FOR A MOMENT, STELLA panicked. And then she heard the water running in the bathroom and saw the light coming through the doorway. She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. Her body throbbed pleasantly from the work she and Arest had put it through, and she wanted him back with her for another round. A glance out the window showed a dark sky. They had hours yet until morning.
But when the water shut off and Arest stepped out of the bathroom, he was fully clothed. He’d found the dark pants and top she’d managed to purchase for him and they hung a little loose on his frame. She hadn’t been able to find any shoes for him and the purple of his feet almost glowed in the faint moonlight.
“You’re dressed,” she said, obviously. She sat up from where she’d been laying and pulled up a blanket that Arest must have laid over her.
He startled as she spoke and the light in the bathroom cut off, leaving them bathed in darkness. Silence settled over them and stretched, crawling into and rolling around with every hint of self-doubt that Stella knew she had.
“Not safe to stay,” he said quietly, no longer struggling with his words. Stella’s heart cracked at his defeated tone. He must have planned to flee before she woke up.
“We’re not staying.” She tried to keep her tone calm but anger threatened to take her over. She’d survived hell with this man, let him inside her body and her heart, and now he wanted to leave without a word? She stood and let the blanket drop, somewhat satisfied when he drew in a harsh breath at the sight of her naked body. She scooped up the robe she’d been wearing before they made love and slipped it on, cinching the belt tight.
“They’ll chase.” He stayed by the bathroom door, but his body leaned closer to where she stood and she got the idea that he was holding himself back by a thread.
“So you plan to go off by yourself and lead them away from me, is that it?” He didn’t need to say anything, the bow of his head was answer enough. “If these people are as bad as you say they are, they probably have more than enough people to send someone out to find me, even if we split up.”
His breath turned ragged and in the shadows, she saw his fingers curl into a fist.
“I contacted my people last night,” she revealed. “I would have told you, but...” She glanced down at the blanket on the floor, her meaning clear. “Whoever your people are, they won’t come after mine. It would be political suicide, and it sounds like this organization of yours is heavily involved in galactic affairs. I’m not saying that they can’t get to us ever, but the safest, surest way off this planet is on a civilian fleet ship.”
“And if they hand me back?” His whisper cut to her soul.
“I won’t let them.” She wanted to reach out. He was lying to himself about why he ran, telling her it wasn’t safe, claiming that it was all to protect her. But in the end, he didn’t trust her people. And Stella couldn’t blame him. In the same situation, she wouldn’t want to trust either. “Do you believe me?”
He stayed silent for so long that tears threatened to prick at her eyes and she almost told him to go. But finally, he took a step closer, not quite closing the distance between them. “You’ll try,” he said.
“I want you safe.” She found herself stepping forward and her fingers cupped his cheek. He leaned into her, the soft stubble on his chin rasping against her fingers. “You said I was yours. Well, you’re mine too. And we’re in this together. Please.” She didn’t know what else to say. The risk was all his, and all of his paths led to danger. She was almost certain she’d get him safely off of Prellys, but they would face challenges once they got into fleet territory. But they’d face them together, and that was what mattered. There was power between the two of them, more than they’d ever have alone.
Arest wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. Stella went to him, her head resting against his chest. Lips brushed against her hair and in the darkness, she heard a murmur. “Safe.” And for now, she was.
***
DAWN HADN’T YET BROKEN when the call came. Arest’s instincts kept him on high alert, and every few moments, his eyes darted to Stella and away. Like him, she wore all black, the clothes provided by a vending machine inside the hotel. Unlike him, she wore no hood. Apparently Prellys was a planet known to the civilian fleet and had a small human population among the natives.
But Arest would catch eyes. And so he remained hooded and stood in the shadows. Around them, the town was beginning to come out of its winter storm induced slumber. Vehicles and robots cleared snow from the streets and sidewalks and a few people braved the cold, dressed in Marad’s answer to business attire.
He didn’t see anyone that looked like his handlers. None of his trainers had looked Prellysian, instead most of them either human or Oscavian. But Arest knew they were here, he felt it in his veins.
Two cars, one with flashing lights and an official looking plaque affixed to the front, sped by, horns blaring. Stella glanced back at him. “Police, maybe?” She shrugged and looked to the sky, watching for their transport.
The hair on the back of Arest’s neck pricked and he swung his head back to follow the sound of the horns, but they’d turned away and the sound faded. He didn’t like this planetside bullshit and would much rather be sitting in the artificial confines of space.
The horizon blurred in the distance and a small craft flew forward, getting bigger and bigger as it came close. Arest recognized it as a land to orbit vehicle, the kind common on large space ships. And it occurred to him that it was a bit strange that a civilian fleet ship was so close to this little outpost.
“Where’s it from?” he asked. Words were coming easier and easier, though he doubted he’d ever want to speak in long paragraphs.
“Honora Station,” Stella answered. “It’s an old space station, a bit of a hub for this area. I didn’t realize we were so close, but Zwill was there and he’s coming to get us.”
“Zwill?”
“A friend.” She said she had a lot of them, and Arest had to trust her.
The vehicle disappeared from the skyline somewhere at the edge of the city, and Arest told himself not to panic. From what he’d seen, Marad allowed low hover on city streets, not outright flight. This Zwill would need to drive in from outside of town.
The honking teased his ears and Arest looked down the street behind them. He waited a second and then placed a hand on Stella, pulling her down a small alley and crouching behind a half-wall that divided two properties. The cars they’d seen earlier sped by again.
She looked at him, eyes wide and breath heavy. “Your people have probably been to the tunnels by now. They could be back.”
Until that moment, neither of them had mentioned it. After his abortive run, they’d moved to the bed, making love again and sleeping like the dead. And when they’d woken, they’d had no time to worry, not with the escort on the way.
Arest nodded.
A vehicle stopped on the street and a door slammed. Arest laid a hand on Stella’s shoulder, silently keeping her in place as he strained his ears to identify the number of opponents and the likelihood of making it out of this situation in one piece.
A bird chirped and he ignored it. But Stella shot up and dragged on his arm before Arest realized what she was doing. “Come on,” she said. “That’s our ride.”
She stopped short when she saw the thing that stepped out of the vehicle. While it had two legs and two arms, there was no face, and simply a small antenna sticking up where an ear should have been. Under its dark blue jumpsuit, its skin, for lack of a better word, was gray. An android drone.
“Zwill?” she asked tentatively.
“The canary flies.” The response made no sense to Arest, but the tension eased from Stella’s shoulders and she nodded, obviously relieved.
“Too scared to come down yourself?” She grinned at the machine and spoke to it like it was a person, speaking through it to its operator, who sat somewhere on a spaceship in orbit above them.
“Captain is... antsy. I think something is about to go down and you need to be gone before it does.” The drone stepped back into the car and took its place in the driver’s seat. Arest and Stella got in the back and the drone whipped around as if just seeing Arest for the first time.
“Stella? What? Him?” For something without a face, the expression came through loud and clear.
“Yes, him. Do you have a problem with that?” She leaned forward and laid a hand on the seat behind the drone as if she could threaten its driver.
The machine gunned the engine and took off even faster than the vehicles they’d seen earlier. “It’s not a problem yet. Just... damn it. Don’t let the captain see him before we leave orbit. This is way more than repaying that favor.”
She sat back and brushed a hand against Arest’s knee before settling back in her seat. “I know,” she said. “You’re a good friend.”
***
SMUGGLING AREST ONTO the ship might have been difficult if it were a military vehicle rather than a civilian vessel. But the fleet was chronically low on cash and couldn’t afford the highest level of security equipment. Stella vouched for Arest, even as he kept his face averted from most of the crew, and then stashed him in her room.
Honora Station wasn’t far, but she couldn’t keep him hidden for that long. She just needed to get them out of orbit, like Zwill suggested.
Captain Kel Faragan was waiting for Stella in her office off the bridge. It doubled as a secondary communication hub, but only when the captain wasn’t busy. The older woman smiled when Stella walked in and got up to hug her. She was a human in her forties with graying hair and keen eyes. She and Stella had more than once shared stories over some smuggled moonshine, but Faragan wasn’t a woman to cross.
Or bluff.
It’s for Arest.
“Welcome back, Miss McDonald. Glad you got in touch.” She gestured to a chair and pulled out a tray with two steaming mugs of tea from her food processor. Faragan took a seat and Stella followed suit, heart pounding like mad.
“I’m glad to be alive.” Her nerves were on fire, but when she took the tea, the cup didn’t shake. Maybe facing a bunch of monsters had put things in perspective.
“Report says that you brought on another party. Non fleet.” The captain liked to make statements more than ask questions, but it didn’t mean that a person could refuse to answer.
“A fellow survivor. I offered him a lift.” She sipped the tea and didn’t flinch as it burned her tongue.
“Hmm.” The captain gestured to the comm screen beside the table and Arest’s picture showed up, but unlike what she’d come to know of him. His eyes were dead, flat, and that electric blue she was growing to love dull. His skin, on the other hand, seemed even more purple, dark and mottled with strange patches of something she couldn’t identify. Her cup shook as she put it down, and from the horror she could feel on her own face, she knew she couldn’t fool the captain.
“A bounty has been placed on information that could lead back to this... man. Do you know anything about that?”
Stella shook her head, unable to speak. Her fingers curled into fists and she pulled them off the table so they couldn’t give her away anymore.
“The call went out just this morning and the fleet was notified as a courtesy.”
“We aren’t bounty hunters.”
“The bounty is for 400,000 Oscavian credits.”
Stella sucked in a breath. That was a fortune. Beyond a fortune. It was buy a villa on a pleasure planet money. Just for information about Arest. “We aren’t bounty hunters,” she repeated with more force. “Fleet code forbids it.”
The captain sipped her tea. “Doesn’t it just. That being said, welcome home. I’d suggest you find papers for your new friend sooner rather than later. This company that wants him... there’s something wrong there. Even if we talked to them, I have a feeling they wouldn’t pay. Or the credits would be delivered in las fire.”
Stella recalled the clean up crew. “They don’t like witnesses.”
“Then I don’t like them.”
Tension had been riding high since she woke up, and almost all of it dissolved as the captain spoke.
“You’ve been recalled to Earth in light of the accident. I can authorize your new friend for transport back, or give him passage on a ship out of Honora. Your choice.” With another gesture, the shot of Arest dissolved, leaving the normal screen’s resting pattern swirling silently.
Stella licked her lips nervously. “We’ll go to Earth. I think... I think that will be best, for now.”
“I’ve never seen something like this before,” said Faragan, concern heavy in her eyes. “You be careful. With money like that...” she shook her head, “there’s no way this isn’t part of something bigger.”
From everything Arest had said, Stella knew that. But Earth was light years away from trouble and she and Arest could deal with it when it came. “I will.”
And like that, the meeting was done and Stella dismissed. As the countdown to departure boomed over the loudspeaker, she practically skipped down the hallway back to her room.
She opened the door and the last of the tension she’d been carrying dissolved. He lay on her bed, feet propped up and glowing eyes opened, waiting for her to come back. She grinned at him and locked the door behind her. “You’re a wanted man,” she said. “Lots of money out there for your safe return.”
He sat up in a smooth motion and studied her, saying nothing.
“Luckily for you,” for us, “the captain is a good woman. And you’re safe for now.” The room wasn’t large and she crossed to him in two steps. Arest opened his legs so she could step inside. “You’re a free man now. What do you want to do about it?”
She saw the intent in his eyes a moment before his hand wrapped around her hips and he scooped her up, laying her gently on the bed behind him in a feat of flexibility that gave her ideas. Arest held himself over her and looked down at her body like she was a tasty morsel. All for him. “Safe, really?” he asked.
“For now.” She traced a finger down his neck and saw him shiver. “And if they find you, we’ll fight, or stop them, or run. But they can’t have you back.”
“You’re mine.” He took the words right out of her mouth and gave his lips and tongue in exchange. Stella wrapped her arms tight and gave herself over to his kiss and to her Arest, the beast. They’d escaped. He was safe. And together they’d be free to love one another for a very long time.