The scout ship hovered over the area for long enough to make Sierra sick to her stomach. She sat with Mindy and Jo, checking the one window that had a good view of the sky. They couldn’t power back up until the ship was out of range, so they had to rely on visual contact to see where the enemy ship was.

Though the likelihood of that ship being able to pick up anything inside their vessel was almost impossible, they sat in silence, waiting for the all clear. Sierra bit her lip as she watched the scout hover over the edge of the shipyard long enough to do several scans. What was it looking for? There were enough ships in the yard for decent scrap money, but a military vessel wouldn’t need to bother with that. Not unless they needed something specific. She wasn’t the praying type, but she sent one out into the universe, just in case.

Watching for the ship meant paying little attention to Raze and his men. Mindy and Jo had to be going crazy about them. In the excitement of powering down, Sierra hadn’t told them that they probably weren’t in danger. She added a footnote to her prayer for anyone out there listening to keep Raze and his guys safe too.

Jo tapped her on the shoulder and Sierra stepped back from the window to let her teammate take over the watch. They’d been switching between themselves every fifteen minutes or so, just to have something to do. With the ship powered down, it was a dark tomb inside, so there wasn’t much to do but sit and wait.

Sierra took her seat in the kitchen and smoothed her fingers out over the table, trying to make as little noise as possible. She wanted to tap out a rhythm, but she didn’t dare. Mindy took a seat next to her and took her cue, drawing little circles against the grain of the faux wood covering. Nothing in the mission brief had prepared them for an Oscavian warship. This was supposed to be a place forgotten by the empire, safe from military intervention, for better or worse.

“They’re not going to send anyone back,” she whispered, her words loud and clear in the silence of the ship.

Mindy’s fingers stilled and she looked at Sierra and quirked up a brow. “Hmm?”

“If the empire is monitoring this place, no way would they risk angering them. Not even for a senator’s niece. And that’s if that warship isn’t here to collect the women.” Failure was a heavy weight on her shoulders, making her slump down until her head hung low enough for her hair to fall over her face. She waited for some hollow platitude from Mindy, but her teammate remained silent.

The whole situation sucked.

“I saw some of those women,” Sierra said, emotion gathering in her throat, making her words thick. “They look so… defeated. They’ve given up hope. And they’re right.”

“The scout is moving on,” Jo said, her normal tone like a shout in the silent ship. She took the seat on the other side of Sierra. “It would be tight, but we could fit twelve more people on this craft for a short journey. It’s rated for up to twenty passengers.”

Sierra snapped her head over to her surly partner. “You are not the person I expected to make that suggestion.”

Mindy made a snorting sound but remained silent.

Jo shrugged. “This location is burned. We had a reason to hide our presence when we thought the empire didn’t give a shit about it. But no way are humans coming back here. I just don’t see how we pull an extraction op with three people.”

“True.” Against just the pirates and slavers out there, the risk might have been worth it. But add in highly trained Oscavian warriors? No way. “What if we had six?”

“Would that include three who have seen exactly where they’re holding the women?” Mindy asked with a grin. Then she shook her head. “It’s still pretty much suicide.”

Sierra pushed back from the table and started pacing. “Yeah, in an ideal situation, this wouldn’t be the setup. But they won’t expect us.”

“And if they put in greater security measures after your new friends escaped?” Mindy asked, keeping her part as the group’s new downer. “This isn’t a training sim. If we die here, we’re just dead.”

“There’s nothing new. I’d bet my life on it. This isn’t a military grade operation. They think because the women are stranded on this planet with no way off, they don’t need to bother with high tech measures.” That much had been clear from the data she’d pulled off the crawlers before the ship powered down, and from what she’d witnessed in the settlement.

“Okay.” Jo held up a hand and Sierra stopped moving, leaning back against the storage cabinets behind her. “Say we get the women out, how do we get them across twenty kilometers of rough terrain without being seen. We can’t exactly land the ship right outside of town.”

Sierra grinned. “If we time it right we can.”

“You’re fucking crazy.” Mindy gave a mirthless laugh. “If we risk the ship and lose, we’re stranded here.”

“On a planet with hundreds of ships just ripe for the taking,” Sierra gestured with a hand, as if she were looking out a window instead of in the enclosed kitchen. “One of these babies is probably flight worthy, if it comes to that.”

“No.” That wiped the smile off of Jo’s face. “We can’t make a plan based on maybe and probably. You should know better than that. What is it about this one that’s gotten to you?” she demanded. “You’ve lost objectivity.”

She’d never had it in the first place, but Sierra kept that part to herself. She took a deep, calming breath, and then another for good measure. It did little to calm her nerves, but her heartbeat started to settle, at least. “I was born in the Wastes. If I hadn’t been lucky, I could have been one of those women. Either abducted from Earth for sex slavery, or forced into it the old-fashioned way. If it weren’t for my dad…” She shook her head. “Twenty percent of the women in the abduction files came from the Wastes. No one gives a damn about them. And I know these women represent barely a fraction of the ones who have disappeared, but we’re their only hope. Leaving them isn’t an option for me. Not one that will let me look myself in the face in the mirror, not if we don’t even try.” Her past wasn’t exactly a secret, but Sierra didn’t like to spend time dwelling on it.

Neither Jo nor Mindy had a response to that. The three of them stayed looking at each other for several moments until Jo broke the silence. “So… how would we even find our new friends, if we were willing to try this?”

At that Sierra smiled and pointed towards the hatch. “Last I checked, they were about two hundred meters away.”

***

Powering up a hundred-year-old ship held together with more rust than metal was a challenge, but Raze trusted Kayde to do his job. He was there to provide any support his partner needed while Toran took the first watch outside. They were wary of more ships like the scout they’d spotted, but they couldn’t afford to be caught by the pirates who guarded the ship yard this late in the game.

Kayde worked in silence and Raze respected that. They had nothing to say to one another, so there was no reason to fill the space with idle chatter. He found that he had to keep reminding himself of things like that, things that would have come naturally two days ago. Standing near Kayde did more to confirm that the impossible had happened than anything else.

Raze’s emotions were back, to some degree. What that meant for his soul or the Denya Price, he wasn’t sure, and he doubted that he’d have time to figure it out. At least Toran was keeping his distance for the moment. Kayde could not care if Raze acted slightly strange, and as long as he didn’t do anything drastic, the man probably wouldn’t even notice.

“Please grab me a second battery pack from the case,” Kayde requested without looking away from his work, the words muffled by all of the wires and metal in front of him. Raze dug through their tool kit until he found the part and handed it over silently.

He looked toward the door before he realized that he heard a commotion. A moment later, Toran came in with a bound and hooded woman. Raze’s spine stiffened. Sierra. He took a step closer, his hand clenched in a fist and claws pricking his skin, begging to be let out. “Let her go,” he gritted out before he did something rash, like attack his leader to free a woman he barely knew.

“Raze?” Sierra asked. She was curious, not scared, which did a little to settle his nerves. “Want to explain that we’re friends?”

Friends? Like it was that simple. When Toran made no move to unhand her, he stepped forward and reached for her. Toran stepped in front to block his path and Raze growled, this time unable to stop his claws from shooting out. “She’s the reason you’re free,” he managed to say around the protective anger in his throat. “Unhand her. Now!”

A tool clattered to the ground behind him and Raze had to take half a step back to keep both Kayde and Toran in his sight. If they took him out, there was no telling what they’d do to Sierra.

Sierra held up her bound hands. They seemed to be held together with Toran’s belt. “Easy there, buddy,” she said, her words only for him. Even without sight, she managed to step around Toran and close the distance between them. She placed her hands on his chest, right over his heart, and some of the fighting edge lessened to the point where he could think. Raze covered her hands with his own, careful not to prick her with his claws, even as they rested against her skin. He heard her swallow hard. “Um, are those claws? When did you get claws?”

With a flick of his wrist he retracted them. “Sorry,” he said. “They’re gone for now.” Carefully, he pulled the hood back. It was a spare bag that came standard with their supplies in case they needed the extra room. He placed it beside the toolkit before unwrapping the belt from around Sierra’s hands, her hot skin burning his flesh in exactly the right way. No risk of seizure here.

Her red lips pulled into a smile and their eyes locked.

Denya.

Recognition tore through him, sweeping uncertainty out of place and replacing it with the driving need to claim Sierra as his own. He cupped her cheek with one hand, unwilling and unable to break eye contact with her as he pulled her close enough to taste.

“What in all the hells is going on?” Toran broke through the spell and Sierra jumped back, suddenly coming back to herself. Raze let his hands drop, but took a step closer to her, ready to protect her if his men turned on his mate.

“She’s mine.”

“We need your help.”

They spoke at the same time and Sierra shot him a confused look. She mouthed something at him that he didn’t understand, then subtly pointed to her chest and then to Toran. He nodded, letting her speak. Toran narrowed his eyes at Raze for a moment before turning back to the human in front of them.

“From that welcome, I’m guessing that Raze didn’t mention me.” She smiled brightly, but her tone lacked sincerity. She leaned back against a wall and kept her hands loosely at her sides, deceptively casual and quite unlike the woman he’d spent the night with. What was she playing at?

“Raze has yet to give his report,” was Toran’s reply.

Sierra nodded. She glanced back at him, one eyebrow slightly raised as if asking him a question. He nodded, even if he had no idea what she planned. If she needed help, he’d do anything to see it done.

“Right.” She nodded. “So, let’s talk.”

***

Sierra had really hoped that Raze would be the first person she met when she crossed the distance between her ship and the place he and his men seemed to be investigating. The old junker couldn’t be theirs. It was more than a hundred years old and covered in rust, completely grounded. When she ran into the golden alien that she’d spotted before he was abducted, she knew some portion of her luck had run out. He didn’t give her much time to talk, but at least he didn’t shoot her. She’d been blasted enough for one mission.

And she really hadn’t expected Raze to make such a fuss about it. Jo and Mindy would have done the same, or worse, if one of his guys had shown up unannounced. This was just business. And she had to keep her head in the game.

No focusing on this she’s mine nonsense. No matter that it sent a thrill through her and had her crazy to know exactly what he meant by that. The guy could barely kiss her without freaking out, and she’d walked away knowing there was nothing between them. But relationship—or whatever—conversations would need to wait until later.

Right now they had some lives to save.

“Please have a seat,” the leader said. “I’m Toran, and that is Kayde.” He pointed to a man practically wrapped up in wires. “You clearly already know Raze.”

Toran was different from Raze and Kayde. Though his expression was more or less neutral, there was a tightness to his eyes that gave away frustration and his tone was nowhere near as even as the infuriating way Raze had of talking. Maybe he hadn’t given up his emotions yet, or he had a mate. Either way, it was clear that he was in charge.

She’s mine.

Raze’s voice sure hadn’t been neutral there. And every time she looked at him, his expression held layers that hadn’t been there when they first met. A conclusion tickled her mind, but if she let herself think about it, she just might panic, and shit was about to get way too dangerous to allow panic.

“I’m glad you’re safe and more or less unharmed,” she offered, which Toran acknowledged with a polite nod. “I came to you because I need your help.” She didn’t call it a favor, but from the look Toran gave her, he could read between the lines. He and Kayde might be dead if it weren’t for her. She didn’t look at Raze as she spoke, she didn’t want to know what he thought of her leveraging his teammates’ lives like this. “I have a team prepared to extract the women being held for transport in the heart of the settlement.” An exaggeration, but they didn’t need to know that. “Our mission parameters have changed and we need backup. We’d like to offer you the opportunity for a little payback.”

“Who is ‘we’?” asked Toran. “Where are you from?”

“We’re a team of three, all well trained on Earth.” There was little use hiding their origin, since Sierra was speaking English rather than Interstellar Common. The Detyens’ translators would have been able to pick that much up. The fact that they were Sol Intelligence, on the other hand, couldn’t get out.

Toran opened his mouth to speak, but Raze interrupted him. “A word?” he asked his leader. The two men exchanged a look and walked down the hall silently, leaving Sierra alone with Kayde.

She watched him for a minute, waiting to see if he’d say anything, but he was an animated statue, breathing and watching her silently, ready to take her out if she gave a hint of danger. She hadn’t brought weapons with her as a sign of good faith, and Toran had patted her down, but Kayde didn’t seem to care that he was bigger and apparently had claws sometimes, he respected her as a threat.

She liked that.

Though the claws thing was freaking her out a bit. Green skin? No problem. Muscular enough to hurl boulders? Great. Weird biological imperatives to mate or die? Well, that was kind of fucked up, but not in the same way. Claws were scary. It meant that a Detyen always had a weapon and she’d have to remember that and warn her teammates in case this idea went south.

The longer Raze and Toran were away, the more concerned Sierra grew. She couldn’t hear a hint of what was being said and as the seconds ticked on, her optimism for her plan working plummeted. Kayde’s hard stare was starting to get to her, making her want to cover herself up even though she was fully clothed. It wasn’t that he was being lecherous or anything, but he seemed to see through her, analyzing her like some kind of interesting scientific specimen.

Had they been gone for five minutes? More? Jo and Mindy wouldn’t wait forever, no matter the assurances she’d given them that Raze’s crew wasn’t likely to kill her. She knew that Raze wouldn’t, but Kayde would pull the trigger, no questions asked. Toran was the wild card.

A door somewhere in the back of the ship rattled open and out came Raze and Toran. Raze had on that mask of emotionless calm that had started to look fake to her eyes and Toran looked ready to tear something apart. Sierra’s heart sank. So much for that plan.

Toran ignored her and asked Kayde something in a language that her translator couldn’t process. The man responded in the same language. Raze looked at her, but his face gave nothing away. She gave him her best blank look, but compared to Kayde, she knew she gave away far too much.

A moment later, Toran turned to her and Raze looked away. “You will have our help,” he said. “We will rendezvous at your ship in four hours.”