DON’T PANIC. DON’TPANICDON’TPANICDON’TPANICDON’TPANIC.

She was panicking.

Tessa woke to darkness with a warm, still form slumped over beside her. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she made out a faint sliver of light coming in from between the slats in the ceiling and she got the idea that she was being held in some sort of building made of wood, rather than back on the space ship.

But Kayleb was so still beside her that she couldn’t spare any more of her attention. Not until she was sure he was breathing. She moved carefully in case he had any injuries that she might disturb. Judging from the thrumming pain in her own bones, she was pretty sure they’d both been stunned by a blaster. Her teeth ached and her head threatened to explode if she moved too fast, but it meant she wasn’t bleeding and none of her bones were broken.

Kayleb’s chest rose and fell under her fingers and his heartbeat was strong. With featherlight touches she examined him for anything worse than a bruise from the blaster and found nothing. A small mercy.

Satisfied that her mate wasn’t about to keel over, her mind spun. Were these more pirates? Had Jacinta’s men turned on them? Was this a completely unknown threat? Why were they in what looked like a storage shed? If she busted down the door, would she be immediately shot? Or was there no one out there to guard them?

She sucked in a deep breath and counted to ten, and then twenty, and then thirty when ten wasn’t enough to make her calm down. Her nerves were on fire, screaming at her to take her mate and get out of wherever they’d been stashed. She forced herself to remain still and listen. Somewhere in the distance wood groaned like the creaking of a floorboard in an old house. Only the fanciest of space ships had any sort of wood embellishments; the material was too expensive and easy to damage for workaday vessels. So if she could hear something that sounded like wood, that probably meant that they weren’t on a ship. And judging from the state of her clothes and the pull in her muscles, she hadn’t been out too long.

They were on Earth, probably near Jacinta’s compound or in one of the outbuildings. That made sense, she supposed. If the pirates had come for them one last time, they couldn’t get back to a ship that was under attack by a band of mercenaries.

She hoped Jacinta’s people were winning. She hoped they’d been stolen by cowards who didn’t stick around to fight, not that the fight had gone wrong and Jacinta and her people were injured... or worse.

No. She wouldn’t allow herself to think that, not until she didn’t have another choice.

Kayleb groaned and rolled to his side, hissing in a breath as something pulled unpleasantly. He cursed under his breath and Tessa’s heart flipped over. She reached over and placed a hand on his arm. “I’m here, I’m alright,” she said.

He cursed again as he sat up, the sound ending with a pained hiss and groan, but he didn’t seem to have a problem moving. “Desert isle,” he said, “as soon as we’re done with this.”

It took Tessa a minute to make sense of what he was saying, and when she did she couldn’t help but grin. A worry she hadn’t realized she’d been harboring dissolved as he immediately recalled the last minute of their conversation from before. She squeezed his arm. “Vacation,” she promised. “Beach, cocktails. Lots of sex.”

Kayleb eased up to his knees and pressed her back towards one of the walls. He crawled carefully towards the door and pressed his ear up against it, straining to hear. Tessa took the other side of the room, feeling around the floor and walls to see if there was any convenient exit or makeshift weapon they could use. By the time Kayleb eased back, she hadn’t found anything more dangerous than a roll of tape.

He crouched beside her and whispered. “I can hear one person out there walking around. He might be waiting for someone else. Or multiple people. And he’s probably armed.”

“You got that from listening for a minute?”

He kissed her cheek. “No, that would be from the bruises on my chest. Blaster shot.”

“Rushing at a weapon doesn’t sound like a great idea.” Even if they could bust down the door and take out the guard, at least one of them was sure to go down.

“I’ve got an idea.”

***

THERE WAS NO WAY THIS was going to work. But Tessa didn’t have anything better to offer, so she kept her doubt to herself and did as her mate suggested. She didn’t see how things could get worse, even if this all did go wrong.

Kayleb grabbed her hand and kissed her palm. “Have faith,” he said and got into position.

She rubbed her fingers lightly against his cheek and nodded. “I do. In you.”

“Ready?”

She nodded. Tessa had never considered herself much of an actress before now, but with her mate’s and her own life at stake, she couldn’t afford to be anything but convincing. She took a deep breath, leaned down, and kissed Kayleb’s forehead for luck and got up.

She slammed against the door with all the force she could muster, banging so hard that her fists threatened to bleed and she was sure there’d be bruises. “Help!” she screamed. “Please help. I think he’s dead! Oh, god, I need help.” Some distant part of her wanted to pause to see if anyone was coming, but she had to keep up the act or they’d never buy it.

Her knuckle scraped against something and the skin broke, but she hissed through the pain and kept yelling, desperate to draw attention to their position.

A shuddering knock on the other side of the door almost sent her sprawling back. Instead, Tessa yelled again. “Please! You have to help him!” Her voice croaked out the last word, breaking as she remembered the fear and the pain of six months ago when she’d truly thought pirates had killed Kayleb. Tears pricked at her eyes and she had to suck in a deep breath before she could yell again.

“Shut the fuck up!” The pirate pounded against the door again. “I’ll do worse than kill you.”

Kayleb growled where he lay on the floor and Tessa spared him a glance and a jerk of her head. She held up a hand to her lips, urging him to keep quiet. “Please, I think he’s dead. Why? Oh god, please you have to help him.”

It was quiet on the other side of the door and Tessa was afraid that the plan wasn’t working. If they just planned to kill them anyway, the pirates wouldn’t care if one of them was already dead. But, Kayleb had argued, if they just planned to kill them, why weren’t they already dead?

And his theory paid off. “Back up,” the pirate grumbled. “All the way against the wall with your hands up. I see you move and I kill you quick. Got it?”

“Yes.” Tessa backed up, stepping over Kayleb’s prone form and keeping her eyes glued to the door. Light escaped through the crack under it and she saw the shadows move as the pirate approached. Even better, it looked like there was only the one shadow. If he had a friend, he wasn’t there to act as back up for the moment.

The door swung open and a human man stood, haloed in light, holding a blaster pointed straight at her.

He was the human who’d been chasing her with his tentacled friend back in the city, and he looked a bit worse for wear. His left eye was swollen and bruised and his lip split by a nasty cut. But the blaster in his hand didn’t waver at all as it pointed straight at her.

“Turn around,” he growled, glaring at her. “Face the wall.”

Tessa wanted to protest. She didn’t want this guy at her back, but he had the blaster and Kayleb needed her to be strong, to play her part. Keeping her hands in the air, she turned slowly, stopping when she had her back completely to the pirate.

The light coming in from outside gave her a better idea of the room they were in. It was little more than a shed that wasn’t being used at the moment. The smell of cut grass tickled her nose, so she figured the door opened to the outside, not into a hallway. She hadn’t had enough time to see when the pirate walked in.

Her heart beat madly as his cautious footsteps came closer. “What happened?” he demanded. She expected to feel the blaster pressed against her back, but all she felt was empty air.

She swallowed and her hands unconsciously clenched into fists before she released them. They were getting cold, the blood struggling to pump up as she held them high, and her arms ached. “He just started convulsing,” she forced out, doing her best not to imagine it actually happening. “Then he stopped and I couldn’t find a pulse.”

“You’re the doc, bitch. Why you need my help?” His breath tickled the back of her neck and she shivered. He wouldn’t do anything to her on top of the supposedly dead body at their feet. Right?

“She doesn’t.”

Kayleb surged up, forcing the pirate’s hands up so the blaster shot uselessly towards the wooden roof where it couldn’t do much damage. Tessa jumped to the side to get out of their way. Kayleb was the hand to hand fighter, not her.

The scuffle didn’t last long and when it was done, the pirate’s other eye was swollen shut and he cradled his wrist close to his chest. He crumpled to the floor, holding his legs up to his chest to protect his more sensitive organs. Kayleb held the blaster and gave him a stun. The man went limp.

“This one had a friend back in the city,” she told her mate. “Giant guy with tentacles. He might be waiting outside.”

Kayleb studied the pirate on the floor for a long moment, his hand still holding the blaster steady, and pointed right at him. She could see the decision he was struggling with in his eyes. Every time they’d left these guys stunned, it ended badly for them.

But Tessa placed her hand on top of Kayleb’s and slowly helped him lower the weapon. “You’re not a killer,” she told him. “Let’s tie him up.”

Kayleb swallowed hard and after another infinity of a moment nodded and stuck the blaster in the band of his pants.

They took a few minutes to look for something to use to tie the man up, but there wasn’t anything around the little shed they’d been shoved into.

“I guess that’s why they didn’t tie us up,” Tessa mused.

Kayleb just nodded, expression still grim from the encounter in the room.

They ducked back in and found the man still unconscious. A quick search revealed that he was wearing a belt which they used to tie his hands up behind his back. Tessa found a communicator in the man’s pockets and stuck it in her own. Other than the blaster, he didn’t have another weapon.

They left him in the dark and locked the door behind him.

“Let’s see if he had any friends,” said Kayleb.

“Let’s finish this.”