For three seconds, Sierra didn’t realize that anything was wrong. But when Raze slumped over with a groan and rolled to his side, completely unconscious, she went from delightfully sated to the edge of panic, the blissful haze of sex wiped away in an agonizing moment. She checked for his pulse, belatedly realizing that a Detyen might not have a heartbeat in exactly the same place. But the steady, if a bit fast, rhythm under her fingers was enough to get the panic to abate for a second.

Next question. Was this a Detyen sex thing? A mating thing? Or something weird and wrong and dangerous? There were only two other people on the ship who might be able to answer that. It hadn’t been Sierra’s intention to go around announcing what just happened between them, but fear for Raze’s life got her ass into gear. It wasn’t that she wanted to hide what they had together, but there was a lot of talking they needed to do before they started announcing that they were dating… mated… whatever.

Talking could come later. After medical attention.

Though Raze tearing her clothes off had been just about the hottest thing she’d ever lived through while it was happening, now she cursed as she had to dig through her pack to find an intact shirt. She pulled it over her head and grabbed for her pants. Before she could take her first step towards the door, Raze groaned and rolled to his side. She was torn, but couldn’t just leave him there in pain. She sat on the bed beside him and placed her hand on his chest, rubbing it up and down gently, trying to soothe any pain he might be feeling at the moment.

Raze’s eyelid cracked open and the sense of relief that pounded through her would have taken her legs out from under her if she’d still been standing. He groaned again and blinked both eyes hard. “What happened?” he asked.

He was asking her that? Sierra tried to get her roiling emotions to calm down, but she kept picturing Raze collapsing in pain. “I could ask you the same thing.”

He rolled onto his back and tugged her down beside him, but when she lay down, he picked at her shirt, trying to tear it off with unsteady hands.

“Maybe I should go get one of your guys,” she said. He still looked pale and she had no idea if he was okay now or if he was about to collapse again. She definitely didn’t want to take her clothes off again until she was sure he wasn’t about to keel over. “Or at least a med kit.”

“No.” He tugged harder at her shirt and Sierra relented, pulling it off before shimmying out of her pants and laying down beside him. “I don’t need medical attention.”

She cuddled into him and his arm came around her. “Was that supposed to happen?”

He pressed a kiss against her forehead. “I can feel it. Can’t you?”

Okay, maybe undressing had been a bit premature. But he was a warm, solid presence and the safety of his arms was a soft blanket of strength around her. “Feel what?”

“Everything.” His eyes shone, shifting to that demonic red for a second before fading back to black. “I didn’t realize how muted it all was until just now. It was like everything that’s been suppressed for two years exploded in my chest in a single second. My soul…” he paused for a moment and squeezed her tighter, “I think it’s there. And our bond…”

She felt something, like a weight anchored just under her heart, and if she concentrated on it, she could sense Raze right there. It was unlike anything she’d ever felt before, less than a physical connection, but more substantial than emotion; she knew it was something that could never be severed. They’d be connected, heart to heart, soul to soul, to the end of their days.

“It’s beautiful,” she admitted. “And kind of terrifying.”

Raze tilted her chin up until they were looking eye to eye. “Why are you scared?” He seemed to savor the word, as if talking about any emotion were a forbidden treat.

“Why aren’t you? We live on different planets, this is supposed to be impossible, we’re different fucking species!” All of the ways things wouldn’t work between them cascaded until Sierra’s head was aching and her heart threatened to break. “I have no idea how to make this work,” she admitted, “and I think letting you go would kill me.” It was heady to feel this way, to know she belonged completely to the hulking warrior lying beside her, and that he was hers. But she was so terrified that she was practically shaking with it. She’d never felt even a tenth of this much for someone, and it had all happened so quickly that she was afraid she’d wake up one morning and find that it had all been a dream made from too many media shows and sleep deprivation. Raze was so solid, so real next to her that she couldn’t doubt him in this moment, but soon they’d have to part again, and there was only so much time they could steal until the real world came calling.

He wiped the pad of his thumb across her cheek and it was only then that she realized a tear had escaped. “We will figure this out,” he promised. “I won’t give you up, no matter what we have to do to make it work.”

Her mind reeled, trying to come up with a solution, something that would make them both happy. She couldn’t ask Raze to leave his people, not when they were so desperate, but she was loyal to Earth and didn’t know what leaving would mean.

Raze kissed her and pulled her close until she was half-draped over him, their legs tangled together. “Leave it for tonight. We will deal with our problems tomorrow.”

She checked the clock on the bedside and saw how late it was. It occurred to her that she should check in on the women to make sure they were sleeping okay, but with Raze next to her, she knew that could wait. They couldn’t get into that much trouble on a ship this size. He’d have to leave at some point, but she wasn’t about to push him away a moment sooner. Not when any moment could be their last.

***

Raze woke to a tidal wave of sensation and the colors of the room assaulted him as his eyes opened. He teetered on the edge of a dozen emotions, his body caught between laughter and tears and lust. The scent of Sierra enveloped him, grounded him, and as he sank into her presence, the overload faded slightly until he could begin to process everything that was happening.

His soul was back. His emotions, all of his emotions, were back. He had a mate. And she was looking up at him with wide eyes, full of the same wonder and fear that rattled around his chest.

“You looked a little freaked out there for a second,” she said, concern written across her features. Her red hair was a halo around her and her skin gleamed in the dim light of her room.

For the lighting to be this low, it still had to be late, but he wasn’t sure what woke him. He didn’t want to make his mate worry, but he would not lie to her. “My emotions, my senses, they will take some time to adjust. I lost so much along with my soul and regaining it is… overwhelming.”

“Will Toran and Kayde be okay with it? With us?” She cut to the heart of the issue, laying out his biggest concerns with her simple question.

And he didn’t want to give her that answer. Change did not come easy to the soulless, nor to anyone in the legion. His relationship with Sierra, his bond, represented the biggest change they’d encountered since the destruction of Detya. “There are strict protocols for soldiers like me and Kayde,” he admitted. “Any change in our mindset must be cataloged and reported. If we’re deemed to be unstable, the decision is made to put us down so that we do not become a danger to anyone else.”

She jolted up, her hair flipping back and eyes wide. “Put down? As in executed? What the fuck?” Her voice got so high that she practically squeaked out the last word.

Raze didn’t want to die. The fatalistic acceptance he’d had of that conclusion had blown away the second he claimed Sierra, and he would fight the sentence with everything in him. But he also understood his people’s logic. “It’s necessary,” he explained. “The soulless, soldiers with no emotion, they can easily become violent. In the early days of the legion, rates of murder and suicide among us—them—were astronomically high. Detyens aren’t meant to live without their souls. We cheat death to grab a few more years, but the average life expectancy for one of the soulless is thirty-five. The oldest now is forty-two, and the oldest ever was forty-seven. My own brother will need to make his decision soon, and even before today I didn’t want him to walk the same path as I did.”

“You have a brother?” Sierra asked, then she shook her head. “Not the important part right now, but we should probably circle back to the details of our lives before long. I know you, but there’s so much about you that I still need to learn.”

He leaned in and stole a kiss, unable to resist the siren song of her lips. “We’ll make time,” he promised, though his mind still hadn’t come to a solution there. “But do you understand what I’m saying? Kayde can no longer tell between right and wrong. He can only rely on a strict set of rules and procedures to keep himself from being a threat to others. We should have taken the origin of the soulless as a warning. Even in our desperation, we should not have created monsters.”

She reached down to cradle his cheek, her hair falling around her like a veil. “You wouldn’t be here with me if your people didn’t do that. I don’t think I like the alternate universe where you died two years ago and I’d never have any idea who you were.”

“The origin is not a pretty story,” he insisted, even as he agreed with everything she’d just said. He’d sacrificed everything in becoming soulless, but meeting Sierra made it all worth it.

“Tell me anyway?”

He hesitated for a moment. Everything he’d said since he woke up was forbidden knowledge. Those who weren’t members of the legion weren’t ever to know. He could be imprisoned or executed for spilling their secrets. But Sierra was his mate, and his duty to her came before all others. And because she was his, that made her a part of the legion so long as he was a member.

“At first, the survivors of the destruction of Detya thought it was a legend,” he began. “It happened hundreds, maybe thousands, of years ago. When the planet was still healthy and when we lived in peace, finding a mate was common. There was an entire system in place to pair potential matches and ensure survival. But still, some people were not lucky. Perhaps, like me, their mates weren’t Detyen.” It hadn’t occurred to him before, but it made sense. Even if Detya were still around, he would not have met Sierra there. “So there was a scientist who had several children. One by one, they reached thirty without finding their mates, and they died. The scientist became obsessed with finding a way to save them. His final child, a daughter, was about to turn thirty, and he thought he’d found success. He performed a procedure on her, and she survived her birthday. But then, she killed him, destroyed his laboratory, and killed herself because what had been done to her wasn’t worth it. She knew she was a monster and that she shouldn’t exist.”

Sierra’s eyes were wide. “How terrible. Is it true?”

Raze shrugged. “Parts of it must be. Whoever the scientist was, he had sent a copy of his findings to a colleague. Those papers were uploaded to a server somewhere and had been buried deep in a military archive. Someone in the legion discovered them and a vote was taken among the survivors when it was clear that mates were scarce. They decided to experiment and see if they could prolong Detyen lives through the removal of the soul. They succeeded. And here we are today.”

Her eyebrows drew down as she thought. “And you’re the only one who got your soul back? Or grew it back? However that works.”

“As far as I know, yes.” He knew it was possible that there had been others before him, but he’d never even heard the hint of a rumor, and gossip spread fast in a group as small as the legion. Someone would have whispered something if it had ever happened before.

She traced his cheek and kissed him again. They couldn’t seem to stop touching one another. “I could talk to you about this stuff all day,” she said. “But if we don’t get up soon, everyone will be up before us. And even though you didn’t quite say it, I’m taking from everything that you said, that telling Toran and Kayde is off the table until we figure all this out.” She didn’t sound resentful and Raze kissed her in thanks.

“This will work out between us.”

Hope and skepticism warred on Sierra’s face, and Raze was amazed at how easy emotions were to read now. A week ago, he could barely discern if someone was happy when they smiled from ear to ear.

She ran her fingers through his hair before pulling back and rolling off the bed. “Get dressed. I’ll leave first and if the coast is clear, I’ll knock once on the door. More than one knock and there are people in the hallway.”

They dressed in silence, but it wasn’t awkward. Neither he nor Sierra were self-conscious about their nakedness, and they kept stealing looks at one another and grinning when they caught each other. It took the utmost discipline to keep his hands off, but he knew if he touched her, they’d both end up back in the bed, or against the wall, or on the floor, and for the moment, they didn’t have time.

She gave him a final kiss and pulled away reluctantly before walking out the door. A moment later, a single knock echoed through the room. Raze slid out behind her and brushed his hand down her arm before heading back towards the kitchen and away from his mate. With every step he took away, the bond tethered him back to her, and he knew that he’d never be alone again.

But the feelings of connectedness and contentment were doused when he walked into the kitchen and found Toran standing there with a curious look on his face. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “And where did you sleep last night?”