TESSA SCRAMBLED UP behind Kayleb and started shooting, blindly following him in hopes that he had his eye on cover. From the sizzle of the blaster fire as it impacted the metal around them, the pirates hadn’t been kind enough to set their weapons to stun. Blasters couldn’t normally kill a person, but neither she nor Kayleb would be able to walk if they were hit.

Two large, long stacked crates acted as enough barrier for them to hide behind. Rather than peer over the top, Tessa leaned to the side and tried to get a look at who was shooting at them. Kayleb must have been doing the same. “I see two,” he grunted, ducking down as a shot almost hit him in the face.

Tessa winced, but she held her position. They needed to be smart about this. Her mind wasn’t doing any favors, flashing back to another moment when the two of them had been under fire from vicious pirates intent on taking the ship.

When Kayleb looked out again, she placed her hand on his jacket and tugged him back. “Just, stay behind cover. Please. I have the blaster.” She leaned out and shot a spray of laser fire before he could argue. When she leaned back, he stared at her, a question in his eyes. “We’ve been here before. I can’t—” She shook her head and shot again. A cry and reduction in the rate of fire told her that she’d hit someone.

Lights flashed around them, a siren ringing out, and Tessa’s hope for a swift and painless getaway dissolved. She could see the door that would lead them to freedom. They only had a handful of meters to go before they were off the ship and in the middle of whatever place the pirates had set down. They could be hanging off of a cliff, for all she knew, or buried deep in a mountain. But as long as she and Kayleb could get away, at least then they’d have a chance to escape.

She didn’t let herself worry about the wound in Kayleb’s leg, or the fact that they only had one weapon. And she certainly couldn’t worry that they had no food and water and could have been hundreds of miles from civilization.

She really hoped they weren’t in one of the Waste Zones, where contamination from leaks of old nuclear waste made life unlivable. That would be very bad.

All those things she shoved away, focusing on the blaster still firing at them. Kayleb placed a hand on her arm and she jerked to look at him. He studied her with a scary amount of intensity before holding out his hand. “I can see him. Let me.”

She remembered Kayleb’s blood gushing out under her fingers, the memory of his trauma at the hands of the pirates blending together with the first time she’d seen him, nearly bled to death by a shoddy rod on the ship. He’d been hurt so many times when she was around, she didn’t want to put him in any more danger.

But she handed him the blaster and did her best to hold back the tears that wanted to fall as her mind flashed through all of the things that could possibly go wrong when he stuck himself out to shoot.

Her mate took a breath to steady himself before leaning out, pointing with care, and pulling the trigger. The blaster fire coming their way stopped, but the siren still rang out and footsteps pounded down one of the corridors, coming towards them fast. There were definitely more than two people headed towards them and she and Kayleb no longer had the element of surprise.

“Make a break for it,” she said, tugging at his arm and standing up swiftly. As Kayleb rolled to his feet, she took off running, eating up the distance to the door in seconds. This one didn’t slide open as easily under her command, and it took Kayleb’s strength once he got there to push it out and release the seal that kept it shut.

Fresh air rushed in, the smell of green and living things. Even better, they weren’t perched over the side of a cliff. The ship was tall, but a careful jump and she and Kayleb were free.

This ship had set down in the middle of a clearing, woods surrounding it everywhere that Tessa could see. She grabbed onto Kayleb’s arm as he landed beside her and took off, sprinting for the coverage of the trees that was so close she could taste it. As the grass thickened under her feet and twigs beat at her arms, blasters shot off behind them, but Tessa didn’t risk a glance back. They needed cover. Once they were in the relative safety of the forest, she’d take the time to breathe.

She stumbled over a fallen log and Kayleb ran ahead, jerking her arm before he realized she’d fallen. He let go and skidded to a stop, throwing a look back over his shoulder to see if she was okay. Tessa pushed herself back up to her feet and gave Kayleb something passing for a smile. His skin had gone a bit pale, as pale as a hulking blue man could get, but once she waved off any need for assistance and assured him she wasn’t injured, they were off.

Shots should have rung out behind them, the panicked bursts of blaster fire shot blindly from pirates picking off easy targets. But the shots never came. After a punishing pace and a few more minutes of running, she slowed, bringing Kayleb to a stop beside her. She tried to listen, but birds chirped and bugs buzzed, all oblivious to the danger from the people around them.

“They’re not following us,” she said. “Why?” Not that she wasn’t grateful. She wanted to launch herself into Kayleb’s arms, spin around, and celebrate. But it didn’t make sense.

Kayleb heaved in a breath and turned around, eyes narrowing as he studied the way they’d come. If he’d been a cyborg, she might have thought that he was analyzing the terrain and using whatever enhancements he had to calculate the chances of their survival or to sense where the pirates lurked. But she’d peeked inside his head months ago and there was nothing but a brain, a bit battered, but dangerously smart. “I don’t like it,” he said quietly, his words almost lost among the chirps. “We should keep moving. Maybe we’ll find a road nearby, or a settlement.”

Tessa hoped he was right. In the last century, much of the land in New York state had been reclaimed by wilderness, surrendered by the clutches of the city in an effort to make the world into something livable once more. The effort had worked, but now it meant that where once there’d been miles and miles of sprawl and hope of an easy trek home, now they were left with woods as far as the eye could see, and the type of people that thrived in a disconnected wilderness. She’d heard complaints about the enclaves of humans who hated aliens and thought they should be barred from the planet, if not outright destroyed. She had to hope that they didn’t run into any of them.

“I hope we don’t bring trouble down on anyone,” she muttered, half to herself.

Kayleb didn’t respond, but from the set of his shoulders, she was pretty sure he agreed. At some point in the last few days, Tessa had come to know him well enough to read those little tics and tells of his, until sometimes he didn’t need to speak for her to understand his half of the conversation. She’d started on that journey back on the Kella, but back then, he’d talked for hours with her, the words between them flowing as strong as a river. They’d neither needed nor wanted silence, too wrapped up in each other to pay attention to the ship around them.

Tessa had resented her duties for the first time since she’d signed on with the ship, wishing she could shirk her responsibilities to spend the days in bed with Kayleb. She’d even resented his brother for the time he came to the infirmary to watch over Kayleb as he recovered. The ship’s doctor had to have guessed that something was going on between her and her Detyen patient, but he’d said nothing.

“I should have told Krayter about us,” she said as she brushed the back of her hand against Kayleb’s. They’d been walking for several minutes and there was still no sign of the pirates. She glanced up at the sky to make sure they hadn’t taken to the air in their search, but the clouds only had birds for company.

Kayleb jerked his head toward her, eyes wide with shock. He stared at her for a long moment before he replied. “Why didn’t you?” There wasn’t any accusation there. He didn’t try and tell her that it was just as much her fault that they’d been parted as it was his. Hell, it was probably more her fault.

She hadn’t fought for him, after all.

Tessa tried to speak, but the words choked in her throat. Why had she said anything? She could remember the blank look on his face the first time he opened his eyes after she spent hours fearing that he would slip away from her. The polite, distant smile he’d given as he thanked her for her help had stabbed her in the heart and she’d spent the night crying her eyes out as one thing became abundantly clear to her.

“I thought you lied about it.”

***

HE DIDN’T REALIZE THAT whispered words could hit like a physical blow. Kayleb staggered as the enormity of what she said slammed into him. He wanted—needed—to yank her close and make sure that she understood that everything between them was as real as the sun in the sky.

But he forced himself to look at her and what he saw broke his heart. Those soulful eyes of hers were glassy with unshed tears and her face had lost some of its color, now washed out like a piece of wood left on the bank of a river for too long. Her lip quivered and there was terrified hope writ plain across her expression.

“And what do you think now?” he forced himself to ask. He remembered that moment at the police station, the last minute before the pirates took them when he was prepared to sacrifice himself.

She reached out and squeezed his hand, keeping it in a loose hold. “I think I was an idiot.”

Maybe he should have been angry. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to Kayleb that Tessa might have said something before they left the ship. He’d assumed that time had worked against them and that he and Krayter were gone before she could realize that she needed to speak up. And every time anger tried to rear its head, he reminded himself that he hadn’t said a thing to Krayter. Any blame on Tessa’s shoulders fell equally on his own.

“I should have told Krayter the moment I saw you,” he said. “Or,” he added after a moment, “at least after we were certain.” Had he really only wanted to protect his younger brother from heartache? Or had he wanted to keep Tessa a secret, something that was only his for as long as he could? “I told you about my siblings, right?” His memories were still a mish-mash of conjecture and half-formed thoughts, but he couldn’t imagine that he hadn’t spoken of them.

Tessa smiled and huffed out a little laugh. “Oh yes, I almost made up a little song to try and remember all of their names. Twelve? Right... or, I guess it’s eleven since your sister...” She trailed off before mentioning Karwan’s death.

The heartache lodged home in his chest, just where it always was when he remembered the last time he’d seen his sister. She’d been a bright light, full of love and laughter and the fact that she’d never been able to find her mate was one of the greater injustices in the world. But that wasn’t what this was about, and she wouldn’t want him to give up on Tessa, or on love because she was gone.

“With so many of us, it’s difficult to have things of our own,” he admitted. “I missed those brats so much, but even when I was back on Jaaxis, I tried to make my space.” He’d insisted on his own apartment, despite the fact that the family had more than enough room, and he’d been street fighting for money even when he had dozens of other, safer, opportunities. It had been his, and no one in the family knew how to take it away from him.

“I was so much younger than my brothers and sister that I was practically an only child,” Tessa said. “My parents...” She shrugged and let out a breath. “I don’t even know what to say about them.”

He let go of her hand and slid his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close and savoring the warmth and give of her soft body. “I was... afraid,” and that was a hard word to get out, “if I told Krayter, he’d tell everyone, and then they’d all be there. Not physically, but they’d intrude on our space and it wouldn’t just be us. I never thought that I could forget, that’s just... it’s not possible.”

She was quiet for a long moment, walking in step with him, before she finally asked, “Is that something that you actually remember, or is it why you think you didn’t tell?”

“Does it matter?” Thoughts and memory and theory were all tangled up and he wasn’t sure how to sort it all out any more. “I don’t know that I’ll ever remember everything about those early days,” he admitted. “But some of it is coming back and I’d rather die than forget you again.”

She stiffened beside him. “Don’t say something like that.”

The woods fell abruptly away before he could respond. Kayleb looked at the buildings in the distance and the vehicles driving around the neatly paved roads and a laugh escaped his throat, echoing through the open space loudly enough to startle a group of birds in one of the trees to fly away. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, though he wasn’t certain who he was talking to. Not Tessa, certainly. Maybe the old gods on Jaaxis. It was time one of them offered him a bit of help.

“Do you know this place?” Tessa asked, tugging on his sleeve to drag him back to the cover of the trees in case the humans in the distance offered up resistance.

But Kayleb couldn’t keep from smiling. “Now I know why the pirates didn’t come this way,” he said.

“Why?”

“Krayter’s mother in law.”

They’d been spotted. Kayleb let go of Tessa, but stood close by as a jeep rattled off the road towards them. He couldn’t see any weapons, but they were too far away to make out anyway. “They won’t hurt us,” he promised, hoping it was true. “But they like their weapons. Just be cautious.” If anyone else had been coming their way, Kayleb would have told Tessa to hide and primed the blaster, just in case. But Jacinta Morales wasn’t a woman to trifle with, and since she’d saved his brother’s life, he would never raise a hand against her.

As the old truck stopped in front of them, her people didn’t seem happy to see them, but she was all smiles. A middle-aged woman with light brown skin and long hair pulled back, she didn’t look like she should have a daughter in her mid-twenties. But from the way she carried her weapons and the bulge of her muscles, he’d never had trouble believing that she ran a mercenary outfit with an iron fist when she wasn’t making the effort to reconnect with her two younger daughters and Penny, Krayter’s mate.

“I can’t say I’m shocked to see that you’re responsible for the disturbance we sensed in the area,” she laughed as she climbed out of the vehicle and crossed the small clearing towards them. She offered him a handshake, not a hug. His own mother would have swept him up in her arms and clung tight, but Jacinta wasn’t the type.

Thankfully.

“Who’s this?” Jacinta asked, nodding to where Tessa stood.

Kayleb opened his mouth to answer, but she beat him to it.

“Tessa Greely,” she said. “I’m his mate.”