The men with guns had overtaken her before Penny even realized that there was a danger. Her bones were heavy with exhaustion and she realized it had been a fool’s errand to try and keep watch overnight. She and Krayter would have done just as well if they’d both taken the full night of sleep.

In a matter of minutes, her sisters appeared, bags strapped over their shoulders, marched between more armed people covered all in black. She couldn’t see their faces, but the uniforms they wore looked nothing like those of the guards in Highland Settlement. Penny tried to look around to see if they’d brought Krayter, but the guard blocked her view completely.

The need to ask if he was there clawed at her throat, but she kept it contained. She didn’t want these scary armed men to know that Krayter meant something to her. How much he meant to her.

But that didn’t mean she had to embrace silence. “Who are you?” she demanded. “Where are you taking us?” She caught sight of Nicole and Resa and leveled a glare at them. She couldn’t predict what would happen if her sisters bolted. They might escape, but blaster fire could cut them down in an instant and she wasn’t willing to risk it. It occurred to her that while the soldiers had guns, they hadn’t roughed her or her sisters up. Better to cooperate now and work on escape later.

It was a short journey to the road, too short, really. Three all-terrain, hover enabled vehicles waited on the old dirt path, another half dozen soldiers with them, just as armed. Their leader, though, was not masked. She was a tall, dark-skinned woman with bright white braids, a smile on her face, and violence in her blue eyes.

The soldier leading their march opened the door and shoved Nicole and Resa in and reached out a hand for Penny. She looked back just in time to see Krayter being forced into a different vehicle.

Her heart clenched even as she breathed a sigh of relief. He was alive. As long as that was true, they could do anything.

She climbed in after her sisters, still choosing to be compliant. Ish. “I asked you who you are,” she said again when one soldier climbed in behind them and shut the door. The back of the vehicle consisted of two rows of seats that faced each other. She was crushed in beside Nicole and Resa, but Penny would much rather sit next to them than the guard.

Someone climbed into the front seat and engaged the engine and the vehicle glided forward with a smooth antigrav.

“We’re taking you to Jacinta,” the soldier said. He didn’t have a rifle like the others, but the butt of a smaller gun poked out from his side. He was older than Penny, probably in his forties, judging by the gray hair at his temples. But laugh lines crinkled around his eyes, and despite the situation, Penny didn’t feel threatened. Which made this man more dangerous than any of the guns.

But the name Jacinta lit a fire of hope in Penny, even as fear burned alongside it. “That man back there is a friend,” she said, pointing to the vehicle behind them with the hands they hadn’t bothered to bind. “Don’t hurt him.”

The soldier’s eyebrows shot up. “An alien? Highland Settlement must have changed a lot since I left.” She thought he would say more to her, but he murmured something into the radio on his shoulder and settled back into his seat. At the mention of Highland Settlement, Penny studied him closer. The community was small, and she could recognize its members on sight. But there was nothing familiar about this man. He must have left when she was very young.

“They’re taking us to Mom?” Resa whispered, leaning over towards her..

Penny nodded quietly as her mind raced with all of the reasons that this had been a bad idea. She’d never anticipated that her mom would have as many men and guns as her father.

They drove down the dense country path for more than an hour, mostly in silence. Penny gave up asking more questions when the guard wouldn’t even give her a name. Penny bumped in her seat as the hover disengaged and they switched to manual steering. The vehicle turned down a side road that had long since been paved, but the other two vehicles continued down the other path.

“Where are they taking him?” Penny snapped, jerking her head to the side to watch the truck until it disappeared from sight.

The guard sneered, his non-threatening, smiling face dissolving into something sinister, something she’d often seen on the face of the men of Highland Settlement. “Don’t worry, your friend will be just fine.”

“He’s our friend too!” Nicole piped up unexpectedly. Penny squeezed her sister’s knee and gave her a quick smile of thanks.

But that brought his attention to Nicole, who he appraised from head to toe. “You don’t seem old enough to have friends,” he leered.

Penny’s hand snapped out and her fist connected with his nose before she even thought to move. No one spoke to her sister like that. But he was a trained soldier while she was only quick enough for sucker punches. The guard jerked on her arm, pulling her across the bench and wrapping his free hand around her neck and digging in until Penny started to see black spots swimming up over her eyes. She struggled, clawing at his hand even as she heard weapons drawn.

The car stopped and still the guard kept hold. She didn’t have the leverage to kick him and it was getting harder and harder to think as the pain swelled and the blood flow to her brain slowed.

The door opened with a crack and the guard froze, loosening his grip on her just slightly. Penny risked a glance away. Right outside the door was a woman who’d aged in the eight years since Penny had seen her, even if her eyes were just as bright and her hair just as shiny as it had always been.

“Dennis, explain why you’re hurting my daughter.”

***

Penny could still feel the bite of Dennis’s fingers digging into her neck as she stood in her mother’s airy kitchen. It was ridiculously big, bigger than the entire first floor of her cabin, and rivaled what her dad had at the Residence. A gigantic island took up the center of the room and pots and pans hung from a fixture above it. The stove and food processors wouldn’t have been out of place in a fine restaurant—at least according to what Penny had seen in vids—and light streamed in from the large windows and the glass doors that dominated one of the walls.

It would have been paradise, if her mother hadn’t been there.

Nicole and Resa sat at the table, digging into big breakfasts laid out in front of them. The girls were still dirty from their day in the woods, but they’d all agreed that food was the most important thing right now. The soldiers hadn’t paused to give them protein bars.

Her mother’s people milled about, men and women and even an alien walking through the kitchen to get to other parts of the house that served as her headquarters. This, too, was like the Residence, but given the presence of the alien, it couldn’t be as strict.

Penny stood by her mother, far enough away from Nicole and Resa that they couldn’t easily hear. The steam coming off the bacon tempted Penny much more than any conversation with the woman who’d abandoned her children. She’d thought that she’d feel more when this day came. But right then, she was just tired.

“He finally got to you?” her mother asked. She leaned casually against a counter, her arms crossed. She was every bit the soldier that her people were, and Penny could see three different weapons in plain view. Jacinta had never been the cookie baking type, not even when Penny was a girl.

“I suppose he did.” She wanted to ask about Krayter, not talk about her father. They needed to get him back to his people, and though she’d planned to leave her sisters here, she wouldn’t force them to stay. She couldn’t throw them into the hands of a neglectful parent just so they could escape an abusive one. “This is quite the place. I guess it’s easier to build without three kids in tow.” A drop of venom rasped in her words.

Her mother had the grace to flinch, but Penny wasn’t moved. “I didn’t build it,” she explained. “I… took over when the last leader became too much.”

“And that’s easier to do without your children too.” A long time ago, Penny had dreamed of this reunion, of the words she could say that would make it so her mother had always loved her. How she could make it so she’d never left. But Jacinta Morales wasn’t worth that trouble.

“Leaving you was the hardest decision I ever made.” There was real pain there, and if Penny hadn’t been on the verge of exhaustion, if she hadn’t been fired on by her father’s people, and if she hadn’t shared two amazing kisses with an alien, she might have been moved.

All she could summon was indifference. She ignored her mother’s confession and moved on to important business. “Your men took my friend Krayter somewhere. I want him freed and safe, and brought to us. He needs to contact his brother in New York.” She’d have more demands for that later, but the first step was to be reunited.

“So you broke out of Highland Settlement for an alien?” Disbelief laced her words, as if any child of Kurt White must also be full of his hate.

But her mother needed to understand. Krayter was the catalyst, not the reason. “I couldn’t leave Nicole and Resa there. They’re just kids, and it’s no place for children.” She didn’t wait to hear her mother’s response. The words were enough to echo through the better part of a decade that separated them. After all, it’s no place for children had been the last thing that Penny’s mother ever said to her.

Before leaving her to suffer at her father’s mercy.

***

Blindfolds had a place they belonged, and it wasn’t Krayter’s face. Though, given the ubiquity over the last day, he wondered if there was something that humans read that invited them to tie him up. Did his clan markings spell out bind me? He hoped not.

He’d been pushed into a little room that might have been a cell. There were no bars, but the walls were rough wood and there was no handle for a door. Whether it was dark or light, he couldn’t say, but the air was fresh, which told him there might be a window somewhere. He’d tried to rub his head against the wall to remove the blindfold, but it was tied too tightly to budge.

His hands had been bound behind his back with rope too far away to reach with his claws. It was becoming more and more obvious that his escape from Penny’s shed was a onetime thing.

Where was Penny? And the girls? Were they alright? He’d been marched out of the woods with no word about them and shoved into a car with enough force to leave his ears ringing. If he had the blaster, maybe he could have done some damage. But he’d left that with Penny when they switched watch shifts.

His guts churned. Had she been hurt? Had she fought back? Was she… no, she was alive. He’d know if she weren’t, he’d have to.

He strained against the rope at his wrists, testing for any give, but it held steady. Without his sight, he couldn’t see anything he could use to cut the bindings away, and until he could either see or use his hands, he was screwed. But Krayter needed to get out. He needed to find Penny and the girls and get them to safety.

The door open and Krayter froze, as if that would do anything to hide him. A slightly floral scent tickled his nose and the door shut once more. He breathed deep and the scent was still there, stronger now, and chemical. Something from a soap or perfume.

“You’re the friend?” a woman asked, not Penny.

“What?” Was he being interrogated? Did they have Penny tied up somewhere, demanding what she knew and how they’d gotten here? How was he supposed to respond? The harshest interrogation Krayter had ever gone through—before this week—involved his boss asking who’d arrived late three times in one week. He didn’t know how to handle this tied up and blindfolded business.

“My daughter says you’re her friend. Is that true?” He was almost relieved that it was Penny’s mother standing in front of him, if not for the bindings.

“Yes.” Friend didn’t quite capture it, but the rest of it was between him and Penny and Krayter wasn’t about to tell her estranged mother things that his denya didn’t even know yet.

Her footsteps were nearly silent as she approached and circled him. Krayter forced himself to stand still. He wouldn’t chase his tail like some small yapper. For a moment, fingers brushed against his hair and then his blindfold sagged. He was momentarily blinded by the bright sun streaming through a window and blinked wildly as Penny’s mother stepped away.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw the tall form of a woman who looked like Penny, only with twenty years added on and any soft edge filed down to hardness. She was made of hard muscle and strength, the lines on her face each marks to a life lived through adversities and triumphs. Her dark hair was held back in a tight braid and a thick scar peeked out from under the neck of the dark shirt she wore under a black leather jacket.

There was no question in her eyes about who would win in a fight between the two of them. And even with his claws, Krayter was pretty sure that she was right.

“Please, have a seat.” She gestured to the bench flush against the wall behind him.

Krayter eyed her for a long moment, but he shuffled back and sat, his arms awkwardly winched behind his back and fingers brushing against the wall.

“Who are you?” She stood relaxed, as if she was discussing plans for dinner instead of interrogating a bound man.

Krayter wanted to growl in frustration. He’d given Penny his answers and he’d offered no harm to anyone. But Krayter held that back. He might not have seen a weapon, but he’d bet all of his credits that this woman was armed and ready to shoot.

He jerked his shoulders around, flashing his bound hands. “I’m not very talkative when I’m tied up.”

She didn’t even twitch an eyebrow. “That’s too bad. Who are you?”

He could stay silent and risk at least a day of lock up, or he could play her game. Fine. “My name is Krayter NaMoren. I live with my brother in New York.” Maybe she was making sure that he told her the same story he’d told Penny.

“Clearly you’re not from New York,” she drawled.

“Clearly.”

Krayter met his eyes, but didn’t offer any more information. The moment stretched between them, the sounds from outside filtering and making every second crawl by.

Penny’s mother relented. She placed a hand on her waist and cocked her hip to the side. “Why should I let you go? Your presence has put my daughter in danger and I won’t stand for that.”

Rage burst forth, hot and heavy in his veins. This woman dared to say that to him? As if he would ever harm his denya! As if he wouldn’t lay down his life to protect her. “You lost the right to worry about that when you abandoned her,” he spat.

She narrowed her eyes. “Is that what she called it?”

Krayter reined in the emotion. “I realize there are translation errors at times,” he conceded, “but the concept is clear enough.” Three daughters with no mother—there were only so many words that fit the situation.

“It wasn’t…” She shook her head as she cut herself off. “We’ll talk—” And once she began again, a commotion outside the room interrupted her.

With a bang and a clack, the door burst open, revealing Penny, breathing heavy, her cheeks bright and eyes on fire with determination. “Let him go, Mom.”

“How did you—”

“Untie him right now.” Krayter saw a soldier standing outside the door holding a blaster, but it was pointed down at the floor as the battle of wills raged between mother and daughter. Krayter bet on Penny winning. He’d always bet on her. And right now she was ready to shoot blasters from her eyes and blow this place down.

“You’ve known him for two days, how can you trust him?” Her mother had her arms crossed, but she was otherwise unmoved.

Krayter didn’t breathe after the question was asked. Penny’s mother had a point.

Penny’s voice dropped to barely above a whisper, but it had the force of a tsunami. “Because I do. Now untie him.”

She and her mother stared at one another, Penny barely in the room and ignoring the soldier at her back, her mother standing defensively. Finally, her mother’s shoulders dropped and she pulled out a wickedly sharp knife from an invisible sheath. Krayter did his best not to imagine what kind of damage she could do to him with that. Penny flicked her gaze his way and gave him a tight smile. In it he read a simple request: don’t do anything stupid.

He nodded.

His bonds were cut away and Penny’s mom left the little cell, taking her soldier with her. Penny pulled him up and led him out of the room and into the bright sunlight beyond.