“What you’re suggesting is suicide.” Toran sat beside him and Kayde in the small kitchen on Sierra’s ship. They’d exchanged greetings with her crew: Mindy, a human woman with an explosion of brightly colored hair, and Jo, a much more sedate human woman with a hard expression. These weren’t soldiers, that much was clear. No matter the planet of origin, soldiers held themselves with a similar bearing. Sierra, Mindy, and Jo all seemed relaxed, even in the company of three strangers who could easily prove to be hostile.

Spies held themselves like that.

They hadn’t given much information on what they did, but Raze had spent enough time around the legion intelligence agents to recognize the signs. Not to mention the plan they’d put together.

“It’s risky,” Mindy conceded, “but none of us have a death wish.” That ‘us’ clearly just meant the humans.

Raze shot Sierra a look and she rolled her eyes at her teammate. It wasn’t a common Detyen expression, but he’d seen plenty of humans make that face to understand what it meant. “We can’t guarantee that the women will be in the settlement beyond tonight,” Sierra added. “In the time since we last spoke, we were able to gather a little intelligence. Despite the size of the ship that breached orbit this afternoon, there are fewer than thirty Oscavian soldiers on the ground. We have no intel on how many are in reserve on the ship, but that shouldn’t matter. The ship is docked fifty kilometers away in a large canyon. The scout ships are near the settlement, but they’re all powered down. The Oscavian in charge is keeping his men close. As far as we can tell, the women are still in the central holding pens where Toran and Kayde were imprisoned. As long as they’re there, we can extract them.”

“What makes you think they’ll still be there after midnight?” Toran asked. He hadn’t spoken to Raze in the hours since their private discussion and even Kayde seemed to understand that there was something wrong.

“A payment dispute,” said Jo. “They’ve been arguing about it all day. The slavers are trying to extract every credit they can from their buyer, while the buyer is trying to bargain since the women are used goods.” She sneered out the last two words.

“Where is your intel coming from?” was Toran’s next question.

“We’re relying on electronic surveillance,” Sierra admitted. “It’s too risky and time consuming to get one of us back in the settlement. Something on the planet has been doing strange things to our signal, but we’re confident of everything we told you. We are these women’s only chance of a rescue.”

“Why these twelve?” Kayde shocked Raze by asking. “There are billions of humans. If you are so opposed to slavery, why not hit a place like the Slave Markets?” He referred to a notorious planet which made all of its money in the slave trade. “There are thousands of humans there that will never be rescued.”

Mindy recoiled as if he’d slapped her and both Sierra and Jo glared. Kayde didn’t seem to notice the response.

Sierra was the first to recover. “It would take an army, or billions of credits, to rescue anyone from the Slave Markets. We’re here. I’m not sure what’s so complicated about that.” Her tone was harsh enough to cut, but Kayde merely nodded, satisfied with the answer.

“If you’re out, tell us,” Jo commanded. “This is our only shot, so we either need you beside us, or out of our way. Which is it?”

Toran studied the three humans for several moments, and Raze knew he must be weighing the pros and cons of the plan. This was far outside the mission parameters and he could be disciplined for offering his assistance. But he still had a conscience, and both he and Kayde had listened to those women’s screams for hours. Though he still had his soul, his leader could be cold. Could he really leave those women to suffer? He finally spoke. “As payment for the assistance that you provided to us, we will be your distraction. But we cannot risk engagement or discovery. And I need your promise that you will not reveal who we are or where we are from to the enemy on the ground here or to anyone from your world. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Sierra said without hesitation. “No problem.”

“Then we have a plan.”

***

Raze was right there and Sierra couldn’t find an excuse to say anything to him. And even if she had an excuse, she wasn’t sure what she’d say to him. No, that wasn’t right. She’d ask him what the hell he’d said to Toran that had the man practically glaring at her every time his gaze swung her way. Then she’d ask him what he’d meant by that ‘she’s mine’ comment. His what? Friend? Acquaintance? Responsibility?

Mate?

Ugh! She was beginning to wish that she’d never come up with this harebrained idea in the first place, if only so she didn’t have to examine her weird thoughts and emotions when it came to Raze. He was a piece of adhesive that she couldn’t tear off, sticking to her every time she thought she had him removed. And the longer he stuck, the worse getting rid of him would hurt. It didn’t take a genius to figure that part out.

“We need to leave now if we’re to make it to our ship in time to be of any use to you,” Toran told Jo. He’d been addressing most of his comments to her, rather than Sierra or Mindy. Why he ignored Mindy, Sierra wasn’t sure, but at least Jo didn’t seem to mind the de facto leadership position she’d been pushed into.

“If you give us the coordinates, we can take you there,” Jo offered. “The scouts haven’t flown since their initial scan and we haven’t attracted any pirate attention so far.” The Detyen leader made a sound like he was going to refuse, but Jo threw a hand up before he could say anything. “I insist.”

Their gazes locked and something ticked in Toran’s jaw, but he relented after a moment and gave her the coordinates. She thanked him with a falsely bright smile and left for the cockpit, Toran right on her heels.

Mindy caught her gaze, then flicked her eyes to Raze and then back to Sierra. She didn’t cock her eyebrow up, but she didn’t need to. Sierra got the message. She still didn’t have an excuse for why they needed to be alone, but with Toran gone, it didn’t seem to matter as much.

She placed a hand on Raze’s shoulder and nodded to the hallway towards the back of the ship. “Come on,” she said.

Raze stood with her and followed without a word to Kayde or Mindy. Maybe that whole ‘emotionless’ thing could come in handy sometime, if it meant she didn’t need to make meaningless small talk or excuses. She could get used to that. They passed by the door to her quarters and for one insane second Sierra considered opening it up and yanking him inside, but that choice only led to madness and embarrassment the second they were discovered. No, she wanted enough space between them and the crews that they wouldn’t be overheard, but no doors between them. No temptation to do things she knew she shouldn’t.

That thinking was what ended with them squashed into the little alcove beside their fresh food storage closet, standing not quite close enough to touch, heat from their bodies boiling between them. Sierra stared at Raze, trying to look in his eyes, but her gaze kept dropping down to his mouth. She had questions, she needed answers.

But when he leaned forward, her hands went to his waist like they were being pulled by magnets and her lips found his, swallowing his breath as they crushed themselves together. There was nothing tentative, not like the first time they’d done this back in the cave. This was an affirmation of everything they’d felt, everything they’d known was impossibly true from the moment they’d stopped trying to kill one another.

Raze let out a groan strong enough to reverberate down through Sierra’s toes and she forgot about anyone else on the ship, forgot about anyone else on the planet. As far as she was concerned, she and Raze were the only two beings to exist in the entire galaxy. His fingers reverently cupped her cheek and she didn’t care about the claws she knew lurked under his skin. He’d never hurt her, that certainty ran bone deep.

His tongue swiped at her lips and she opened for him with a gasp, swept under the spell of the kiss as he ensorcelled her with sensation. A shudder ran through him, his body vibrating under her fingers. She tightened her hold on his hips, hard enough to bruise, even through the thick material of his clothes, anything to keep him close. But Raze showed no signs of pulling back. His other hand cupped the back of her neck, his fingers teasing the hair at the base of her neck until it came undone from the tie she was using to hold it back. It wrapped around his fingers and every movement of his hand was enough to pull it just a little, not quite painful, but a rattling sensation through her body.

The floor under her feet tilted, sending Sierra sprawling forward and pulling her mouth off of his. She buried her face in the dark material of his shirt, afraid to look up and see the expression on his face. God, she was nuts, throwing herself at him like some sex-crazed teenager going through her first crush. Her actions were the opposite of professional, and they were setting a horrible example of human-alien relations.

She placed her palms on his chest, as if she could push away from him and put some needed distance between them, but he covered one of her hands with his own and tilted up her chin with his fingers. In his eyes she saw the dazed wonder that was surging through her, not something she understood but something she wanted to explore further and see where it went.

But there was no ‘further’ for them. After tonight they’d be off the planet and heading in different directions and only Mindy and Jo would ever know that he’d existed in her orbit.

“What is this?” she asked, afraid that if she spoke louder than a whisper she’d break the spell between them.

“It’s right,” said Raze, his volume matching hers.

“You’re different than you were.” Maybe it was too soon to say something like that, but it was true. She’d seen him next to Kayde, and there was no way to believe that Raze was just as emotionless as his cold partner.

“You’re—”

She cut him off, placing her fingers over his lips. “Don’t say it.”

He kissed her fingers and she slowly pulled them away, tracing a path along his cheek. “Say what?”

“What I think you’re going to say.” If he said she was his mate, his denya or whatever, she didn’t know what she was going to do. But she wouldn’t be able to let him go, and neither of them had another choice.

“I’ll find you,” he promised.

“How?” She didn’t know where he was going, and Earth was a backwater, far away from everything.

“Meet me somewhere.”

“Where?” It was a dream, but she wanted it so bad she could taste it.

“Honora Station, on the interstellar new year.” The hope in his voice and eyes was enough proof that those emotions he’d claimed to have sacrificed had come back in full force, and Sierra couldn’t be the reason that hope was quashed.

The interstellar new year was months away, and though Honora Station was far away from Earth, plenty of transports took passengers there. She could make it happen, somehow. “Okay,” she agreed.

He kissed her again, this time hope and desperation mixing into something she was afraid to contemplate, but as the ship glided through the air, taking them closer to Raze’s destination and their parting, she knew she had to find a way to make this work. They came from different worlds, but nothing had ever felt so right as his lips on hers. And no matter what happened, she needed to feel this again.

***

Toran’s silence continued once they left Sierra’s ship and boarded their own. Raze could still taste Sierra on his lips and feel the imprint of her fingers on his hips. Toran had no idea that they’d sneaked away to steal a moment for themselves, and Kayde didn’t seem inclined to tell. How Raze would keep his promise to meet her, he didn’t know. The soulless didn’t have permission to leave the legion by themselves, and he would need time, money, and transport to get away from home. But no matter what it took, he’d find a way to get back to her. He’d somehow survive the next months until he could claim her, his existence lonely and cold, but with a bright spark of hope held close to his heart.

His stomach roiled, not for the first time, and Raze gripped the armrests on his seat as Kayde engaged the launch sequence. A similar sharp lance of pain had shot through him while he held Sierra in his arms, but he’d been able to push that aside, years of training at working through the toughest conditions perfectly applied to experience a pleasure he’d never thought possible. He’d thought the pain came from physical contact, his soul, or lack thereof, reacting to its reawakening under Sierra’s touch. But she was far away now, back on the other ship with her own people.

And Raze thought he was going to vomit. Sweat beaded his brow and his vision went a little hazy. He clenched his fists tighter, almost hard enough to leave in imprint in the metal beneath his fingers. It didn’t do much to help, other than make his fingers hurt nearly as much as his stomach. Would this be what he felt like now when he was away from his mate? Would it go away once he claimed her? He’d never heard of this kind of sickness from anyone who’d met their denya, but he’d also never heard of one of the soulless finding a mate.

Another thought occurred, one chilling enough to freeze him to his core and momentarily make the physical pain flee. He’d met his denya, his emotions were back in some capacity. What about his soul? And if his soul had grown back, did that mean his life was at stake? He hadn’t claimed her, hadn’t bound her to him. Without that bond, he was living on borrowed time, over thirty with no way of knowing if he might fall over and die at any minute.

The stomach ache began to recede, stabbing pain gentling into something manageable. He wiped the sweat from his brow and didn’t sweat anymore. The physical effects of distance from Sierra, or from exposure to her, were letting him go and he could feel the calm returning to his mind, blotting out the peaks and valleys of emotion until he had his equilibrium once again. But unlike their parting before, he did not mistake this for an emotionless state. His feelings were still there, a present threat to his safety among his people and something he would need to hide until he could find a way to get away and claim Sierra as his own.

“Do you require medical assistance?” Toran asked, finally breaking the silence between them with a concerned look.

“No.” He was under control now and he wouldn’t endanger the mission. Wouldn’t endanger Sierra.

Anger simmered in Toran’s eyes and something that might have been betrayal, but Raze wasn’t sure how he’d betrayed them. The conversation they’d had when Sierra came to them with her plan hadn’t revealed much. Raze had given Toran a more in depth report about what he’d done in the hours between Toran and Kayde’s abduction and their rescue—leaving out the parts about kissing and emotion—and he’d argued that they owed it to the humans to help them. But nothing they were doing now, provided they were successful, was a betrayal of the legion.

“We need to talk before we get home,” Toran said, his voice devoid of all inflection.

Raze just nodded and kept his eyes forward.

Kayde cut through their discussion. “I’m patching in to the humans’ communication. We’re coming up on the settlement in thirty seconds.”

“Engage cloaking,” Toran ordered.

It was time to fight.