
— to rescue them. He, too, was growing tired of the humans’ delays. They’d promised to turn control of the Etzee over to the Triad three months ago. Yet nothing had changed. Still attempting to keep the façade of relative peace, Roden had the
Striga
,
Artox
, and
Evo
keep a safe distance from Earth.
But that didn’t mean the
Grax
would listen.
Controlled by a vile man, the fourth core ship was all that remained of the blood feud Roden and his consort, their new Grand Lord Nalea Puftan (a Sephian-Draeken hybrid, no less), had stomped out a year ago. Currently, the
Striga
,
Artox
, and
Evo
maintained orbit in this solar system, waiting until a time they could safely make a home on this world. The fourth, under constant surveillance by the other ships, changed orbit frequently but had yet to show aggression or any sign of retreat.
In her darker thoughts, Talla sometimes wished Roden would order the core ships to bomb the largest cities to thin out the human population and even the playing field. Once the humans fully understood Draeken firepower, perhaps then her people could live in peace on this planet, free from the desolation of the Etzee.
But core ship weaponry was a sledgehammer to a world’s landscape. It would be difficult to destroy the human population without devastating the planet. And so they continued to let the humans believe that they were in control while Roden and the other Draeken and Sephian leaders negotiated for a parcel of land they could call home.
What, then, would happen to Jax? Every muscle in her body tensed. She frowned. Why did she have that thought? Why should she worry about what happened to a human?
Suddenly a wall of gold stood before her. Talla looked up to see two large Sephians, one looking downright pissed, the other betraying no expression, standing there.
“It’s time,” Legian, who
always
looked pissed when in the company of Draeken, said.
Wync curled his upper lip and then nodded, slowly. “Yeah, Goldilocks. Let’s go.”
Wync and Qan stepped out of the line.
A hand brushed over Talla, and she turned to find the other Sephian grinning. “Well, hello, sexy.”
Forcing back the urge to roll her eyes, instead, she blew him a kiss. “Always a pleasure, Bente.” Then she stepped away from the Sephian and the food line. “I’ll see you back at the trailer,” she called out to Laze over her shoulder.
As the unlikely group of four Draeken and Sephians headed off, she walked the other direction. It was time to get jumbled thoughts out of her head. And the only way to do that was to confront the man responsible for them. With her head held high, she started walking toward Jax only to stop cold. She frowned.
The shadow he’d stood within was now empty.
• • •
Jax slammed the door of his Jeep and slipped the key into the ignition. He wanted to rev the engine, and peel the fuck out of there, taking Talla with him. Instead, he gripped the steering wheel, then slammed a fist into the dashboard.
He pulled out the flask from his leg pocket and took a long draw. The whiskey burned but it felt good. It grounded him, in a way like Talla did. No, in a different way. Where the booze numbed him, she made him
feel
. Too damn fucking much.