WHEN THE SHIP STOPPED moving, Tessa and Kayleb each let out a sigh of relief and the knot of tension that had coiled along Tessa’s spine relaxed until she could finally drag in a deep breath, something that had evaded her since Kayleb cut the tracker out of her. The back of her neck was tacky with blood, but the flow had stopped, thanks mostly to the bandage of torn shirt that Kayleb had kept pressed against her.

A tracker.

She was a fucking idiot. How had she missed the damn thing? She’d been so convinced that the pirates were tracking the tech she’d stolen that she hadn’t for one second considered that they might have been tracking her. And now she’d gotten both herself and her mate captured just because she hadn’t paused to think about consequences. She was lucky to have lasted as long as she did, lucky that the jammer she’d used had cloaked the signal from the tracker embedded in flesh when she thought she was stopping something completely different.

Kayleb squeezed his arms around her. “Don’t blame yourself,” he murmured against her ear. They were still in the little closet they’d found and the most comfortable position they’d managed was with Kayleb’s back to the wall and her nestled against his chest, between his legs.

It had been too trying of a day for her to put up even a token protest at the intimacy of the position, and Kayleb, the smart man, said nothing when she nestled in closer to him, tilting her body sideways and laying her head against his chest. “I should have checked for a tracker,” she argued.

He didn’t have a reply for that. A few minutes passed and footsteps pounded in the hallway beyond the door. Both of them stiffened and didn’t dare to breathe. But no one tested the door, nor did the pirate even pause. For the moment, they were safe.

“My cousin has a craft like this,” Kayleb whispered against her, his breath tickling the inside of her ear and making her shiver. “He said it has some of the best cloaking tech in the galaxy. But when it’s used up, it takes days to recharge. That’s how he met his denya.”

That tickled Tessa’s memory. “This is the cousin you and Krayter were going to meet, right?” She couldn’t recall his name, or the name of his denya, but she remembered the excitement that had laced Kayleb’s voice when he spoke of the match.

“Ruwen, yes. And Lis. She was stranded on a shithole of a planet and he was hired to steal something from the locals. They escaped together, and the rest is history.” His thumb stroked idly against the cloth of her jacket and Tessa reached over to lace their fingers together.

“What are they like?” she asked.

“They’re good together.” She could hear Kayleb smile. “But, honestly, I don’t know them very well. The last few months have been...”

“Yeah.” She knew all too well how they’d gone. And they didn’t have time to dwell on the budding relationships of Kayleb’s family while they were at risk of discovery by the pirates who owned the damn ship they were on. “How long does it take your cousin’s ship to charge?” she asked.

“About a week, I think. I’ve only been on it once, and it’s smaller than this one. Whether that means the pirates need longer, or their generators are larger and they’ll be ready by night, I’m not sure.” And he didn’t sound happy about that uncertainty. He squeezed her hand and leaned further back against the wall, his muscles a hard wall behind her. “We’d best do some exploring if we’re going to get off this thing.”

“Do you have a plan there, Mr. Big Shot? Or are we just going to go with a suicidal charge?” The pirates had blasters for sure, and she wouldn’t be shocked if at least one of them had a las gun. She’d seen what las fire could do to naked skin, and she didn’t want to be the victim of that unrelenting fire any more than she wanted Kayleb to suffer from it. “We need weapons, and intel. How many of them are there on the ship? Can we fly it if we incapacitate them? Stuff like that.” She wracked her brain, trying to come up with different things they needed to know, but most of her ideas came from the media shows she sometimes devoured during long, lonely stretches of space. There wasn’t excitement like this on normal merchant ships. She’d hoped that the pirates she faced at Kayleb’s side on the Kella would be the worst thing she’d ever face.

And she’d been so, so wrong it wasn’t even funny.

“I’m beginning to think that I should have been a soldier,” Kayleb groused. “We need to get a look out first,” he decided. “See where we are. And you’re right, we need weapons. So, weapons and recon. We can do this.”

“You watch the same media shows as I do, don’t you?” Tessa guessed. The tension was riding high, but Kayleb was keeping her grounded, making this entire awful situation alright. As long as he was there next to her, she could figure out how to put one foot in front of the other and make it out the other side of this damn mess. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do with him once that was done, but she’d figure it out when they got there. When they survived and were safe.

“If they’re charging the cloaking shield, it probably means that we’ve landed somewhere,” Kayleb mused. “And while I’d love to overpower anyone here and triumphantly steer the ship back to New York, I’m not a pilot.”

Tessa agreed, though something bloodthirsty in her wanted to rebel. “Do you think there’s an information station in the hall? We had them on all the ships I’ve travelled on. It will give us a map of the ship.”

Kayleb shrugged. “The longer we wait, the bigger the risk of discovery. I say we go out there and find out.”

***

KAYLEB WANTED TO WRAP Tessa up and keep her safe. Being trapped aboard a pirate ship, that wasn’t an option. There was nothing he could give her for extra protection, and with the wound in his leg, he risked becoming a liability for her if he wasn’t careful.

So he was careful.

They waited a few breathless minutes, listening for any pirates who might be walking by. But no one joined the one they’d heard before. With steady hands, Kayleb eased the door open, sliding it into the wall beside them.

His claws itched to shoot out and face any unseen threat, but he kept them sheathed, a secret weapon in case they ran into trouble. More trouble. No one waited for them in the hallway. It was a simple corridor that could have belonged on any short range ship. A door, identical to the one they’d been hiding behind, stood opposite them and Kayleb assumed it also led to storage of some kind. Space was at a premium on ships and every crevasse that could be used to stow things was used.

Tessa stepped out beside him and the door slid shut with barely a hiss of sound. His denya stepped forward and opened the door opposite them and glanced inside, closing it after a few seconds. She looked back at him and shook her head—nothing useful.

By unspoken agreement, they turned right, heading in the opposite direction of where the pirate had walked earlier. Kayleb’s skin pulled tight and his instincts were on high alert, ready to jump into action at the slightest provocation. But their goal wasn’t to fight. The best option was to get off of the ship with no one realizing they were gone.

The metal of the corridor echoed as they walked, no matter how soft their steps. A passenger ship might have put down carpeting or a dampening fiber to muffle the sound, but the pirates didn’t need such luxuries. While they walked, Kayleb’s jaw set and he wished for something that would let them walk like the silent predatory beasts that stalked the deserts of Jaaxis.

But when footsteps pounded their way, walking at a fast clip, he rethought his desire for a rug. Echoes, it seemed, had their uses.

Adrenaline flowed through his veins and he quickly realized they had no place to hide. They’d passed another pair of doors, but they couldn’t make it back without running and alerting someone to their presence.

Kayleb pushed in front of Tessa and waited, breathing in and out slowly while the calm of the fight settled heavily on his shoulders.

The pirate rounded a corner and froze, his mouth dropping open in comical exaggerated shock. He was human, and short. He would barely come up to Tessa’s chin if they stood side by side. A blaster hung loose in his holster and Kayleb was on him before the short man could try to fumble for it.

They slammed against the wall, the crash of their bodies too loud to Kayleb’s ears, but he pushed that concern aside. He punched, hitting hard at the man’s ribs and giving no quarter. With a jut of his hips and a quick flip, he had his arm around the man’s throat and squeezed, cutting off the flow of blood to his brain. The man jerked at his arm but Kayleb’s hold was too tight.

As he went limp, Kayleb let him down. “He won’t be out for long,” he warned Tessa. “Should we...” He couldn’t make himself say it. Now that the pirate was unconscious, doing anything worse to him felt... unfair.

Tessa sucked in a ragged breath, some color draining from her face. She jerked her head back as if straining to hear if anyone were coming from where the man had run from. There was nothing. But the pirate was already starting to moan and grumble under them. Kayleb placed his leg on the man’s chest to keep him from moving.

His denya reached down and grabbed the blaster from the man’s holster. “Step back,” she warned Kayleb. Once he’d done what she asked, she shot, stunning the man in place. “That will keep him out for a while.” She examined the gun closely and then let out a curse. “It doesn’t have a tractor beam, we’ll need to carry him and hide him somewhere.”

Tessa tucked the blaster into her pocket and took the man’s legs while Kayleb grasped him by the shoulders. They dragged him back to the last storage space they’d found and laid him on the wall beside the door. Tessa pulled out the blaster and Kayleb opened the door, both of them pressing themselves against the wall in case anyone was standing inside waiting for them. But all that was in the closet were crates of dehydrated food and what looked like a busted water processing machine. Kayleb dumped the pirate and Tessa shot him a second time, just in case he thought of getting up.

They hurried back the way they’d come. The corridor seemed to go on forever, with turns and bisecting hallways to break up the monotony. Kayleb wasn’t sure how far they’d gone or how long they’d been running. There were no windows in the corridor and time seemed to bend strangely around them. After another turn and a heart wrenching second where multiple sets of footsteps seemed to surround them, but must have come from a different floor, they found an information terminal and took it as a sign to pause.

Tessa let out a hiss of “yes!” when the screen lit up under her fingers. She grinned over her shoulder at him and handed him the blaster while she worked. “They don’t have it locked down. Idiots.” And in a matter of seconds she had a map up of the small ship. Kayleb trusted her to map the way while he kept his eyes open for any threats coming their way. He didn’t like stopping out in the open like they were, but walking around aimlessly would be even more dangerous.

“Does that tell you how many people are on the ship or where they’re located?” Kayleb asked. His fingers tightened under the hard metal of the blaster’s hilt, the weight unfamiliar in his palms. He’d always used his fists and claws when he fought, the battles about dominance and skill, rather than a need to kill.

She poked at the screen a few more times and then shook her head. “Looks like we used up our lucky break on logging in to this thing. Hopefully that means they can’t track us either. Now let’s get out of here, there’s a side hatch one floor up. I think it’s our best shot.”

They took off running, sounds of the ship echoing around them as they made their escape. As they made it to a ladder and climbed to the next floor, Kayleb started to hope they’d make it out without being seen by anyone else.

But when the first shot of the blaster fired next to his head, he knew that their luck had run out.