The Consortium had been her home for five years. Dorsey had hoped to build a life here, perhaps one day raise a family. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t suck. And in little more than a week she’d been kidnapped, escaped, almost kidnapped again, and attacked, all because she’d done her job and gotten mixed up in the high level politics of a power mad warlord.

She could see how this played out. Either Nina would bring her into the fold and own her life wholly as the cost of protection, or she’d leave Dorsey to hang, the cost of protecting her not worth the trouble.

And if she went back to Nina’s fortress, one of those things would happen. Dorsey was a loose end to Droscus and a pawn to Nina. And she’d entangled Ty all up in this, never even trying to separate his interests from her own.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Guilt crashed over her as she realized exactly how much she’d screwed up Ty’s life. He probably would have never even been kidnapped if it wasn’t for her! Those pirates were only near the Jaaxis gate at the same time as him because they’d needed to capture her.

His arms came around her and tears pricked her eyes. She clutched his shoulders and dragged in deep breaths, his homey masculine scent mixing with the fresh air all around them and making her feel safe when she had no right to it. “Don’t,” he told her. “Never apologize for us. I wouldn’t choose anything different, no matter how this ends.”

She tilted her head up and saw the intensity in his gaze, his expression. “I might get you hurt. Killed.” Didn’t he see that she was bad for him, that she’d put him in danger?

Ty gripped her shoulders tight and stooped down so that they were eye to eye. “You have saved me. More than you could ever know.” He glanced around them quickly, but no one was near enough to overhear anything they said, especially not with so many vehicles all around. “You are my mate. My denya, the only person in the universe I can call my own. You are mine, and whether it’s for a week or for a lifetime, it is my honor to keep you safe and stand by your side.”

“M-mate?” This was not a discussion to have on an open tarmac when their lives were at stake, but that wasn’t stopping them. Dorsey’s brain misfired. All she could think was that humans didn’t have mates. Not like he was talking about. “That’s not…”

“Do you care if you thought it was impossible?” he demanded, eyes shining red fire. “Would it make you walk away?” He grabbed her hand and placed it against his heart. “You can feel the bond between us, it’s been there all along.”

He was right. A snarling, reflexively independent part of Dorsey wanted to fight it, wanted to rebel against the bond for the sake of rebelling. But this was Ty. She’d already decided on him, he was already hers.

“I love you,” she said. She’d never said before, not romantically. And Ty was the only man she’d ever say it to. “Run away with me?” she asked.

His intensity didn’t dim, but after a moment, he grinned and scooped her up, hugging her close and twirling her around before setting her back down. She shrieked and clamped her arms around him before she could fall.

“I have an idea,” he said. “But we need to go now.”

She took his hand. “Then let’s go.”

Losing the soldiers was far easier than it should have been. But Ty and Dorsey weren’t under guard, and the soldiers’ first priority was seeing Haylio to safety, not guarding them. So when they came to the gate at the entrance to the landing pad, the guard let them out with a casual wave, not bothering to alert anyone that they weren’t accompanied.

“Do you still have that encrypted communicator?” he asked. They held hands and casually walked down the street toward the more crowded parts of the city. It wasn’t busy here, but there were a few shops and people waiting at the bus stop to get closer to town.

Dorsey reached into her pocket and grabbed it. “I thought it might be something useful.” Because the communicator was encrypted, they couldn’t be tracked by it. That didn’t mean Nina didn’t have the power to find them, but it did take away one tool.

She handed it to Ty and he punched in a code and held it up to his ear, using the private mode so that no one nearby could hear them.

“Who are you calling?” she asked. She’d lived here for five years and didn’t have anyone who could help them. How did Ty?

“A friend, I hope,” he replied. He spoke to his friend in a language that her translator couldn’t decipher. When she heard the word denya she knew it must be Detyen.

A minute later he handed the communicator back to her. “We have a ride.”

Ten minutes later, a hovertaxi showed up beside the bus stop. A Detyen male sat in the driver’s seat, but he wasn’t the same one that Ty had met on the street outside of Reina’s place. They climbed into the back seat and rode in silence.

They were dropped off in front of a discreet, squat building in one of the worst parts of town. Superficially, the place looked just as rundown as all of the other buildings. Two windows on the top floor were cracked, the paint only appeared in gray splotches at random intervals. The door was a simple wooden board, but when they got closer, she saw that it was a front. A much thicker metal door sat flush up against it, invisible to passersby, and sturdy enough to hold off an incoming army.

Ty had been on Tarni for less than a week. How had he cultivated a contact with a safe-house and a way off planet in one random meeting?

Dorsey didn’t have time to ask since the door opened, and they were ushered inside by a young Detyen girl who looked no older than nine. The girl led them through the well-maintained house to a windowless room on the second floor. She left the door open, but Dorsey knew it was merely a courtesy.

“You keep interesting company, Tyral NaRaxos,” she murmured. She didn’t have time to say more.

A Detyen man walked through the door. He and Ty grasped forearms in a familiar greeting. Then Ty stepped back and to the side to make sure she was included in the conversation. “Dorsey, this is Stoan. Stoan, my denya, Dorsey.”

Stoan’s eyes widened and he looked between the two of them. “A human? How is that possible?” She would have expected censure, not the grasping, desperate hope of a broken man. “We are saved, cousin.”

Saved? What could that mean? And why was Stoan looking at her like she was made of diamonds?

“Ty?” she asked, not sure how to word the question. “What’s going on? What is he talking about?”

Ty’s expression was carefully neutral, as if he was afraid of how she would react. Dorsey reached on and grabbed his hand, giving him a reassuring squeeze. He couldn’t say anything that would make her run. She couldn’t imagine it.

But Stoan was the one who spoke. He took a stumbling step towards Dorsey and placed his hand on her arm, his fingers barely brushing her skin. Dorsey glanced at Ty, expecting a spike of jealousy or the protectiveness she’d seen on the jet. Instead, she saw a deep well of understanding.

And pity. Not for her, but for the Detyen.

“We are dying,” said Stoan. “One by one. I have only three years left. And my… she…” He shook his head. “I have no one. But if we’re not limited to our own women…”

“Ty?” She’d accepted the mate thing, but this man’s reaction was freaking her out.

He looked over at Stoan. “May we have a moment?”

 

***

 

Ty watched Stoan close the door behind him and looked over at his denya. He had intended to tell her the full impact of their mating, but he had hoped to wait a little while and she had time to adjust. Stoan had not seemed like a man who would react that way to a human denya, but Dorsey was a chance at salvation for their race. If they could mate with humans, then all of the unmated men and women of Detya might not be cursed to a short existence, snuffed out too early.

He wondered if he was actually the first to discover this. News traveled slowly across the galaxy, and except for their enclaves, Detyens were few and far between.

“I told you that our race was dying,” he began, struggling for the right words as apprehension and a new sense of purpose filled him.

Dorsey took a step back, putting a little distance between them. Ty didn’t like that, but he made himself stay where he was. He wasn’t going to make her run, he just had to say this right.

“You said it was because your planet was destroyed,” she replied.

“Yes, that’s part of it. But there is something else.” It wasn’t a secret—Max had known and Ty suspected that Nina knew as well. But if a person didn’t make a habit of studying alien morphology, they had no reason to suspect. “Without a denya, without mating with our denyai, we die when we turn thirty.”

“What?” She whispered it with the force of a yell. She wobbled a bit but kept upright. Ty wanted to reach out, but he feared that she would pull away.

“When Detya still supported us, it was better. Not perfect, but something like ninety percent of people found their mates in time. We had an entire system set up to support it. We never had to look outside of our planet or our people because we sustained ourselves. In the last hundred years, it has become less and less common. Our men outnumber our women and there is no guarantee a bond will be triggered even if the women are there and willing. No one thought to look to humans. I didn’t even realize until…”

“Until what?” she asked, leaning against a chair for support. Her face had turned ashen, some of the color leaching out.

“Do you remember that my eyes were injured?”

“Yes.”

He waved his hand in front of his face. “The first sign of the connection is by sight. It’s not the only way to tell, but it is most obvious. Because I couldn’t properly see you I didn’t realize what was happening, and by the time I did, the bond had snapped into place.” Though even that was quite true. He’d recognized the bond, he’d just thought it was impossible.

Dorsey sank into one of the black, padded chairs that had been placed in the middle of the room and rested her face in her hand. She took several deep breaths and then straightened back up, looking at him with tears glistening in her eyes. “You told Max that you’re twenty-nine.”

Ty knelt in front of her and clasped her hands. “I just turned thirty, actually. If our paths hadn't crossed…” He shook his head. “You said that you put me in danger, but in reality, you saved my life. Don’t pity my people. We have survived for this long. And if there are more people like you, then we will flourish.”

Dorsey’s brown eyes were wide, but some of her color was returning, that beautiful golden brown returning to life. “Don’t keep this stuff from me anymore. We can’t move forward, we can’t be a team if we keep secrets. Even if you think it’s going to hurt me, you need to say something.”

Relief flooded him, strong enough that he sucked in a deep breath to steady himself. Ty reached forward and hugged Dorsey. “No lies. You have my word. I love you, denya-mine, and I would not see you hurt.”

She clutched him close, “I know.” For several moments, she didn’t let him go, and Ty breathed the scent of her deep into his lungs. But they were sitting in another man’s safe house on a planet where they could be captured at any moment.

He forced himself to sit back and stood up, offering Dorsey a hand up. She took it and smiled. “Let’s do this.”

They let Stoan back in. He’d used the time to compose himself, and the man who stood before them now was icily polite, with no trace of the supplicant who’d fallen at Dorsey’s feet. Ty knew that part of him was still inside, but locked deep. Hope was a heady drug; it could sustain a man, then betray him with no warning.

Ty laid out their dilemma for the Detyen, telling him of their capture all the way up to the rescue mission they’d run from. Stoan waited patiently for him to finish talking, but he didn’t seem shocked at any of the information. Ty wondered where this man’s loyalties lay and what he did to need a safe house in the capitol city.

When Ty finished, Stoan nodded once. “I can help. You’ll be off planet by nightfall and headed to Jaaxis by morning.”

“We can’t pay you,” said Dorsey a bit guiltily.

Ty opened his mouth, but Stoan held up a hand to stop him. “You’ve given us all hope. Make sure that others know and that will be more payment than anyone could ask for.”

She stepped forward and laid a hand on his arm in much the same way he’d done to her. “I hope that you find your denya, whether she’s human or Detyen.”

Stoan was stricken, his eyes haunted with ghosts Ty couldn’t fathom. “I thank you, but my hope is for others. I am not…” He shook his head. “It is not for me.”

Dorsey opened her mouth to argue, but quickly closed it. She squeezed his arm and let her own hand drop. “Thank you for your help,” she finally said.

“Mirha will bring you what you need. Please listen to her and do as she says.”

“Wait!” Dorsey cried before Stoan could leave.

He paused, hand on the door latch, and half-turned around.

“I have a friend, Reina Draven. Can you let her know that I’m—that we’re alright? And that I’ll contact her as soon as it’s safe?” she asked. “Her husb—things aren’t good for her right now and I want her to know I didn’t forget about her. I want her to feel safe.”

Stoan nodded. “I will deliver your message and see to her safety.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Please, let me.” He turned and left without giving Dorsey a chance to argue further.

A little while later, the young girl that had let them into the house came to retrieve them. “These docs will get you onto a ship.” She handed each of them thin black cards with holographic image displays. “But once they’re scanned, they’ll only hold up for about a day. Once you’re out of Consortium territory you’ll be safe to use your own IDs and access your own accounts. Take the bus to the shuttle depot and keep to the shadows.” She held up a canvas bag and handed it to Dorsey. “Change your clothing before you leave.”

In less than fifteen minutes they were changed and gone. Dorsey wore a dark blue ensemble, her pants baggy, the shirt dark and long, and a hood pulled up over her head. Ty was dressed in gray and wore a hat with a wide brim and a bit of netting that obscured his face.

They looked like two normal people living in Nina City. Ty dropped his shoulders, trying to appear shorter than he was. Dorsey kept looking behind them as if she expected armed guards to pop out of the shadows at any moment.

“We’ll make it,” he reassured her. “Act natural.” It didn’t feel right and he wanted to sprint for the bus stop when he spotted it at the end of the street. But Ty forced himself to keep a sedate pace, and when Dorsey looked around again, he grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze.

There was only one other person waiting for the bus. The sun would soon set and no one would wish to be out in this area of the city after dark. Ty could feel the scavengers, the street toughs who preyed on the weak and downtrodden, waiting in the wings, ready to pounce as soon as the streets turned to shadow.

Ty’s blood pumped strong and he was ready to dance if anyone gave them trouble. Anyone they met out here would be a low-rent thug, nothing like Droscus’s trained lackeys. He could handle anything one of these bottom feeders threw at him.

But the light held and the sleek silver hover bus showed up right on schedule. The driver glanced at everyone as they stepped on, but once they paid their fare she didn’t seem to care what they did.

The bus wasn’t filled and Dorsey took a seat near the middle, close to one of the doors. She kept her head down and her hands out, ready to grab or run or punch. She clasped her fingers over her knees to hide the slight shake.

The driver waited, the door still open. Ty started counting the seconds, his mind flashing through all the possible scenarios for why a bus driver would care to wait in this part of town at this time of day. A boxy green speeder pulled up beside them, the privacy mode engaged on the windows so he couldn’t see who drove.

Dorsey stiffened.

“What?” he asked.

“That’s a guard vehicle. I think.” She whispered so low that he could barely hear.

The driver of the bus took them out of hover mode and landed on the wheels, parking the bus at the stop. The lights shifted from yellow to blue on the speeder as it parked as well. The door opened and a guard stepped out, his uniform unrelieved black, his blaster an open threat at his side.

Ty barely breathed.