She carried Ares’s clone in her arms like a baby, her muscles straining as she hefted his big body down the corridor.

“Oversized idiot,” she grumbled under her breath in Earthian. “You’re lucky I’ve got a biometal spine, Vradhu.”

No ordinary human could have carried him around like this. He was heavier than he looked, and that was saying a lot. But he was also warm, and his smooth hairless skin felt like hot velvet beneath her bare hands.

Hot velvet doused in a slick of wetness. Stars, how his magnificent black-and-violet body glistened beneath the ship’s warm lights.

He was a living work of art.

Calexa arrested her wistful sigh before it escaped her lips, taming her gaze before it dropped to Ares-copy’s groin. She couldn’t believe where her imagination was trying to lead her. She never had these kinds of thoughts. After she’d been sold to the Khral, everything good and free and wholesome had been systematically stripped from her, and she’d been left with nothing but hatred against all slavers and an aversion to anything sensual.

Killing that Khral asshole had been extraordinarily therapeutic, but the emptiness had never gone away. That was why Calexa shied away from intimacy and tried to quell her demons by waging war against real-life slavers.

And then Ares had come along, and suddenly it felt okay to be damaged and fucked up and full of conflicting thoughts and feelings.

It felt okay to desire someone.

How had he done this to her?

Ares walked slowly in front of her, carrying the bodies of his slain clansmen. He’d fashioned an elegant sling from the ever-present ilverium, allowing him to carry one of the dead Vradhu in front while the other was strapped to his back.

He’d insisted on taking every piece of them; the mutilated bodies, the canister containing the bones, everything.

“I must ensure they are returned to the Ardu-Sai and buried intact, otherwise they will not walk in the afterlife.”

Apparently, Vradhu took their death-rituals very seriously.

They took a different route down to the hold, winding through elegantly desolate chambers that reminded her of catacombs. Now and then, they would pass a statue of some unknown Drakhin. The winged aliens—for some reason, all of them were male—would stare down at them with haughty expressions, as if they were merely tolerating their presence.

Ares’s carbon-copy didn’t stir. His breathing remained perfectly even, his spectacular face arranged in the most peaceful expression.

Innocent. That’s how this sleeping Vradhu appeared, even though the real-life Ares was anything but. Sleep had a way of banishing wickedness.

Ha. Perhaps she could wake him with a kiss.

“We’re almost th—” Ares stopped dead in his tracks and turned, meeting Calexa’s eyes. He cocked his head as something caught his attention. “We have to run.”

“Run?”

“Quickly now, they come.”

“Who—” But she already knew there were only two types of enemies on this ship.

“Run!”

Distant moans—it sounded like hundreds of them at once—reached her ears.

Corrupted. A chill ran through her. There was no way they could fight them off while carrying these bodies. “Let’s go.” Her bionic joints whirred softly as they loaded up, responding to the tension in her muscles.

“You go first,” Ares ordered. “I’ll guard the rear. We are close to the hold now. Keep going straight until you reach the twin pillars. A green light marks the entrance. Turn left and you will be there.”

“I get the feeling your people aren’t exactly going to welcome me with open arms.”

“They won’t touch you. I have marked you as makivari, and you carry my swords. Go, Calexa. I’ll be right behind you.”

The fierce possessiveness in his words surprised her.

I have marked you.

When the hell had he found the time to do that? Warmth coursed through her as she glanced down at Ares’s clone. “I’ll send someone back here to help you with the bodies.” She would have returned herself, but there was no way she was leaving her precious cargo, not until…

Their eyes met. Ares acknowledged her with a proud-tender-fierce-hungry smile, but instead of filling her with reassurance, his smile made her feel vulnerable.

“Don’t…” What if she didn’t see him again? What if the consciousness transfer failed? What if she lost the only person who might be able to untangle the terrible knot of pain and suffering inside her head?

Because although Ares obviously hungered for her in some strange way, he’d held back.

He hadn’t touched her.

Restraint. That’s what she so desperately needed. Time and patience and restraint.

“Run, Calexa,” he urged. “They can’t kill me when I am like this. My rank-equivalent, the one with the silver torc around his neck, is called Maki. Tell him to come and bring a pod of three. The sooner your craft can be prepared for departure, the better.”

She returned his stare with a slow-burner of her own. Then she sped out of there like a bat out of hell, carrying Ares’s living, breathing escape-plan in her arms.