“TAM SAYS SHE’LL MEET us at the precinct this morning,” Tessa told Kayleb when she came downstairs after a fitful night of sleep. Sex normally calmed her down, or rather, cuddling after sex normally calmed her down. Despite the mind-altering orgasm from last night, she’d slept alone. Which was the right decision. She had to keep telling herself that and hoped that eventually she’d believe it was true.

She couldn’t quite look at the counter beside the stove.

“Was she there yesterday?” Kayleb asked. He handed her a bowl of oatmeal and kept a respectful amount of distance between them.

She hated it.

He hadn’t said much about what they’d done last night and it left her mind reeling. Did he think that nothing had changed between them? Or everything? Did he expect her to let him fuck her again? Did she want him to?

Well, yes. She’d make love with him for days if it weren’t for their stupid past and his stupid betrayal that still hurt her heart. But it no longer hurt with every breath. No, now it was somehow worse. Between those aching memories of betrayal, hope had begun to bloom, tentative blossoms of fragile green leaves that could be crushed by the slightest misstep. She was fool to consider ever trusting him again.

But forgetting her hadn’t been his fault.

“No, she wasn’t,” Tessa answered before her mind could take her down more unwanted pathways. “But she wasn’t surprised. She said if I don’t talk to the cops now, they’ll just become persistent and they may make trouble for me when I try to leave the planet again.”

“You’re leaving?” He sounded casual, but even she could tell it was false.

Tessa shrugged and took a seat at the counter, taking a bite of oatmeal to delay her answer. After she swallowed, she glanced over at him and found him studying her like a deadly predator. Her heart skipped and she snapped her gaze back to her meal like that would keep her safe. “I guess,” she said. “I haven’t had much time to think about it. But I’m a ship medic. That kind of requires, you know, being on a ship.” Why was she so apologetic? She needed to get ahold of herself. “Are you planning to stay on Earth?” she asked, still not looking at him.

Kayleb moved, passing close enough behind her that the air stirred at the base of her neck and she shivered. “We came to Earth in the hope that humans would be the key to saving our people. And we were right. My brother plans to build a place for Detyens to call their own. Someone will need to travel to spread the word. And I have family back on Jaaxis. I would like to see them again.”

None of that was an answer. “So you’re not staying?”

“Are you?”

Time for a change in subject. “We should head out. Tam will be waiting for us.”

Kayleb didn’t argue. It took a few more minutes to collect their things, disengage the security system, and tidy up the small messes they’d made. Tessa wished she had a blaster, even though she’d rarely gone armed in the past. But walking openly down the streets after the week she’d had made her jumpy.

Those assholes were after the tech, she reminded herself. They had no way to track her anymore. If only that were enough to calm her nerves.

They took a cab to the precinct and Tessa kept her eyes peeled. Was the white truck she spotted in the mirror following them or merely heading in the same direction? A speeder cycle whizzed by and she flinched back. Kayleb’s fingers curled around hers in silent support and Tessa didn’t pull away.

At this time in the morning, it took nearly an hour to make it to the precinct. By the time she stepped out of the cab and into the harsh sunlight of morning, her skin was on fire with nerves and she jumped at every small sound and unexpected sight. She knew she had to look like some sort of unsavory character when they walked up the old stone stairs and checked in with the officer at the front desk, protected by a sheet of plas glass. But he buzzed them through the door and directed them back to the bullpen on the fourteenth floor where Dores and Wixon waited with Tam.

Seeing Tam was a shock. Tessa somehow hadn’t expected her to look older than she’d been the last time they spoke. The degraded quality of vid calls hid the changes. She hadn’t been able to see the lines at the corner of her sister’s eyes, and the gray hair starting to make itself known at her temples was hidden. They both took after their father, with frizzy hair that was normally brown, though Tessa dyed her own, and large brown eyes and broad noses. But Tam got her bearing from their mother. She stood like a queen under the harsh lights of the precinct and all eyes automatically were drawn to her.

She could be mayor one day, Tessa thought. Maybe even president. But it was their brother Adam who was the politician. Tam liked to get her hands dirty when it came to keeping bad guys off the streets.

Wixon sat at a desk and rose to his feet when she and Kayleb exited the elevator. Dores and Tam were talking and both ignored the officer when he came to stand by them. Greetings took a moment and Tam stared between Kayleb and Tessa for several seconds, a dozen questions flicking across her face at light speed. She asked none, but Tessa expected the interrogation that her sister would give her to be much worse than anything the police could throw her way.

“Thank you for coming in,” said Dores as she led them all back to the elevator and requested access to the top floor. “We’ve turned the device over to our technology team. They were very interested in what it had to offer.”

“So they could access the information?” Tessa asked. If so, why did they need to talk to her?

Dores shook her head. “Not quite.” The seventeenth floor looked more like it belonged in a corporate office than a police precinct. The walls were painted a light grey and impersonal art hung at intervals. The floor was carpeted with a subtly patterned rug and the room Dores led them to looked like a conference room from a media program about lawyers or media publishers, not an interrogation chamber.

Maybe if Tessa had real life experience with the police and hadn’t based all of her opinions on media shows, she would have known what to expect. A darted glance at Kayleb didn’t show any discomfort. In fact, his face was completely blank and she wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

Probably bad. Kayleb didn’t like to hide.

Wixon took a seat with his back towards the door. Dores gestured for them to sit on the other side of the table, backs toward the window with its view of the rest of the city. Tam sat beside the officer and unease—more unease—settled in Tessa’s gut. Shouldn’t her sister be on her side? Should she have brought her own lawyer? She’d thought Tam would help her out on that front.

Distantly, Tessa heard a persistent beeping, but when the door to the conference room slid shut it went away. It must have come from another office.

Wixon played with the table and it glowed, information from what must have been her file projecting on the holo in front of them. The image of the box looked real enough to touch and Tessa wanted to grab it and chuck it across the room and smash it to bits after all the trouble it had given her. But it was just a holo and if she tried, her hands would go right through the image.

A hand rested on her knee, warm and heavy and oh so familiar. She didn’t glance at Kayleb, but she breathed a little easier, knowing that he was by her side.

The beeping started again, a little louder, even through the door. Kayleb squeezed her knee, but the officers and Tam didn’t seem to notice. It had to be nothing. She was just freaked out and jumpy.

“We’re going to need you to walk us through how you got the device, Miss Greely. Please spare no detail.” Wixon brought up a digital recorder program that requested her consent to record the interview.

Tessa placed her hand on the table and gave her acknowledgment. She opened her mouth to begin talking, and a blast rattled the building, throwing her from her chair as debris rained down around them and the window behind her and Kayleb disappeared.

Someone screamed and from the pain in her throat, she realized it was her.

***

GLASS SHATTERED AROUND him as Tessa toppled over with a scream. Kayleb launched himself after her, heedless of the danger to himself. Pebbled remains of the window plastered his exposed skin and an errant shard tore a gash in his leg. Kayleb barely felt it. The smell of blaster fire rose around them, singeing his nostrils as the wind and noise of the shots nearly deafened him.

He covered Tessa, her voice quieting as she realized who he was and what was going on. Her body trembled under him and she clutched at his shoulders, holding him close. He spotted a boot under the table, the limb inside it unmoving. Wixon or Dores? He neither knew nor cared. All he knew was that he and Tessa needed to get out.

“I thought the tech was secure,” Tessa yelled at him over the cacophony in the room.

“It is!” came Dores’s shout from the other side of the table. Kayleb risked a glance up and saw the sergeant covering Tam. Poor Wixon hadn’t been lucky enough to avoid the shots.

Tessa tugged at his shoulders and slid backward, close to a supporting wall, partially hidden from the window. Kayleb followed, crawling carefully over her to avoid glass and keep her covered.

A suspicion tickled the back of his mind, but Kayleb pushed the distraction away. He pressed back against the wall beside Tessa and surveyed the room. Neither of them had weapons and they couldn’t make it to Dores without crossing a field of blaster fire.

Beside him, Tessa had gone pale. She stared out what used to be the window at the busted ship made of blue and gray and black metal, bursts of red shooting out in a shower of flame and death. “Pirates,” she said. “Ground to space vessel.”

That explained why the glass couldn’t shield against their fire. The pirate’s ship was probably designed to take out space ships. A terrestrial building would be nothing to their blaster fire.

Dores was yelling a request for backup into an unseen communications device, her words barely audible over the chaos. Her eyes met his across the room and he saw the regret written across her face.

Metal clanged against the floor, coming from the vehicle hovering outside. Footsteps echoed, eerily loud.

With no weapons and no way to retreat, he and Tessa were doomed.

Kayleb put himself in front of his mate, blocking her from view of the pirates. “When I charge, take cover,” he said. They both didn’t need to die today.

“What!” she yelled back at him, one hand clutched against his forearm. “Fuck that, they can’t have you, you’re mine.”

Under any other circumstances, Kayleb would have been overjoyed. But it was too late for that. He pressed a hard kiss to her mouth and forced himself to pull back before he lost himself. “I love you. Run.”

Without waiting to see what she did, he turned and charged. Either he’d been well hidden behind the pillar or the pirates didn’t expect such a suicidal move. They both froze for an instant and that gave Kayleb the slightest advantage. And for a street fighter from Jaaxis, that was all he needed.

He pushed forward, sending the smaller of the two fighters plunging off the plank that extended from the ship. He didn’t waste time checking to see if the man had any sort of anti grav device because the second pirate was on him, blaster firing too fast for Kayleb to dodge. The first hit took him in the side and he yelled in pain, the second scored across the wound on his leg, sending him to his knees.

He looked up, scowling and defiant, ready to meet his death head on. But the pirate simply shot his other leg, sending him sprawling on all fours. Another shot rang out, but it didn’t hit Kayleb, and he was too close for the pirate to miss.

No.

He forced his head to turn, despite the pain and scorched neurons scrambled by the blaster. The pirate had Tessa frozen in a tractor beam, pulling her effortlessly from wherever she’d managed to run. He grabbed a second blaster out of his holster and aimed it at Kayleb, using the secondary tractor function to snag him as well and carry him along.

Under the force of the beam, they couldn’t be injured by blaster fire. This pirate must have had some other form of protection on since he paid no heed to Dores’s shots. The door burst open behind them, boots pounding against the carpet, but Kayleb couldn’t turn and see who it was.

They moved onto the platform and it retracted after the pirate. The ship’s door closed behind them and the pirate guided the tractor beams over something that looked like a vent before releasing both of them into the bowels of the ship.

A grate closed over them at the same time the tractor beam released them. Kayleb slammed into the wall and bounced back, barreling gracelessly into Tessa as they spun. They managed to hold onto one another and the ship rolled, sending them skidding against a wall but slowing their velocity from breakneck to bruising. Something crashed below them, the only warning before the walls disappeared, and they landed in what passed for a cell on a small ship like the one the pirates were using.

Tessa breathed heavily under him and Kayleb was at least thankful for her breath, though the situation could be much improved. “Are you hurt?” he asked, unable to make himself let go just yet.

Tessa took a few more deep breaths before answering. “Just bruised, I think. What about you?”

Kayleb grit his teeth and pressed a hand against his leg. It came away green with his blood. “A minor scratch,” he admitted. “Annoying, but not life threatening.”

“Let me see.” The confusion and fear he’d heard earlier dissolved as she shifted into medic gear.

On instinct, Kayleb jerked away, but Tessa reached out and grabbed his arm with unexpected strength. Steel threaded her voice as she spoke. “If you bleed out, I’m not dragging your body back home. I need you ready to run. So let me look.” Passion blazed in her eyes and the fire of her determination practically manifested around them.

Kayleb shifted to give her a better view of his thigh, cursing a bit as the cloth scraped against the cut. Tessa was careful and quick, her fingers examining the wound since the light around them was too dim to see much. Kayleb bit his lip to keep from hissing in pain or cursing again, and it took more effort than he wanted to admit not to flinch away from her ministrations.

“You’re right,” she said after several moments. “I want to bandage this to staunch the bleeding, but it doesn’t look like anything important was hit. Running won’t be fun, though.”

“I’ll live,” he promised.

Even in the dimness, he saw her mouth quirk up in a grin. “Good. You better.” She patted the ground around them, turning away. “See if you can find anything we can use as a bandage.”

They were in a metal box with a grated ceiling and floor. There was nothing in there except for the two of them. Kayleb shrugged off his coat and shirt. “I can rip up my shirt and use it. It’s not too dirty.”

Tessa held out a hand. She got onto her knees and crawled close, leaning over him, her lips right next to his ears. Now was not the time to remember the soft push of her flesh against his, remember the taste of her on his lips. His cock didn’t seem to understand that. “Surveillance?” she whispered against the pointed tip of his ear, her lips brushing against the sensitive flesh.

Kayleb shivered and placed a hand on her hip, grounding himself in her presence. He wanted to tilt her head and kiss her, press her against the wall and take her. But they’d been captured by pirates who’d left a police station in ruins to retrieve them. Now was not the time.

His night vision was better than a human’s. He tilted his head around, looking for anything that might have been a camera or surveillance drone. Nothing stood out, but he couldn’t believe that they weren’t being watched. Now that he thought about it, he could feel eyes crawling over him and he didn’t like it. “Not sure,” was his reply.

Tessa kept herself anchored over him. “Use my body to block your claws.” Her hand slid around and cupped the back of his neck and Kayleb knew his eyes had gone red. Tessa stared straight at him, challenge in her gaze.

Damn it all. He stole a brief kiss, barely enough for a hint of her taste. Then with quick motions, he let his claws out and tore into his shirt, leaving enough to make it look torn rather than cut. Once he was done, Tessa sat back and got to work bandaging him. The cloth was tight around his thigh, though not enough to cut off circulation.

Kayleb wondered what he’d give for some regen gel, but that was the least of their worries.

The ship rocked again, moving far more slowly than he would have expected. They were in the middle of the city, the police or the army had to give chase. And yet it felt like a stately glide through a park rather than evasive maneuvers.

“They have cloaking tech, don’t they?” he asked.

Tessa rolled her eyes. “They’re pirates. Of course. Now come on, we need to get out of here before they break atmo. I don’t think I can escape in space a second time.”