I awoke in a tent, on a dirty mat on the ground. All around me, the wolfish sounds of the Alzarian language barked around me, mixed with some Standard. My head hurt, but automatically, I ran myself through the physical eval they had drilled into our heads for reviving from unconsciousness. Limbs, chest, neck, head, legs all hale and accounted for.

I took a deep breath. Well, at least it wasn’t a state dinner.

I was unbound. Either my kidnappers were confident in where they were situated or were confident in their ability to track and catch me. Or they had injected me with a nano-tracker, which was entirely likely, since Jonaz was here.

I rubbed my head. When the hell did the Coalition start kidnapping discharged pilots? I squinted and tried to get to my feet. Though if I truly thought about it, there had always been rumors of a secret Coalition faction within the military with their own agendas.

I dragged my hand across my face. I was still wearing the princess dress, now splattered with mud.

And somehow it had changed.

It was still this ridiculous sparkling thing, but the long skirt had shaped itself into pants. Additional fabric now covered my back and shoulders.

I looked as if I were a children’s version of a fairy space pilot.

I pulled at the fabric, trying to figure out if there were other things that could be activated, but it remained inert. I’d have to figure it out later.

I stumbled to my feet, staggered to the tent opening. The coarse snarls and grunts of Alzarian sharpened as I drew myself up to take stock of my surroundings.

I had absolutely no idea where I was. The sun was setting, but I could still see the vibrant purple-and-yellow foliage sprinkled with tiny white flowers. It surrounded the air with a heavy scent of delicate sweetness that not even the oil and ash stink could mask. It was the kind of smell you imagined young ingénues spraying all over themselves before their grand debut.

Which meant, of course, that it was as poisonous as anything you could imagine.

By the mud that was all over everything, the ground was a soggy swamp that would make escape difficult. In the trees, radar drone spheres hummed, blocking satellite-based heat and motion sensors.

I turned, saw the massive mountain looming to the rear. The camp was dug in at the base.

It was so dark, I couldn’t get an accurate count of the tents and vehicles.

But by the movements and rugged overbuilt appearance of nearly all the soldiers, I realized I wasn’t in a Coalition camp, but a shifter one.

That made it even worse, because it meant that the Coalition, or at least elements of the Coalition, were working with factions of the shifters against Ral’s efforts to unite the wolves.

Ral.

Funny how being drugged and kidnapped gave one a certain perspective on things.

With death and torture now in the cards, the fact that Ral might have a secret baby somewhere didn’t seem so problematic.

I would deal with that, and all those odd emotions churning inside me, later.

First, I had to figure out what the holedark was going on.

As I watched the movements of the camp, I realized I was in the midst of trained soldiers. And not just any trained soldiers, but shifters, anywhere from thirty to close to a hundred shifters, probably soldiers.

All who were designed to be some of the most efficient killing machines in the universe.

I laughed, a sense of odd confidence settling around me like someone else’s armor.

This I knew. I had been a prisoner before, and though it wasn’t an experience I would have preferred to repeat, at least here, unlike a state dinner with werewolves, I had an idea of what to do.

I had to steal a ship.

But to do that, I had to find a vambrace in order to access the controls. Unfortunately, stealing someone’s personalized computer vambrace would be about as easy as stealing underwear.

I repressed the sinking feeling I had as I realized that escape was not going to be my first option.

I had been lying to myself about how much my armor had become a part of me. If I had had it, I would have been able to defend myself. If I had access to it, I could easily break into any vehicle’s security codes and get out of here.

But I didn’t. All I had was myself.

A harsh undulating cry echoed in the forest, reminding me of the reputation of the Alzarian wilds.

I took a deep breath, feeling the heavy pull of Alzarian gravity with each breath, reminding me that I was out of my element. I wouldn’t survive out there on my own, not without my armor.

I’d have to set out a signal for rescue and hope that Ral and the Nightclaw forces would find it quickly.

A huge gray wolf suddenly blocked my path. It snarled, huge teeth inches from my face. I could smell the stench of some kind of raw flesh wafting from its mouth.

I winced but made sure to hold my ground. Werewolves were all about territory and invading one’s personal space. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

Another shifter came up from behind the wolf, this one in human form, wearing a uniform with no insignia. “Go ahead. Wolves don’t mind piss.” He gave me a leering grin. “We like it actually.”

The thought made me nearly gag.

He stepped closer, ready violence in his movements. I didn’t have a chance against him without my exo-armor. He was demanding I acknowledge his higher status.

I swallowed my pride, widened my eyes, and lowered them to his mud-covered boots. “Please? I’d like some privacy.”

He went silent for a moment, and I realized I said the word please, which wolves didn’t just say to anyone, only to mates, close family.

Oddly enough, that one word was magic enough to give him some sort of grudging respect. He grumbled, “You were in the military. You still have a sense of privacy?”

Werewolves were so weird. “I was a grunt in Space Force. Most of the time I was out in space, alone.”

The shifter sneered. “I don’t believe that for a second.” He paused, then pointed over into the darkness. “No farther than that tree. There’s a razor remoran the size of a shuttle in the quickpit beyond it. That thing will suck the brains out of your nose like a candy globe before you can scream.”

Lovely. Just lovely. The shifter home worlds had been seeded with all sorts of plants and animals designed to prey on shifters and humanlike life-forms in all sorts of horribly painful ways. The Ealen strove to cull their creations to create the most perfect weapons for their endless wars.

When I came back, the wolf guard was arguing with Jonaz.

“It’s just an unarmed human in a sparkle suit,” said one of the wolves. “Where the hell is she gonna go?”

“Don’t underestimate her. She was a Starbolt pilot.”

“No armor, no vambrace, no ship. Look, she knows she run, she get eat.” The wolf turned to me where I hid in the shadows. “I smell ya, girl. You know betta than to run, don’t ya?”

“You’re not going to escape,” said Jonaz, who seem to have appeared from nowhere.

“I wasn’t trying to escape,” I said. “I was trying to find a bathroom and then some food.”

He tossed a nutrit-bar at me. If I hadn’t had such a headache, I would have caught it with one hand, but I decided to pretend I was weaker than I was. I actually fumbled and dropped it on the ground.

Well, reality could be pretty convincing.

Jonaz turned. “Come with me.”

Since it was a chance to get a handle on my surroundings, I followed him. He didn’t walk like someone adjusted to Alzarian gravity, so he had to be wearing some kind of exo-armor that helped him get around.

There were a series of cloaked tents with image manipulators that made them look as if they were part of the landscape until you got within ten paces of them. More image manipulators hid at least a dozen recognizable wyrmhole-capable vehicles. A man walked by, hauling a surface-to-suborbital rocket launcher on his shoulder as if it were nothing more than a laundry sack.

A cold feeling gripped my gut.

I followed Jonaz out around the tent toward the center of the camp. A meeting had been called. Shifters, both in wolf and human form, circled an older man who snarled in the furious language of the wolves. Dark hair with streaks of white made him even more of a looker as all the werewolves were, but his face, his movements, were as ugly as anything I had ever seen. There was no beauty in the way he stoked them and called the gathering to war.

Without any translator or exo-armor, I was only able to catch a few phrases.

War… fight… a more pure Alzar….

The shifter in the center pointed at me, and suddenly I felt the weighty gaze of a hundred angry werewolves staring at me.

It wasn’t resignation or fear that sank into me at that moment, which if you had asked me earlier, would be the two most logical emotions for me to feel.

To them, I was just a pawn in a move against House Nightclaw and their new United Alzar.

By taking me, the prince’s intended, they were demonstrating his weakness.

Pain exploded in my jaw, and I flew into the mud.

For a moment, my vision went white. My head felt as if it was going to explode. Belatedly, I realized I had been backhanded.

A cold feeling overtook me. They prepare all soldiers for the eventuality and reality of a situation like this. Capture. Torture. Rape. But no preparation is ever enough.

“The holedark are you doing?” I heard someone yell. “She’s a human. You breathe on her she’s gonna fall apart.”

Someone grunted.

I tried to stagger upward, covered with cold, dark mud.

An arm hooked around mine, dragging me upward. “Get back in your tent.”

“Wait,” I said, shakily, trying to fight the spinning in my head. I had to make myself valuable enough not to be touched. “The Coalition doesn’t want you to know what I know.

“I know how the most advanced fighter craft in the universe works. And I know how to put it together.”

Jonaz shoved his way through the circle. “She’s lying.”

The first part wasn’t a lie. But the second part—well, yeah, that was a stretch. But anything I could do to get myself access to any flight-capable vehicle I would do.

The older man laughed. “Such is true love,” he said to the wolves, who all nodded strangely and smiled. “Are you offering to betray your precious, beloved prince?”

I looked the man in the eye as I was trained and hoped to the stars that what Ral had said about my scent was true. “The Coalition ordered me to abandon my colleagues to die. And when I didn’t, they punished me, put me on probation, with an assignment I wasn’t supposed to come back from. And then here comes a werewolf prince with an… interest in an exo-armored pilot.”

The shifters laughed. Sex with partners wearing multifunctional and vibrational exo-armor was a staple of interstellar sex vids.

“Tell me. A prince offers you the opportunity to live in the lap of luxury and whisk you away from your military grunt life. Would you take it?”

The old man stepped closer, invading my personal space. His eyes were that fierce shifter gold that seemed as if they could strip the secrets from your soul.

But Ral could do it better.

“The Coalition stripped me of my exo-armor. Do you think I will hold his interest much longer?”

The old man laughed. “Prince Ral is the kind of wolf who uses people until their value is extracted, after which they are discarded.”

I met his gaze, challenging him with the truth of my words.

“Put her to work,” he said. “Give her the starship we stole.”

Another shifter interrupted. “But that ship is —”

“Fix it,” the shifter said to me, ignoring the other voice. “And then we’ll see where you stand.”

* * *

I was no engineer of my former copilot’s caliber, but I thought at least I might be able to rig some kind of hovercraft. It wasn’t a starship. It was barely even an orbital shuttle, and not only that, it looked like it had been ripped apart by a pack of wolves years ago. There was actually greenery growing on top and inside, jagged chunks of metal.

If I could strangle the shifter who had brought me here with my gaze, I would have.

“This isn’t a ship. It’s garbage.”

The shifter shrugged. “Just followin’ orders.”

I walked around the ship. I was definitely not going to be attaining even sub-orbit with this thing. I’d be lucky to even get it to turn on, let alone fly.

I picked up a piece of tarnished metal shielding, crumpled and blackened. “When is this from? The Evermore War?”

The older shifter’s voice echoed into the clearing. “It’s the ship your prince left his mother to die in.”

The metal shielding in my hand thudded to the ground. Could we stop having any more revelations like secret babies and betrayed mothers?

I turned. “You want to have a conversation?”

The older shifter’s gaze was more calculating and suspicious than a self-aware enemy hyperspace jump computer. “I looked into your record. You are who you say you are. The Coalition didn’t see fit to enlighten us as to who we were taking from the Nightclaw domain.”

Obviously, the Coalition and their wolfish allies didn’t have the same goals. “So you’re just the delivery dogs, then.”

His eyes narrowed, and for a moment I almost flinched.

Almost.

“You remind me much of her.”

I said nothing because it was more bait. Bait I couldn’t verify.

But I couldn’t help myself. I had to know more about the woman who had had Ral’s child. “Who?”

“Astra. Prince Ral’s mother.”

His mother? I was confused. What did his mother have to do with all this?

I blinked, trying to come up with a decent response. “Yes, well, all human women, we’re all alike. Can’t tell us apart really.”

The shifter simply stood there, his silence taunting me with the power of his knowledge. Not only was I prisoner, he had information that he knew would be of interest to me. It was a position of power I saw no need to remind him of. No matter how much I wanted to know. The power differential between us could mean the difference between survival or death here.

I turned back to the wreckage on the ground trying to focus. I stuck my hand into an open panel where it looked like manual controls might be.

And felt something cold and slimy.

Yuck.

I yanked, and the panel fell open.

I looked at the purple goo and disintegrating leaf on my fingers and hoped it wasn’t poisonous.

“Tools would help,” I said to the shifter.

Another shifter materialized from the darkness carrying an ancient-looking box. It clanged and fell open as it dropped to the ground. An assortment of rusty implements fell out.

“Go ahead,” I heard the older shifter say. “Ask me. I know you want to.”

I picked one of the implements up. No microscreens, no swipe areas, no keys. These tools had no chips, no programming. They were as dumb as rocks. Literally.

“Really?” I asked the shifter. “You want me to fix a starship without modern tools.”

The shifter shrugged, still waiting for me to take his bait.

I turned back to the panel. “I guess I’ll just use some leaves and twigs too.”

Whatever information he had, he seemed to desperately want me to be aware of it.

The only reason it would serve his purposes would be to convert me, which judging by my apparent actions of volunteering to betray Ral, could be done relatively easily.

I tried to keep myself from taking his bait and brushed away the gooey detritus from the panel, and to my surprise, which I immediately suppressed, saw the dim glow of an ancient light.

It wasn’t much to work with, but I would take what I could get.

I closed the panel and sighed. “I’m a prisoner. You can say whatever you like to me at any time regardless of what I want.”

The shifter snorted. “I suppose I can. After all it’s not the subject one typically brings up with an exo-armored concubine.”

And there was the insult reminding me of my place, testing whether or not I would be genuinely interested.

I knew it was bait, but stars help me, I couldn’t let this chance slip away.

I looked at the shifter directly, trying to hold his attention away from the part of the wreckage with the radio. “So tell me what you have come to tell me.”

“I was there when Astra died, unaware that her son had betrayed her.”

What was he talking about? “It sounds like you hold a grudge against him.”

“You cannot trust a wolf who would leave his mother to die,” he spat. “And that’s what your prince did.”

There had to be another story behind it. Stars I hoped there was.

“He’s not my prince. Did I ever say that I trusted him? I told you how I ended up here.”

The shifter blinked as if catching a glimpse of something unexpected. “One gets the mate one deserves.”

“I’m not his mate,” I said, shaking my head as if I were dismayed by a truth I was being forced to face. “If you think to hold me intending for him to come rescue me, you are wrong.”

He looked at me with evident disbelief.

The pressed lips, the cocked head, the eyebrow of skepticism. Yeah, he knew this game too. But I had to keep flying the ship I was given, no matter if it was leaky and full of holes. “Give me the right tools and I will build a Starfighter for you if you promise to let me go.”

He snorted and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you are his mate or not. We took you from his territory, from his father’s estate. You are the symbol of his and Nightclaw’s weakness. He will come for you, and House Fireblade will retaliate, as they must for this trespass on their territory. All the Houses will be forced to choose sides, and his new union will fall before it was born.”

Werewolf politics of course. I’d have to get a holedark doctorate in political science after this thing was done.

Hopefully I’d still be alive and in my right mind to do such a thing when the time came.

I looked around and did a quick eval of the jungle terrain. It would not be an easy battle if Nightclaw brought their forces.

I made myself heave a sigh. “I don’t care about politics. I want to live,” I said to the shifter.

He turned his back to me. “So did his mother.”

* * *

By all appearances, they left me alone with the pieces of junk that had once been a shuttle. But I knew better. I caught glimpses of the wolves in the forest while I worked, glimpses that I knew they meant for me to see, as a warning that they were watching.

I wasn’t going to run, not when my best chance of escape was right here.

The engine, which I managed to turn on, picked that particular moment to completely shut down.

Something sprang loose and shot into the forest.

I sighed, examined the engine. The trianic coupler of course.

I looked into the forest. It was going to take me forever to find the stupid thing.

Still I got up.

Oddly enough, it felt good to be working with my hands, trying to solve a puzzle I had some small chance of actually fixing. Repair of wrecked ships with makeshift tools was a mandated course for all Starbolt pilots, since one never knew when combat might leave you stranded with a broken ship.

Not like being with a werewolf prince politician for which there was no blueprint.

I knew coming into this that there would undoubtedly be secrets. And he had been known for his affairs. But with modern birth control and shifters’ cultural concern over their genetics, surprise children were rare. Which meant that his child had either been planned or a once-in-a-million act of fate. Considering what a schemer he was, it was almost certainly something that had been planned.

But what else had I expected in getting involved with Alzarian royalty? This was the way they did things.

A hot angry mouse of jealousy bit me that I would not have his first child, which I knew was stupid because I had never really wanted children.

At least I thought I hadn’t.

I stepped on something and heard a crack.

Horror sank into my stomach.

I picked up the trianic coupler, or at least pieces of it.

There was no way this vehicle would ever fly again.

I could die out here. I might never see Ral again.

I heard the distinct hum of a cloaked ship overhead. I looked up, even knowing I wouldn’t see a thing past the thick-leafed canopy of the trees.

A clarified awareness fell over me, comforting and familiar. The kind that came moments before a battle engagement that you know you had no other choice than to survive.

I cleared away the debris on the screen and saw an unexpected line of code waiting for a command.

It had established some sort of contact with a satellite.

I could work with this.

I would survive. I would survive this, and get back to Ral, and welcome any child of his into my life and force him to tell me every one of his damn secrets. Survival meant Ral. I had come this far, leaving my career, my home, my nation behind for him, to be with him, to embark on a whole new flight path.

Nothing, not state dinners, secret frozen babies, or shapeshifting killer wolves, were going to keep me from him.

I looked at the pieces of this ship scattered across the ground. So what if I didn’t have exo-armor? So what if I didn’t have a flight-capable ship? So what if death was more likely than life? That had never stopped me before. I still had my thoughts, my hands and limbs, and I had enough pieces around me to make trouble. If I didn’t survive, I would make sure that it would be a death to be proud of.

* * *

I wiped my forehead and stood back looking at my work. It wouldn’t fly—it would never fly again—but might do for my purposes.

All of a sudden, I realized there was a strange vibrational almost sub-audible hum. I would have never noticed it, if I hadn’t been trained to recognize it.

The approach of cloaked ships.

Shifters with their superb senses would have almost certainly been aware of it.

Guess Ral hadn’t gotten my message.

The older shifter who had talked to me about Ral’s mother suddenly appeared. “He comes,” he said with that grin. “And he won’t find you here.”

An ugly cold fear crept into my bones.

The older shifter’s eyes suddenly widened in surprise, and he fell forward.

I smelled smoking flesh and a chemical scent I knew too well. A Coalition weapon designed to take down shifters, embedded in exo-armor.

Jonaz approached and I backed away. “You killed him?”

“Don’t feel bad—you get to die too.”

Only his arm was covered with exo-armor. I felt slightly insulted that he wasn’t even going to bother to fully activate his entire exo-armor suit if he was trying to kill me.

Jonaz shook his head as he came toward me. “You know how this ends.”

I backed away, but slowly so as to let him get close to me without appearing so. Without armor and the Alzarian gravity still pulling on me, surprise was the only advantage I had.

He reached for me.

I dropped to the ground, kicked out, and felt the familiar burst of bones breaking in my foot as my attack landed on his calf.

And it didn’t even make him step backward, the exo-armor automatically moving to strengthen and protect him from attack.

He picked me up by the throat, and I dangled from his one-handed grip, gasping for air.

“Orders are orders,” he said to me with a smug smile—the very same words I had said to him so long ago when he had first proposed we make a little side profit on slavery.

My vision darkened. I slapped at his forearm, slapping another sticky disc into his forearm. Smoke and sound popped from the disc, causing him to drop me to the ground in surprise. I fought through the pain, my fingers struggling to flick one more disc at his armor.

It missed.

Jonaz laughed. His boots were mere centimeters from my nose.

“Tricks won’t save you.”

He moved, and I rolled back toward one of the shuttle remains, hoping he would follow me.

He staggered toward me and found himself stuck in a puddle of rapigunk.

My heart pounded. This was my only chance for this.

I crawled to the nearest screen and swiped.

Nothing.

I smacked the screen.

Fire erupted from pieces of the engine scattered around the glade. One of the blasts caught him full on. He screamed, even as the exo-armor reformulated around him, protecting him from the brunt of the blast.

There were different types of exo-armor. His was not the heavier kind that would protect him for long against the blast of a rocket engine.

But the rapigunk had him stuck fast.

Now it was only a matter of how long the engine would burn.

Of course, at that moment, the shuttle engines spluttered and died.

The exo-armor whined as Jonaz tore himself free.

Parts of his exo-armor had melted, and I could smell burned flesh.

I swiped at the screen.

Ancient rifles fired tiny bits of molten slag, impossible to shield against.

It ripped through him and his exo-armor. He staggered backward, suddenly prone to the weight of Alzarian gravity.

Holedark, this was actually working.

I grabbed the sharpened pole.

He staggered to his feet.

I ran toward him as fast as I could, giving up my last burst of strength.

I hit him with the point of the pole. Momentum carried us backward, and I stumbled and fell, knowing I was dead.

I’m so sorry, Ral.

I fell to the ground and scrambled upward, expecting that every breath would be my last…

And saw Jonaz, skewered by the spear. His exo-armor had short-circuited, swirling and reforming around him as it tried to heal the flesh around the pole and eject it at the same time.

Couldn’t he just die already?

I dragged myself up.

And remembered the broken disc melted into the pole.

I scrambled for the compad, swiping against the dirty screen.

Swipe. Nothing.

He stood up and took hold of the spear.

Swipe. A picture of a cartoon cat smiled at me.

He screamed as he began to pull the spear from him.

Swipe. FU—

The explosion knocked me backward. I flew and hit something. The world was spinning around me, and I couldn’t tell if it was from me rolling or if someone had knocked the planet off its orbit.

Fuck, I had to get to my feet and get out of here. I had no more tricks up my sleeve.

But my legs just wouldn’t move, and the damn weight on my chest of Alzarian gravity was as relentless as ever.

I used a tree stump and dragged myself upward, sparing one more glance at the clearing.

A huge gray wolf stared at me.

My heart jumped out of my chest.

No, no, it had to be a concussion vision.

I blinked.

There was a blur of motion. In what seemed like a single leap, the wolf landed in front of me. Fur retracted, flesh flowed, bones shifted and reformed in a blend that once seemed utterly grotesque to me.

It was now the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.

“It looks like you didn’t need my help,” he said, his arms encircling tightly around me.

I clung to him, completely and utterly exhausted. The only reason I was standing was because he was holding me up. It was a strange feeling, to feel so vulnerable.

And yet, with Ral, oddly enough, I had no fears in regards to that.

It was as if the world had stopped and we were the only ones left in it.

“I guess you didn’t get my message,” I said.

“To his wolfiness,” he said. “Stay the fuck away. Captain’s orders.”

“You wouldn’t know it was me otherwise.”

“You’re right that no one else would dare send me such a message.”

I held him, breathing in his scent. “I’m glad you’re here.

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” he said with his lips against my hair.

“Sorry I missed your dinner.”

I could hear the smile in his voice. “Liar.”

I drew back, reaching to touch his face. I thought I would never see him again. “What? You think I got kidnapped on purpose?”

There was a distant explosion and the sound of a fleet hovcraft descending. He smirked as he stroked my cheek with his thumb. “You’re just avoiding meeting my family.”

I was never going to let him go. “Who doesn’t love the idea of walking unarmed into a ballroom full of strange werewolves?”

He hugged me again. “Unarmed you say. Because we regularly schedule duels to the death around the second course.”

I sighed. “I’m adjusting."

He kissed me. “Thank you.”

Werewolves, especially werewolf royalty, didn’t say thanks to anyone, only to children and their mates.

A shiver went through me.

He looked at me, his eyes searching my face as if making sure I was actually there. “I have your birthday present with me.”

Something screamed to the right of us. He shoved me aside, and shrapnel crashed down where we had just been hiding.

“My birthday isn’t for another three months.”

He grinned. “This is the perfect time.”

He embraced me and placed a cold heavy brick on my back. When he withdrew, it remained on my back.

An oddly familiar pain scraped the insides of my skin as it dug into my spinal nodes.

I staggered back as he released me.

He grinned. “Something is going to fly in your mouth if you don’t close it.”

Power erupted in my blood as the nanites in the armor unfolded and met the ones in my blood. It crawled over my skin, unfolding itself into a hard yet flexible shell that could withstand the stress of flying in outer space.

I closed my eyes, embracing my new armor, surrendering to it as it adjusted itself and bound itself to my blood.

I opened my eyes and took a step forward. I felt strong, alive, and ready to take on whatever came next.

“Where did you get this?”

“The Coalition’s new president is happy to sell technology for the right price. I promise you, it was all done aboveboard. You wouldn’t take it if I hadn’t.”

I opened my eyes and a familiar display was in my vision.

I opened my eyes to see Ral grinning at me. “There’s my Captain.”

I smiled back.

And then we joined the fight. Together.