“Status?” I glance around the lab, taking in the insulated, refrigerated canister on the desk. It’s for biological samples. Lilli was right.

Corporate espionage.

“Vitals are good, but she’s out cold,” Zamora says from the floor, where Dreyer lies draped over his lap, eyes closed. “I don’t think it was gas, or she’d have woken up along with us. Which probably happened when our cell doors opened, clearing out the air.” Thiago’s gaze shifts to Lilli. “Was that you?”

“Yeah.” She holds up Justin’s wrist com. “I figured out how to unlock the bindings and the doors, but that’s all I had time for.”

“That was great work,” I tell her, pride echoing in my voice. “How did you disable him?”

“Headlock. Took forever. No one ever tells you how long it takes to knock someone out like that, but my ankles were still cuffed to the table, and I couldn’t reach any weapons, so…” She shrugs.

“You choked him out while you were still strapped to the fucking lab table?” Coleman’s incredulous gold-eyed gaze finds her.

“He threatened to hurt the baby. But I kind of suck at fighting.” She lifts the back of her shirt and turns so that I can see. “Is there a bruise?”

Rage fires through me. Her back and side are already purple with bruises developing like roses blooming on her skin.

He hurt your mate, the beast growls. He tried to hurt your child. Kill him.

A growl rumbles from my throat and I lunge at the unconscious scientist.

“Sotelo.” Jamison steps into my path, holding me back with both hands on my chest. “We still need him.”

“It’s okay.” Lilli grabs my arm and pulls me back. “I’m fine. We’re fine.”

I fall to my knees in front of her and lift the hem of her shirt to expose her stomach. The skin is unblemished, except for a hint of stretch marks from her previous pregnancy.

“Seriously, we’re fine.” Her hands slide into my hair, and the physical demonstration of her need to reassure me wrings my heart out like a wet rag. Nothing can be wrong while she is healthy and happy and with me, but I will tear down the world, should any of that change. “I bent over him so he couldn’t get to my stomach,” she adds.

For a moment, pride threatens to derail my focus, as the beast puffs out his chest. My mate is smart and protective. A tiny little warrior, fighting for our unborn.

She is perfect, the beast purrs. Get her to safety.

I press a kiss against her flat abdomen, already eager for the day she swells with my child. Then I stand and force myself to focus.

We’re getting out of here today. Thanks to Lilli.

“May I see that?” I nod at Justin’s wrist com, and she sets it in my palm. I tap on it to confirm that it’s locked to his fingerprints, and when it doesn’t respond, I hand it to Coleman with a nod at the unconscious scientist. “Check for alerts. We need to know who’s coming and how far out they are.”

He takes the device and kneels next to Justin to use his finger on the devise like a stylus.

I turn to Lawrence and Jamison. “Look for adrenaline. If we can wake Dreyer up, she might be able to help us with access to his tech.” Because she’s the only one of us with significant experience in that area.

“You said there’s a shuttle?” I turn back to Lilli.

“Yes, and it’s already authorized to get through the pyro-shield, because Justin has a partner on Station Delta. In the control room. They released a prisoner to trigger a lockdown, and if that’s still in effect, chances are good that no one knows what’s going on down here yet. He said Dr. Brennan and her crew were all locked in their quarters. Oh, and the cameras are off.” She points up at one mounted near the ceiling, and I look up to see that the red power light is off.

“She’s right.” Coleman looks up from Justin’s com device. “There are no alerts, and Station Delta is on lockdown. Reinforcements are on their way from Station Alpha. No one knows about this yet, but we’re in deep shit the moment they figure it out.”

“Then let’s get moving. Lilli, where’s the shuttle?”

She shrugs. “All I know is that he was about to march me ‘down to the shuttle’ and secure me, then come back for Tirzah.”

“Found the adrenaline!” Lawrence turns from an open upper cabinet with a pneumatic injector.” He tosses it to Zamora. “Don’t fuck it up.”

“This is not my first adrenaline injection,” Zamora mumbles as he lifts Dreyer’s shirt to expose her sternum. He counts to three, then he presses the metal cylinder to her chest. There’s a soft hiss, then Dreyer’s eyes fly open. She gasps, washed away for a moment by the tide of adrenaline surging through her veins.

“Zamora?” She blinks up at him. “What’s going on?”

“Evac of enemy territory. You good? We need you to work some tech magic.”

She sits up and pushes hair back from her face, hands still trembling from the jolt. “Yeah. What do we need?”

“Access to the front door. Rumor has it there’s a shuttle waiting for us, courtesy of our favorite dumbass genius.” Coleman stands, giving her access to Justin and his com device.

Dreyer glances around the room, taking it all in. Then she pushes herself to her feet and crosses the room to kneel next to Justin. “He did this to me?”

“He was going to sell you and Lilli—and my child—to UA’s competitor,” I tell her.

Her eyes narrow. Then she sets to work, and while she taps on the com device with the guard’s finger, I turn to address the rest of the room. “Take everything we can carry. Anything we could possibly need, or that could be sold later on. There’s no telling where or when we’ll be able to stop for supplies.” Then I grab Justin’s satchel and start raiding the cabinets, taking mostly medical supplies.

Two minutes later, I glance at Dreyer to see that she’s using her own finger on the com device now, having authorized her own prints. Which means we’re done with Justin.

The beast growls as I approach the unconscious scientist. Spikes, blades and spires emerge from the seams in my skin, and Dreyer backs away from him when she realizes my intent.

“Carson?” Lilli’s voice is tense. “Are you…? I mean should you…?”

“Yes.” I kneel next to him and use my left bone blade to slice through his neck, so deep that I hit his spinal cord.

Blood spurts from his neck, then pours from the massive wound to pool on the floor. Justin’s eyes fly open. He blinks up at me, gasping as he bleeds out.

The beast is not satisfied by such an easy kill, but Justin is no warrior. No soldier. His death wouldn’t have been a fair fight even if I’d stood him up and given him his gun.

“Can’t be done.” Tirzah backs calmly away from the spreading pool of blood on the floor. “He doesn’t have access to the front door, and I can’t get it for him. Not without raising an alert, anyway.”

Lawrence turns from a cabinet open across the room. “If he doesn’t have access, how did get in here?”

“Lilli?” I turn to her, holding her gaze. “What did he say exactly? About the shuttle?”

She frowns, and her focus turns inward as she thinks back. “He said something about walking me down to the shuttle.”

“Down?” Coleman turns from the drawer he was rifling through. “Is there a down?”

“Oh my god, there must be!” Lilli gasps. “Another level. A lower level.”

“The supplies,” I say, as I catch on, and she nods. “From the boxes behind the wall panels. They’re coming up from downstairs.”

“The other facility,” Jamison says. “The lab they kept us in at the beginning. It’s not in another building. It’s on another floor.”

“So how do we get there?” Zamora asks. “We’ve been all over this level, and there’s no elevator. No stairs.”

“We must have missed something. Dreyer, is there a map on that thing? A blueprint?”

“Not that I’ve found. But there’s a list of door locks, some Justin can access, some he can’t. I thought the list looked too long…” She taps on the screen, then scrolls through a list. “There. This one’s labeled ‘stairwell.’”

“But unlocking it won’t help unless we can find it.”

“Maybe it will,” Lilli says. “Assuming the lock is pretty damn sturdy. Like…a big bolt.”

Thiago snorts. “Considering they clearly don’t want us to know about this lower level, much less have access to it, that sounds about right.”

“Okay, everyone be quiet,” Lilli says, and when we all go still and silent, she looks at Dreyer. “Unlock it. Then keep locking and unlocking until we hear something.”

Dreyer taps on the com device.

We all listen, but I hear nothing. “Spread out,” I whisper, and the men silently head out of Lab A to listen in other areas of the building.

Dreyer taps the screen again, over and over, as we make our way from room to room on silent feet. And finally, I hear a faint metallic whisper that no unaltered human ear could have heard.

“Got it!” I call out, and the others rush into Lab C, where I’m staring at the supply closet door.

Dreyer taps again to unlock it, and I pull the door open. And there, at the back of the closet, is a second, clearly reinforced metal door. Not the light-weight, transparent alloy kind. The heavy-duty kind we probably couldn’t even drive a tank through.

Fortunately, we don’t need to.

“Dreyer, what can you do about that pistol? Any way to authorize new fingerprints?”

“Nope. Not without programing hardware they don’t have down here. It’s probably against policy to keep stuff like that on the surface, to avoid this exact scenario.”

“Okay. There’s nothing up here that could be used for a weapon, probably for the same reason.” In fact, other than the two light-weight rolling desk chairs, everything in the building is bolted to the floor or the wall. All the lab equipment is made of shatterproof polymer. “So let’s do what they designed us to do.”

I flip a mental switch, and my spikes, spires, and bones blades shoot through seams in my skin. A glance around shows that my men are all similarly equipped.

“I doubt anyone’s down there,” Lilli says, gaping at the lot of us. “Surely Justin wouldn’t have gone that way, if there were potential witnesses.”

“You’re probably right,” I tell her. “But just in case. Coleman, you’re on point.” Because his skin is like lightweight armor. Zamora, you bring up the rear. And you—” I turn to Lilli, “—stay close behind me.”

She nods, and her pulse begins to race. Coleman opens the door, and Lilli falls in behind me while we pass into a small vestibule holding a freight elevator and a set of concrete stairs. We take the stairs, silent on bare feet, and Coleman pauses to glance back at us from the lower landing, signaling that he’s going to open the door.

I nod.

The door—another heavy-duty sheet of steel—squeals as he pushes it open.

Jamison and Dreyer follow him into the lower level, but I put out a hand to stop Lilli when she tries to move forward. I press one finger to my lips, warning her to be quiet.

She rolls her eyes at me, and I give her a smile.

A couple of minutes later, Dreyer pops back into the stairwell to wave us forward, and I repeat the “shhhh” gesture to Lilli. In case she mistook “proceed with caution” for “all clear.”

We head through the doorway, and despite my warning, Lilli gasps.

I can hardly blame her.

The stairwell empties into a long room built of concrete walls painted dark blue and sealed with a finish that reflects nearly a dozen dropped panels of lighting. The floors are also concrete, stained a darker color, but I can’t tell what the ceilings are made of because they’re above the light source, which casts them in deep shadow.

But that’s not what made Lilli gasp. What has frozen the rest of us in stunned silence.

Positioned around the room are a series of transparent rectangular boxes on shiny steel stands. They look for all the world like glass coffins, and the contents are lit from within by a glowing blue light source.

“Oh my god,” Lilli whispers, and I force myself to look away from the grotesque displays to make sure we’re all alone. And we are, at least in this…vestibule? There are two doors, one on either end of the long room, and they’re both closed. Neither has a knob or lever, or any obvious method of opening them.

I wave Coleman toward one door and Lawrence toward the other, giving them the “stand guard” signal. Then I follow Lilli toward the nearest…spectacle.

“Holy shit…” she breathes as we stare down at what can only accurately be described as a mistake—a specimen preserved and suspended in some kind of clear fluid. Or…gel?

“Early attempts,” Dreyer whispers from her other side.

The creature staring sightlessly up at us through two sets of milky eyes has a monstrous blend of human and alien features, including bone blades nearly identical to mine and bizarrely clawed hands and feet. His facial bones are distended in an exaggeration of the thickening of my own features, when the beast takes over, and every square inch of the poor man’s skin—all exposed by his nudity—is thick and textured with bumpy callouses.

“They’re all variations of the same theme,” Lilli whispers, and I look up to discover that she’s two displays down, flanked by Zamora and Jamison.

“This is what came before us,” Dreyer whispers from my right, horror echoing in her voice. “This is what we could have been.”

I want to reassure her that that was never possible. But I can’t.

“They’re on display,” Lilli says. “As if they’re expected to be seen, and not just by us. This almost looks like it’s for…investors.”

“She’s right.” Dreyer lifts one brow at me. “And they certainly weren’t bringing investors through the upstairs lab. Which means there’s an exit. That’s how Justin got here, and it’s probably where our shuttle is.”

I spread both arms to take in the entire lower level, including both doors. “Take your pick.”

She lifts Justin’s com device, which has found its new home on her left forearm, and after a few taps, the door to our left clicks. Then it swings open.

Coleman moves through the opening carefully, but as soon as he crosses the threshold, the room beyond lights up so brightly—triggered by motion sensors—that my eyes burn. “Um…guys.” Coleman blinks into the bright room. “You have to see this.”

I wave Lilli behind me while we approach, giving Lawrence a signal to maintain his post at the other door. Dreyer, Zamora, and Jamison all precede me into the room, and I can tell based on their silence that the room is unoccupied. And by their tense stances that something is…strange.

I follow them inside. And suddenly I know exactly where we are.

“What is this place?” Lilli whispers, stepping around me to take in all the tables. All the equipment. The drains built into the floor.

Coleman clears his throat. “This is where we were reborn. Where they made us.”

“Where they un-made us,” Jamison insists. And he’s not wrong.

“Let’s go.” Dreyer edges back toward the door. “This isn’t the way out.” And she clearly doesn’t want to go in any further. “It looks like the lockdown has ended,” she adds, reading something on the com device. “They’ll cut off my access as soon as they realize what Justin did. And if they figure out he had help, we’ll never make it through the pyro-shield.”

She’s right. “Move out,” I order softly, and almost as one, my men pivot toward the door. Which Lilli watches with a quiet awe that makes me smile.

I escort her through the vestibule with one arm around her waist, and we’re just yards from the door Lawrence is still guarding when Zamora stops short. “Mother fuckers,” he whispers, his voice so low-pitched and furious I’m not sure Lilli can even hear him.

I turn to see what he’s looking at, and my blood runs cold.

There’s another display case, but this one’s standing upright, against the wall, farther into the room than we ventured before. It’s lit from below, casting deep hollows on the occupant’s features.

“Carson?” Lilli clutches my arm, and that’s when I realize I’m growling. And that the others are all making similar rage-fueled sounds.

“I’ll fucking kill them all,” Dreyer snarls.

“What is it?” Lilli asks.

“Not what,” Lawrence tells her. “Who. It’s Daire Hardesty.”

When Lilli aims a sympathetic glance at Dreyer, I realize someone’s told her about Hardesty.

“He was one of us,” Zamora says. “But he couldn’t take what they did to him. So he ended it.”

And Brennan and her team preserved him and put him on display, right alongside their mistakes. As if they weren’t all people once.

“I’ll kill them…” Dreyer repeats.

“On my honor,” I tell her. The others all echo the oath, while Lilli stares at us in solemn bewilderment.

“Never leave a man behind,” I explain. “In spirit, at the very least.”

“Guys,” Jamison says. “We really need to go.”

Dreyer clenches her jaw and finally turns away from her lover’s corpse to tap on the com device again. The door Jamison is guarding clicks once, then twice. Then it swings open.

Fresh air flows into the stale room, bringing with it the scent of wild grass and the chirruping of hundreds—thousands?—of nocturnal insects.

“We’re out!” Jamison whispers.

“Almost.” We follow him onto a broad concrete landing pad, where Justin’s shuttle is waiting for us, with the ramp already lowered. Ready for a quick getaway.

Works for me.

“If the controls are fingerprint protected, we’re screwed,” Dreyer says. “I don’t have remote access to this ship.”

“That’s because it’s not UA’s.” Lilli points to the side of the shuttle, where the official UA symbol is noticeably missing. “Which makes sense. They could track him, if he took one of their ships.”

That’s good news for another reason: most personal ships don’t require authorization to operate.

We file on board, and Jamison takes the helm, while Zamora settles in as his copilot, and the assumption of old roles feels so familiar that for a moment, it’s hard to believe it’s been two years since we functioned as anything more than prisoners.

Though Hardesty’s absence makes that impossible to forget.

“Buckle in.” I point Lilli toward an empty seat while Zamora raises the ramp and Jamison goes through a quick checklist, familiarizing himself briefly with unfamiliar controls.

“This thing is fast,” he says. “And it’s medium range. It might not be very comfortable, but we’ve got enough fuel to get us a pretty good way from Rhodon.”

I look around as the shuttle buzzes to life around us. There’s a small galley at the rear and several bunks built into the back wall. A narrow, closed door between the two domestic areas can only be a bathroom. “Is this thing armed?” I’m not familiar with the model.

“No,” Jamison says. “But it’ll spin on a dime. Let’s get the fuck out of here.” He takes the controls, and the ship rises gently into the air.

Lilli twists to watch through one of the portholes as the lab shrinks behind us, and her bittersweet expression, as well as the sad ribbon swelling through her scent, tells me that she’s thinking about the friends she’s leaving behind.

I wish I could fix that for her. I wish I could rescue all of her people. But we don’t have room for them, and we’d never make it off the planet if we detoured to zone three.

All I can do is offer her my people. Make her a part of my family. And give her a family of her own.

Knowing that our family is already on the way, I can only look forward as the translucent glimmer of the pyro-shield approaches. Beyond that barrier is Station Delta, and beyond that is a lot of empty space. Plenty of room to lose—

“And…there’s the cavalry.” Zamora points out the broad windshield at the lights of several shuttles heading quickly toward the lab we’ve just left. “They’re pinging us.”

“Ignore,” I order. “We have clearance for the shield?”

“So far…” Jamison says.

“Then step on it.”

The hatch in the shield appears as we approach it—a rectangle of light that shimmers for a second, then disappears. We fly through the hatch just as the shuttles turn to come after us.

“They’re scrambling more units.” Zamora points at Station Delta as it grows in the windshield, then begins to shrink as we leave it behind. “But I don’t think they can catch us.”

“Prove it,” Lilli says, her voice a frightened whisper. I lean over to take her hand.

“We’re going to be fine,” I promise her. “We’re going to be together. And we’re going to be anything else you want. Anywhere you want.”

She gives me a nervous smile, and I turn to our pilot. “Jamison, get us out of here.”

“Full speed ahead!” he announces. And with that, we leave the prison planet behind…