For a woman who’d just cheated on her man, she sure looked cut up about it, Devil mused as he pressed a soft cloth to her forehead and waited for the heaving to pass. And not the guilty, “shit I’ve been caught out” sort of cut up either. That one he’d recognize in an instant, familiar with seeing it in his own mirror. Known as a bit of a player in the regiment, he’d been caught out a few times himself.

His lips twisted. Good times, but long gone. The last time two of the women he was bedding found out about each other, he’d ended up beaten black and blue which had landed him in med-bay on the Vengeance waiting for the new Chief Medical Officer, Sedj Idirianna. Who, far from the crusty, grumpy older man he’d expected for such a position, had turned out to be a tiny, but feisty redhead with killer curves. One look into her turquoise eyes and his days as a Casanova were over.

Unfortunately though, she’d already gotten the lowdown on him from Sanika and Jesil. Rather than being at each other’s throats when they found out he was doing them both, the two ladies, both S-seven commandos, had decided to take it out of his hide. Now Sedj was convinced he was a no-good lying rat just interested in one thing and wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

“Come on, sweet stuff. Let’s get you cleaned up.” His voice was soft as he urged the crying woman to her feet and gently cleaned her up. Numbly, she let him, her dark eyes blank as tears ran silently down her cheeks. He’d been pissed when the Colonel had dragged him out of bed at this time of night, but better him than any of those wankers on the main palace guard. The state she was in, the fact she was a former courtesan and had been cast off by her prince…yeah, those bastards would think nothing of taking advantage of her before they cast her out.

Hand on her shoulder he led her into the main room to grab the bag and throw a coat around her shoulders. She moved like an android. His heart gave a tweak as he shouldered the pack and herded her toward the door. She really was in a bad way, far more than he expected when he’d agreed to escort her out of the palace. The sense that something was wrong assaulted him again.

He’d seen the vid, of course. Terr—Major Benedict—had called him, the communication hot on the heels of Jareth’s ordering him to cast her out, and explained what the hell was going on. She’d included a snippet of the feed, and he’d winced as he watched it, imagining Nikolai’s reaction to seeing his woman being nailed like that by another man.

Lady, if she’d been his woman he’d be fucking furious and ready to tear the guy limb from limb. But, still, that she would didn’t make sense. And the clip was weird. The way the guy was covering her, as though he was holding her down, but not in any good or kinky way. Something about the way she was lying…

He shook his head to dislodge the thought as they walked quickly through the darkened corridors of the palace. This early in the morning they were deserted, still too early for the staff to be up and about, preparing for the new day. Good, the less people who saw what he was about, the better. No matter how pissed Jareth was, Devil hadn’t been able to bring himself to put her out wearing that thin robe. He hadn’t been lying to scare her. There were predators out there on the streets who would snap up such a delectable morsel in seconds.

Holding the door to the service sections open for her, he studied her as she slid past him. Her eyes were downcast again, like they had been that first time she’d come to Prince Sethan’s chambers, but the slump in her shoulders was new, the dark eyes no longer sparkling with wit and amusement, but flat and blank.

Guilt gnawed at his guts. She’d lived her entire adult life in the palace, a pampered possession with no real duties other than warming a bed. How the hell was she supposed to survive on the streets? She had no skills, no way to earn a living other than the obvious. No way to defend herself.

In silence, he walked them through the darkened kitchens to the service lifts. There was no back door or entrance to the palace apart from the heavy, industrial-sized lifts. Lined up along the back of the massive kitchens, they dealt with everything from waste going out, to supplies coming in and everything in between. Pausing in front of the nearest, he punched in the code to call it to the kitchen level and waited.

Mechanical whirs and clicks emanated from the closed door in front of them as the heavy cage rose on its mechanism toward the kitchen. Idly, he listened to the cycle as it trundled upward, stopping for a few seconds in every ten for bioorganic cleansing.

Totally automated, the system was designed not to let anything organic back up in the lift unless loaded on specially designed and tagged trolleys. Anything else was eliminated with a high-yield incineration grid that swept the lift three times on its way up, just in case any of the prince’s enemies decided that the lifts were a good method to smuggle an assassin into the palace.

Thanks to a particularly inventive assassin using an adapted android during Seth’s father’s reign, automated pulse turrets took out anything that moved without a tag. Basically, once you went down, you didn’t come back up in the lift, not unless you planned on a particularly brutal and messy suicide. Devil shuddered. He’d once seen someone caught in an incineration field, and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

The field had cut him in half, shearing off his arm, shoulder, and a slivered cross section of his torso and left leg, partially cauterizing the wound so he didn’t bleed out straightaway. Devil wasn’t the only one who felt ill, but had managed not to puke until he’d reached the safety of his room, when he’d lost his dinner, breakfast, and possibly the last week’s rations.

Sedj had dealt with the fatally wounded man without flinching, raising her from pretty bit of stuff he’d like in his bed, to seriously impressive and hot woman. He didn’t know many people that could both comfort a dying man and manage to administer the fatal shot with such mercy.

The door slid open in front of them with a tortured scrape of metal until it clunked into place in the open position. Inside the worn metal floor with its black and yellow-banded tape border waited them. The floor extended beyond the taped area, but since only the floor itself lifted on the lift mechanism, standing too near the walls was just asking to be caught and pulled between the two as they moved. Not a pretty thought, Devil shuddered as he motioned Keliana forward, making sure she was safely within the right area with an outstretched arm.

The journey down was short, with three half-second pauses as the lift negotiated the cradles for the incineration fields. Even though he knew that they weren’t active on the way down, his heart still raced each time they slowed, ears sharp as he listened for the faintest hint the fields might activate.

Finally they made it to ground level. He released a sigh of relief as the lift plate ground to a halt and the locking mechanisms in the heavy door in front of them started to whirr and clunk. The smell of grease pervaded his nostrils, the gas release on the door spouting gouts of metallic smelling air along the lift wall as the door scraped open.

They were out of the lift almost before the door was open enough to admit two bodies and Devil took a deep breath of crisp night air. He was damn grateful to be out of the lift, just in case it got a bee in its electronic bonnet and decided on the ascent back up without opening the door at the bottom and letting them out. He’d have to go around the palace to the side entrance reserved for the guards. It was a bit of a walk but he didn’t care, anything was better than that damn lift.

As soon as they stepped into the darkness, he switched into combat mode. The darkness and the close confines of the alleys down here were enough to create an environment he wasn’t comfortable with until he’d scanned it, his gaze sweeping over the dirty asphalt to linger on the scavengers that had emerged from the shadows at the sound of the lift. They lingered for a moment, empty eyes flicking over Devil and his companion before they melted back into the darkness in disappointment.

All but one, a shadowy figure near the end of the alley lingered for a few seconds before disappearing from sight. His eyes narrowed as he tried to grab some details but didn’t manage it, the darkness rendering any identifying features too indistinct for him to catch. Probably just wondering if either of them had any valuables they could be relieved of, he thought as he shook the unsettled feeling off and looked at the tiny woman next to him.

Again, that feeling of wrongness assaulted him and an unaccustomed wave of protectiveness washed over him. Her head was down, the dark hair concealing part of her face. The telltale shimmer over her cheeks told him she was still crying. The silent tears got to him like nothing else as guilt gnawed at his gut. He should just hand over the bag and send her off into the darkness. It was more than he’d been ordered to do…

He flicked a glance around the dark alley, one of the street lamps further down flickering and buzzing as it clicked on and off. With a sinking feeling he knew she wouldn’t last the night, not the state she was in.

“Fuck it. Come on,” he ordered, shouldering the pack and heading off down the street. His long strides ate up the ground and forced her to follow at a hurried pace as he tried to work out what the hell he was going to do with her. Thinking on his feet, adapting at a moment’s notice to new intelligence…

Devil simply turned the current situation into a problem to be solved and fell back on his training. He had a woman he needed to look after, and protected out of sight until he could figure out what was bugging him about this whole situation. Leaving her on the street wasn’t an option, nor was dropping her off at one of the local whorehouses. At least she’d be protected there and able to work, but he couldn’t do it. Without a word, he took a left and headed toward the spaceport. There was just one place he could send her that he knew was totally secure and discrete.

“Where are we going?” she asked, the first question she’d asked about what would happen to her. Her voice was soft, the question asked absently, as though the answer was an abstract concept.

“You’ll see when we get there.” He compressed his lips as the hairs went up on the back of his neck. The sense of unease he’d had since they stepped out of the lift flared into a full-on warning of danger as bulky figures emerged from the shadows around them.

“Down. Now!”

Hand on Keliana’s slender shoulder, he forced her down as the attack was launched. The shapes solidified into two men. Big built, with the scarred faces and dead eyes of professional thugs, they circled him and the woman he stood protectively over. They didn’t try small talk or threats, just launched straight for him. Which was just fine and dandy with Devil, he’d never believed in chatting up someone he was beating the snot out of.

He followed Keliana to the floor, one large hand planted on the floor as he swept and scissored his legs in a hard movement as he took the fight aerial immediately. The guy closing on from his left went down in a tangle of limbs, hitting the ground with a grunt of pain. Devil ignored him, already pushing off and flipping back up to his feet to meet the second attacker.

“I’ma gonna fuck you up.”

His snarl revealed a couple of missing teeth, the rest blackened at the gum line: the classic sign of the Hosan-addicted where the nicotine and drug-laced smoke ate at the flesh. Eventually he’d lose all the teeth. Devil hammered in three hard jabs to help them on their way. Lightning fast, they rocked the guy’s head back on his bull-like neck before he twisted and threw a meaty left hook. Devil twisted, easily evading the blow. Coming up behind the arm, he caught it the wrist and slammed his open palm into the outside of the guy’s elbow. The joint gave with a meaty crack, echoed nicely by the squeal of pain that rolled around the night-darkened alley.

Gritting his teeth, Devil spun back around to face the first attacker as he staggered to his feet. Blood poured from his broken nose, staining his teeth as he opened his mouth.

“Let me guess? You’re gonna fuck me up? Yeah. That’s what he said,” Devil drawled, jerking his thumb at the guy behind him, whimpering and cradling his grotesquely twisted arm. Goon two flicked a look from Devil to his companion and back again.

Devil took a step toward him, his fists raised threateningly, the tattoo on his wrist clearly visible. “Didn’t work out so good for him. Think you can do better?”

A moan of fear escaped the guy’s lips, his gaze riveted to the dark mark inked into Devil’s skin as all the color leeched from his skin. Devil dropped his hands a little.

“Run,” he advised in a soft voice.

* * *

The planetary spaceport on the city limits never slept. Devil walked through the main doors with Keliana in tow and the contrast from the darkened city streets into the brightly light, chrome and glass of the port made him blink to clear his vision. The place was packed, the central area crammed full of passengers waiting for their uplink to whatever liner they were boarding.

Heat from so many bodies in one space wrapped around him like a warm, wet blanket until the tee he’d pulled on under his sleeveless jacket stuck to his back like a clingy lover. The muted roar of conversation wound around the monotone voices of the announcements, punctuated by the jangling tones that preceded each call as a new transporter carriage shunted into place in the vertical pickup tubes.

Transparent, they lined the walls of the departure hall, stretching from floor to ceiling overhead and beyond. Doors at floor level opened onto each carriage and allowed the passengers to board. Once full, the doors closed and the carriages rolled on one to fill the next one, and the next until the transporter was full. When it was the shunt engines at the front and rear of the column would lift it out of the tube to the orbital platform above and link up with a liner or in the case of shorter distances head on out to the space lanes and pick up the route to their destination.

It was one of these that Devil headed for, the crowds parting like water in front of him as soon as they recognized the black on black of his clothing and the ink on the wrist of the hand that held Keliana’s pack over his shoulder. He wasn’t in full uniform, but he didn’t need to be. Most people recognized a Sector soldier when they saw one.

“One for passage to Roulla please,” he said as he stopped in front one of the smaller transport chutes. Not designated to link up to one of the interstellar liners, it was one of the smaller bright orange transporters designed for system hopping. This particular one was destined for the second ring of systems and ultimately Devil’s home planet.

“That’ll be three credits, please.”

The young woman behind the ticket counter chewed industriously as she studied the two of them with blatant interest. Damn it, he should have just put casual clothes on for this. Devil grimaced to himself as he passed his hand over the payment plate. The machine bleeped as it charged his credit line for the cost of the ticket and spat out an orange tab.

He took it, smiling tightly at the young woman and ushered Keliana toward the boarding carriage. A hard look at the conductor got him onto the carriage where he tucked the bag under a window seat.

He dug in his pocket and held out a mobile-credit chip, holding it out to her as she slid into the seat and looked up at him with wide eyes. “Here, keep hold of it. And this is in case you need anything en route.”

She took the slip from his fingers and looked at it for a long moment before she snapped it open and tried to fasten it around her wrist. Her hands shook, delicate fingers struggling with the clasp. With a small sigh, he took it from her and clipped it shut. His gaze fell on the bracelet on her other wrist. Heavy and ornamented, it seemed too big for the fine bones of her wrist. Having seen it on the colonel’s wrist many a time, Devil recognized it instantly as Jareth’s betrothal bracelet.

“I’m gonna have to take that back.”

She recoiled from him as though he’d struck her, the tears that had dried up on their way here sparkling in her eyes again as she cradled the wrist with the bracelet as though it were a wounded animal.

“Please, let me keep it.” Her voice was soft and pleading as she flicked a glance to the other passengers filling the seats around them. He didn’t have much time, even the fact he was with the Sector wouldn’t gain him much extra time against the relentless schedule the transporters had to keep.

“I know you’ve done so much for me already.” She bit her lower lip, her gaze pleading. “But please tell him I wasn’t wearing it, or you forgot. Please? I-I just want something to remember him by…”

Fuck. Devil sat back on his heels and looked at her. Of all the things she should have said, she had to pick the ones that would pluck most at his heartstrings. The man had been prepared to throw her out on the street with nothing, yet she was in tears over losing a plain metal bracelet of no monetary value, just because of the memories it held?

He ground his teeth, feeling the muscle in the corner of his jaw pulse as he thought. The bracelet might not even be sentimental to Nikolai. It was plain, pressed metal with cheap ornamentation, the kind that sold for mere credits in the jewelry quarter, and easily replaceable.

He nodded and reached out to smooth a stray lock of hair back from her face. The touch was gentle but platonic. She was a beautiful woman but that was it, he felt no pull or attraction for her other than sympathy for someone down on their luck.

“Keep it, but don’t tell anyone where you’re going who it belongs to. I’ll sort a cover story for you, just agree with what your pickup says and don’t answer questions. OK?”

She settled back in the seat, relief in her dark eyes. “Thank you and thank you for everything you’ve done for me. I know I don’t deserve it, with w-wh-what you all think I’ve done, but thank you. Just, will you do one more thing for me?”

He lifted his eyebrow, expression blank. She rushed on quickly, obviously realizing his patience was running out.

“Please, just look after him for me?”

“Sir?” The conductor’s voice broke into their conversation. Devil turned his head with a look that made the man visibly quake. “I’m sorry, sir, but we need to close this carriage off and open the next one.”

“Of course, my apologies.”

He looked back at Keliana and smiled as he answered her question. “I will, you have my word.” With that, he pushed to his feet and with a final smile, he walked out of the carriage.

Lingering only long enough to see the carriage sealed and the next rolled into place, Devil left the spaceport. As he walked through the large doors at the front, he clicked the comm-tag built into his collar.

“Yeah, this is Major Bane,” he said as soon as the controller answered. “I’m out at the spaceport, but I was jumped on the way here by a couple of heavies. If I give you a description, can you put out an all patrol alert for me?”