Perhaps it was a bit unreasonable for me to feel so deliriously happy before a hopeless assault on the Teeth, one of the galaxy’s most impenetrable prisons.

Our ship drifted down towards Altai, the capital planet of the Tigrantine protectorate, as if we were an ordinary Tigrantine ship. Thanks to the Tigrantine ship signature code and decoy algorithms that Anduin had picked up, all the Tigrantine orbital defenses read us as one of theirs. The problem was our weapons, shields, and jump engines had to remain depowered. Otherwise the planetary ship scanners would have picked up on them and we’d die. If the drone cameras or another Tigrantine ship got too close, we’d die. Heck, if we all sneezed and farted at once, the atmospheric mines might react and then we’d die. There were too many ways we could die without ever having a chance to defend ourselves. We were holedark-deep in a tiger pit with no choice but to keep going.

And yet, it still couldn’t wipe off the smile that was beginning to take up permanent residence on my face.

“Everything all right?” asked Ral, settling into the co-pilot seat.

I enlarged the screens, displaying what was below us. Vast seas, green brown expanses interrupted occasionally by massive cities that were buried in the jungle.

This was probably as much as I would ever see of Altai, the tiger shifter home planet. Usually the prospect of staying ship-board didn’t bother me; it was part of the job as a pilot. Someone had to keep the engines ready to go at a moment’s notice. And yet, it was different this time. Maybe because I knew even if there were no danger, I wanted to see how difficult it would be for me to even step foot on a shifter planet.

Like Alzar-4, the home planet of the werewolves, Altai had a higher degree of gravity than most of the Coalition planets. Without my exo-armor, I would be feeling as if ten-kilo weights were glued onto every limb. It wasn’t that it was impossible for humans to live on shifter planets, but it took some time and some strength training to adjust.

Without my exo-armor, I’d be helpless in a fight.

I told myself this was the whole reason I got Anduin involved. I was good at flying a ship, but on the ground, I was another average soldier, even if the gravity wasn’t a factor. And average was not what Ral needed to break his people out of the Teeth.

Here, my abilities made me less than average.

On any shifter planets, I would be less than average.

A chill shuddered through me. I had watched the shifter-noble dramas like everyone else. Royal shifter circles were a mess of political intrigue, dynastic scandals, and feuds dating back to the Ealen era. I would make a fool of myself.

Not that he had invited me there.

I forced myself to exhale. No point in thinking about a future that might never come.

“What are you thinking?”

Ral must have heard me let out that breath. Little got by him. “Nothing.”

“The little lie comes so easily, doesn’t it? You don’t need to spare me.”

And there it was, challenge again. It was almost a relief to fall back into our old habits. “I don’t have to tell you everything that I’m thinking.”

“That is true. But I would like to know.”

“Why?”

“Is it not clear, Captain? Because I care.”

Those simple words, as sugary as any advertisement, somehow stopped my breath faster than anything else he could have said.

“Maybe later,” I whispered.

Ral opened his mouth to reply when Anduin yelled from the common area. “Hey Prince. You need to take a look at this.”

“We’ll talk more later.” Before he left, he bent down and brushed my lips with his. He squeezed my upper forearm, as if reassuring us both. “Don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”

He thought I was worried about the mission. I should be more worried about the mission.

I settled back in the pilot’s seat in the cockpit, which was oddly uncomfortable, despite it being a standard Coalition pilot’s seat. The ship was fast and best of all came with weapons mods perfect for close range combat. The navigational, and coms systems were not only up to date, but had some super mods that I’d never seen, totally the kind of thing that Red would have been all over trying to figure out.

I wondered how Red was doing, if she and the Princess were managing all right with the tigers.

An enemy blip appeared on my screen.

* * *

Like many extremely dangerous military missions, there were typically two ways to begin. The first and most obvious had you fighting failure from the start. It usually involved massive casualties. The second and more common way, for those who survived, was through a tension-filled completely uneventful approach.

This time it was the latter. Thanks to the Tigrantine cloaking signature, we easily flew past their orbital defenses. A secondary cloak blocked us from the land-based sensors and we had quickly landed in in the vicinity of the Teeth. The tall pointed spires dominated the skyline, piercing the gray clouds above us.

My job was done for now, but Ral and Anduin were making final preparations.

I went to my quarters where Ral was girding himself in his version of armor. If anything, the fact that he was not only wearing clothes, but armor, told me something about what he thought he was going to encounter. Protective plates covered his chest, thighs, and shins, making him look like some ancient barbarian warrior, but otherwise left the rest exposed. Like Anduin, Ral still wore the computerized vambrace on his forearm. I have to admit, it was actually kind of hot, but then, I thought he was hot in everything and nothing at all. He turned to me. “If you don’t hear anything from us in a day, you have to leave.”

“No.”

He inhaled and exhaled with his eyes closed. “I need you to live. If I’m captured, I will live. The Tigers will simply ransom me back. They won’t hesitate to kill a random human pilot of no rank.”

“I already said no.”

Ral pulled me to him and kissed me. He was trying to distract me, and it was working. His mouth was magic, his tongue even more so.

And then I felt the tiny little ball he pushed into my mouth.

I knew what it was: a databall, the kind often used in covert operations, capable of hiding massive amounts of intelligence.

Startled, I withdrew from him.

Ral held on to me. “I need you to take it back to Alpha.”

I swallowed it. The nanobots in my bloodstream, the same ones that had melded with my exo-armor, would help me extract the ball when I needed it. “You’re not putting this all on me.”

“It’s vital to the war effort. If you can get this through…it will all be worth it.”

“Don’t tell me the fate of the universe rides on my bringing this chip back.”

He grinned. “I won’t.”

Okay, I had to force myself to do it before I wavered. “I have something for you as well.”

I undid the chain around my neck and took off a tag. I kept one and handed him the chain with the tag on still on it.

He took it slowly.

He looked at it. “Your name is on it. And a serial number.”

My heart was beating so fast I thought it might flutter out of my chest. “It’s not the best idea. If they capture you, and find me and my tag, they’ll know the Coalition was involved.”

He put it around his neck. “I won’t get caught. When we’re finished, you’re coming back to Alzar with me. I’ve got a place up in the mountains by a lake. There’s fresh game and pristine water. I want you to taste real food, not that lab-made crud you’ve been eating your whole life. Eat stuff that actually has had dirt on it and once lived.”

I laughed. “It sounds very nice.” A very nice fanciful dream, like unicorns and magic planets of fairies.

He pulled me close. “Honestly, it’s an invitation to walk into a wolf pit with me. I won’t lie. There’s lots of politics.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Do I have to be naked?”

His eyes glowed momentarily. “Only when we’re alone.”

I hugged him as hard as I could with my eyes closed. “Ral? Come back to me. Please.”

He squeezed me back. “I will.”

* * *

They were gone.

I had no idea what was happening. They could both die at any moment and I wouldn’t have any way of knowing.

And it was the most infuriating thing of all.

The only thing I could do was wait.

I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t pace. Couldn’t read or watch anything on the stellarwebs, let alone the antique paper books I stashed in the cockpit there precisely for something like this. Couldn’t even leave the starfucked cockpit because even five seconds could mean the difference between capture or escape.

Ral had to make it back.

He had to.

* * *

A day passed.

* * *

A week passed.

* * *

Ship sensors started going crazy. A localized security net snapped overhead, invisible to the naked eye, but sensors saw it. It was the really nasty kind, the kind that was rarely used because it constantly sounded alarms since it caught almost everything larger than a person.

No way I would be able to even escape now, even when Ral and Anduin made it back.

At least now I could try and calculate the odds of escaping the net.

Still I waited.

And waited.

* * *

Another day had passed. I forced myself to eat. I tried to sleep in the cockpit chair but exhaustion mixed with stress adrenaline meant I fell asleep for ten to fifteen minutes at a time only to jolt myself awake, in case they returned.

Didn’t matter if I was in no condition to fly. I wouldn’t be flying anywhere, not with that damn net in the sky.

If Ral and Anduin got back to the ship, at least we could hunch down and close up for awhile. I had enough mealbars to last all of us probably a month or two if we rationed things out.

He had to come back.

* * *

I jumped up as soon as I realized the console was beeping. On a screen I saw Ral’s and Anduin’s heat signature. Ral had a person’s arm over his shoulder as he limped. Anduin carried another man slung on his back while the last woman staggered along behind them.

All of my anguish vanished, replaced by a state of tense anticipation, thankfulness and an unwillingness to believe them safe until they were on this ship.

The cargo bay doors opened. Medchambers were already set up in the midcom, ready to seal in any injured to cushion them from the stresses of flight and fighting.

Their footsteps were heavy on the gangplank. I could sense quiet relief as they came in.

“Welcome back,” I called to them over the coms. “There’s a security net deployed in the upper stratosphere, so we aren’t going anywhere for a bit.”

Ral strode into the cockpit. He closed and locked the cockpit door behind him.

I stood up.

He smelled of dirt, sweat, and blood. He was as battered and filthy as the first time I laid eyes on him.

And as unbelievably hot. I squirmed, feeling myself get wet from his golden hot gaze. Even as I found myself on the verge of throwing myself at him, something stopped me. This was not the Ral I knew. It was the wolf, that wild part of him usually kept so tight under wraps.

“Skye,” he said, neutrally, his cool voice at odds with the predator in his gaze. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“I know.”

He stalked over to me. Again that disturbingly calm voice. “Why?”

Around his neck, he still wore the single dogtag I gave him. Furious as he was, wolf as he may be, it was still Ral. I closed my eyes and leaned into him, my arms around his torso, my cheek on the flat plane of his pec.

In the space of a breath, he shoved me against the bulkhead. My underskins were shoved aside as if they were never there.

And then he was inside me.

It was the most exquisite thing I had ever experienced, a welcome barrage as if he were a starship engine gone nuclear. He was so hard I was off the floor, held up solely by the adrenaline-fueled strength of his cock.

I cried out his name, screaming my surrender, begging him for more, giving everything he had ever demanded from me and more. The climax came fast and hard, a savage attack that left my vision full of stars.

Minutes passed before I realized I was still pinned against the bulkhead, him still hard inside me.

Slowly, I came to the realization that his lips were moving and words were being spoken. His forehead rested against mine. “Do you know what you do to me, Skye?”

My mind was so blank I struggled with words. I glanced at the screens behind us which showed that our situation remained unchanged. It was all I could do to say, “Show me again.”

His response was to hook my knees under his elbows.

This time, the slow delicious strokes burned the rest of my thoughts until there was nothing in existence but utter and complete bliss.

* * *

An hour later, we sat on the floor, in the corner of the cockpit. His hands, his mouth, his tongue, his cock, all had been too persuasive. Finally he settled for holding me.

My fingers entwined with his. The back of his right hand had a bandage on it.

You should have left.”

“But then I wouldn’t be here.”

He sighed. “There is that. Why can’t you obey orders?” He let out an exasperated groan and kissed me. I was like a starship, soaring. Eventually my engine would burn and I’d probably crash to the ground. This couldn’t, wouldn’t last forever.

“I’m here now. That’s all that matters.”