PANIC BIT AT TESSA’S heels and the sticky remnants of Kayleb’s blood on her hands wasn’t helping anything. Sweat clogged her pores even as the chill in their little chamber was enough to leave her shivering. She wanted so badly to crawl back into Kayleb’s lap and cling to him that she forced herself to stand. This wasn’t some nightmare. She wasn’t going to wake up in the morning, cold in her lonely bed, wishing that she’d joined him in the middle of the night.

No, the pirates had found her. They’d taken her, and her mate, and for that she’d see them destroyed.

Was Tam okay? Though she knew there was nothing she could do about it now, she added the uncertainty over her sister’s fate to the growing list of grievances against the assholes who’d taken them.

“See if you can find a way out,” she told Kayleb. “If not, then a weapon? Anything we can use.” Her thoughts swam dizzily around her head and she didn’t have anything resembling a plan. But she knew they needed to move. The longer they stayed, the closer they were to dead.

Kayleb gave her a silent nod and started to examine the walls, looking for a seam where there might be a door. They’d been deposited through a grate in the ceiling and the walls appeared solid. Then again, this was a space ship. Once they broke atmo and lost gravity, she might forget which way was supposed to be up and which wall was meant to have a door. She snatched a forgotten bit of fabric from Kayleb’s tattered shirt and tied it to a piece of grate on the ground. She didn’t know if it would help, but didn’t see how knowing up from down could hurt.

“How did you escape last time,” Kayleb asked. Anger rode the edge of his voice, dark enough to send a shiver down her spine. She’d feel sorry for whoever made him sound like that if she didn’t want to kill them herself.

“They needed a medic,” she replied, unwanted visions of an unexpectedly clean ship swamping her vision. Their medbay hadn’t looked anything like what she’d expected of a pirate ship. “It look a little while, but they eventually loosened the leash. I was able to smuggle myself out with medical waste at a supply station.” Nothing she’d done then would be useful now and that made her even more angry.

“Hmm,” was Kayleb’s only response.

Had they been after her all along? Or did they want to barter her for the piece of tech that she’d stolen? She didn’t ask it out loud, didn’t want Kayleb any angrier than he already was. She needed him to focus, and she didn’t trust herself not to spiral down and join him in anger if she thought about it for too long.

It didn’t matter. Neither of them were going to be here long enough to be used as hostages.

Kayleb gave up on the walls and turned his attention to the ceiling. It was a bit too high to reach, but he wedged himself onto a step in the wall and reached, straining. Sweat beaded on his brow, and the pressure on his leg must have hurt like hell, but he suffered in silence.

The grate moved.

Tessa bit back the shout of triumph that tried to escape her traitorous lips and rushed to Kayleb’s side. He kept pulling at the flap of metal and it let out a strained howl as the hinges protested. God, he was strong. A shiver of delight went through her and she appreciated the swath of blue chest that peeked out of his open coat, even if she hated that he was only shirtless because of the injury to his leg.

With a final groan, the door snapped into place. Tessa froze where she stood, senses strung tight as she listened for the sound of an alarm or enemy footsteps pounding from somewhere. But there was nothing.

“Hopefully they’re worried about something outside,” she said, half to reassure herself.

Kayleb reached a hand down. “We know this leads to the cargo bay, it might go somewhere else. It’s all better than here. I can boost you up and then climb behind you.”

She took his hand and clambered up over his shoulders until she was half in the chute and still held by Kayleb. Placing her arms on opposite walls, she wedged herself in, using her back and her legs once she started to climb to cover the distance. Unlike the journey down, she was squeezed and it was slow going, centimeter by tortuous centimeter earned through burning muscles and a slide of cloth against metal.

Every few meters, vents no bigger than her hand crisscrossed the chute. Tessa eyed one cautiously. Air didn’t seem to pump out of them and one was blackened around the edges, the metal appearing burnt. She really hoped they didn’t shoot fire or acid or anything that could eat through her or Kayleb before they had a chance to know what killed them.

“Is everything alright?” Kayleb hissed from below her, barely panting from exertion.

Tessa realized that she’d stopped and nodded before speaking. “Yes, I’m fine.” She kept moving.

They’d fallen in seconds, but climbing up from the depths of the ship was hard work. Muscles strained and burned and more than once Tessa wanted to give up and surrender to the darkness, to take the easy path and fall back down into pain and suffering and loneliness.

It was hard work, to recover from an unexpected hardship, but once they were free it would be worth it.

Kayleb’s arm brushed against her ankle and Tessa tried to stop the startled smile that bloomed. At least he couldn’t see it. When they got free, he could have her smiles. Maybe.

Maybe there was more than one hole for her to climb out of.

Tessa’s hand shot out when she went to find her next handhold and she slid, legs flying out and accidentally kicking Kayleb as she shot her hand out and gripped down a secondary tunnel. “There’s an opening here,” she said once she got her breath back. “Turn or keep going up?”

“Is it steep?” Kayleb asked.

Tessa wedged herself up and her arms came perpendicular to the way they’d been climbing. Her thighs burned and her arms ached and she wanted to nap for a week after a long soak in a tub somewhere far from all the excitement. But she wedged herself into the gap and climbed a little, trying to get her bearings. “It looks like it leads to a storage closet or something. I can see a door through a grate.”

“It’s still a long way to the cargo deck,” Kayleb’s voice echoed, now that she wasn’t beside him to muffle it.

That decided them.

It took a bit of jostling for Kayleb to make it into the little tunnel she’d found, and even more to get him in front. But he was the one with stronger legs and though she’d tried, Tessa couldn’t more than budge the grate that led to the closet. At one point, they ended up splayed around one another, Tessa pressed flat against the metal under them while Kayleb crawled over her, his scent enveloping her and giving her ideas. She’d never loved tight spaces before, but she was beginning to think of the possibilities.

Kayleb got them through the grate in two kicks. Climbing out was much easier than climbing in and Tessa stumbled and fell to her knees as soon as she tried to put weight on her suffering legs. Kayleb clamped his arms around her, but he was barely steadier. They clung together, holding one another tight as the ship bobbed around them. Gravity still felt real, for that she was grateful. Artificial gravity was a good approximation, but nothing could quite replicate the real thing, and as long as it was real, that mean they were still on Earth, and they still had a chance to escape.

“Any idea why they haven’t broken atmo yet?” Kayleb asked, echoing the question in her own mind. She might have been grateful, but that didn’t mean that it made any sense.

“Don’t want to lead anyone to the main ship?” she guessed.

“That would be promising,” Kayleb replied. What he said next almost knocked her off her feet. “So how did they find you?”

***

TESSA LOOKED AT HIM like he’d bared fangs and claws at her, but Kayleb didn’t remind her that he’d never cause her harm. They needed to solve this problem before they were hunted down once more. When she said nothing, he kept speaking. “The device you gave the police was secured. If they had the means to find it, they could have retrieved it before we got to the precinct. But they knew you were there. How?”

Tessa let out a frustrated growl and put her hands on her hips. Her feet tapped like she wanted to pace, but the closet they’d found was barely big enough for both of them. Kayleb had wedged himself into a corner to try and give her more space. It didn’t do much.

“How the hell should I know?” she demanded. “This isn’t my fault. Maybe they had a lookout. Maybe someone sold me out. Don’t blame me for this!”

Kayleb grabbed her shoulders and yanked her close before she could punch a wall and risk bringing attention to them. That her body was soft and familiar against his was a side benefit. “I’m not blaming you.” He found a well of calm and tried to exude it, but he’d never been the most serene person. He wanted to find each of the pirates and rip them limb from limb for giving his denya even a moment of trouble. “But if they have means of tracking you, they might find us even if we evade any security measures on the ship.”

She let out a breath and seemed to deflate against him, arms hanging around his waist and giving him her weight. “I don’t know,” said Tessa. “They’ve been on my ass since I got to Earth. I thought it had to be the tech I stole.”

“Were you close to Earth when you escaped?” he asked. Earth wasn’t exactly a backwater, but it was out of the way of many shipping channels, and it took planetary defense seriously. Pirates usually avoided it for wilder solar systems.

Tessa let out a hollow laugh. “God, no. It took a while to get this far. I didn’t even know the ship I found was coming here. But it was a big ship. Easy to hide on, hard to attack. They must have followed.”

“What are the odds they put a tracker in you?” Geo trackers implanted in living beings were popular in the slave trade and it turned Kayleb’s stomach to think of what they’d had planned. Rending the pirates limb from limb was too fast and painless for what they deserved.

“That’s... that’s definitely possible.” Tessa slumped and slid down a wall until she was seated on the floor. “They knocked us out not long after they nabbed us. They could have implanted trackers... or worse. Not a control chip, thank God. I couldn’t have escaped with one of those in me.”

A control chip was another popular tool of the slave trade, though they were prone to malfunctioning and killing the subject, which wasn’t good for business.

The light in the closet wasn’t good. A thin band of wiring along the ceiling pulsed with pale blue lights, giving them enough to see by, but not in any detail. Kayleb used a hand to feel around near the door and found a control pad. He swiped up and the lights brightened a little more. He kept them relatively dim in case anything escaped beyond the door; he didn’t want to draw attention. With gentle hands, he sat and pulled Tessa close to him. She came without resistance and his heart hurt for the pain radiating out of her.

He parted her hair and ran his hands over her scalp and the delicate length of her neck. She had such strength, and yet was so fragile under his fingers. It didn’t take long to find. Trackers were rarely well hidden, from what he’d heard about them. Just to the right side of her neck, a sliver about the size of one of Tessa’s fingernails bumped out of her brown skin. Kayleb placed a kiss over the spot and murmured in her ear, “I found it.”

Tessa nodded. “Take it out.”

He didn’t have a knife or a scalpel and unlike his instincts when he thought of the pirates, now his claws itched to stay in his skin rather than shoot out. Taking out the tracker would cause pain to his mate, something he never wished to do. And yet, if he didn’t, then she—they—would be in even more danger. “I’ll be as gentle as I can,” he promised.

Tessa placed a hand on his thigh and squeezed and in any other circumstances, the feeling would have shot up his leg and given him different ideas. “Just make it quick,” she said.

Kayleb nodded, even if she couldn’t see. With a snick, the claws on his hand shot out. He used his other hand to hold her head steady and keep her hair pushed back. He pressed the tip against her skin and gritted his teeth as harsh red blood beaded under his hand. He had to do this, hesitation would only hurt her more. With a quick jerk of his claw and gentle prodding, he had the thin metal transmitter out of her and gathered up some of the discarded cloth from his t-shirt that he’d kept in a jacket pocket to stop her bleeding.

“Give it to me,” Tessa asked, holding out a hand. Kayleb’s claws retracted and he placed the metal in her hand. She squeezed her fist around the tiny device as if she could crush it.

Then Tessa pushed back against him and pulled out of his embrace. She clambered back into the tunnel and down towards the chute they crawled up. A moment later she was back empty handed. “I don’t know if they can track it in the ship,” she said, “but if they’re looking, hopefully that lands back in our shitty little cell and they don’t spend too much time looking for us.”

He hoped she was right. “Let’s find a way off this piece of shit and go home,” Kayleb said, getting to his feet and offering a hand to Tessa.

She grabbed it with a smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”