Okay, she was officially crazy. It took a little time to get ready to head back to the settlement, but when they crested the first hill, static crinkled in Sierra’s ear and she almost pumped a fist in the air in celebration. Raze walked half a step in front of her and she wasn’t sure if it was because he trusted her not to stab him in the back, or because he didn’t trust her to lead him back to the village. How could she trust him based on his word alone? If she were actually one of the pirates, she would have lied her ass off to save her life.

He hadn’t given her an explanation, hadn’t told her what he and his men were here for. No, all he’d said was that he’d “sacrificed his emotions,” whatever that meant, and now he was in search of his people.

“Sierra, do you read me?” Mindy said into the comms. It was so loud in the night that Sierra was concerned Raze would hear it. She might have believed that he wasn’t going to hurt her, and she could believe that he wasn’t a pirate. That didn’t mean she was going to give up any weapon without a fight. She cleared her throat, hoping that Mindy would pick it up.

Raze glanced back at her. “Do you require hydration?” He spoke in that flat tone that was really beginning to grate.

“I’m fine here,” she replied, hoping the response would work for both of her listeners.

He looked at her for a long moment, face completely placid, before looking away.

“Do you have company?” Mindy asked. “Do you need extraction?”

Shit. “Under control,” she mumbled as quietly as possible.

Raze looked back at her again. “What was that?”

“I said that we have this under control. We’ll find your men, I’ll complete my mission, and then this will all be a less than pleasant memory.” Exactly how bonkers did she sound repeating all this information? Now she almost wished that he had found and removed her comms, at least then she wouldn’t be talking in circles.

“What’s going on?” Mindy asked, somehow still not picking up on the fact that Sierra couldn’t speak freely.

Raze had already begun walking, so Sierra caught up with him. She could wing this, and maybe get some necessary information. “Raze, wait up.” He slowed a step until they walked side by side. It was quiet in the night, the sounds of revelry dampened by distance and the late hour. “You said you’re Detyen, right? I’m not familiar. What’s your home planet?”

“That is irrelevant to this partnership.” He walked beside her silently, and if he hadn’t claimed to feel no emotion, she would have said that he was tense.

“Detyen,” Mindy said over the comms. “I’ll look it up. Give me the sign if you need help. Going quiet.”

Finally. Sierra hoped the relieved breath she let out didn’t sound too weird. That breath turned into a yawn that she barely choked back and her jaw cracked when she got her mouth shut.

“Would you like to rest for a moment?” Raze asked, too conscious of her for her liking.

“I’m fine.” Tired, but she’d live.

“You keep saying that.”

“It keeps being true.” She’d never been so talkative on a mission before, especially not in a mission in enemy territory. But something in her liked speaking with Raze, even if he was a granite block of unresponsiveness.

“A human yawn indicates exhaustion. If we are to succeed, you need to be in optimum condition. We should rest,” Raze insisted in that infuriatingly flat voice.

“Do you have an encyclopedia entry on humans memorized?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Oooookay. “I’m a little tired, not exhausted. You see, I was supposed to get some shut eye before some hulking beast of an alien decided it would be fun to fry me and drag me away to his little lair to have his way with me.” Why did she have to go and say it like that? Now all she could imagine was him looming over her in the dark, those intense black eyes of his drinking her up as he discovered her body with his hands and mouth.

There was a long pause before he said, “I don’t have a lair.” It came out quietly, almost confused. Definitely not flat.

Sierra kept her eyes straight and thanked the darkness. Unless he had super night vision he couldn’t see her blush. “You still wanted to have your way with me.” If she had one iota less training, she would have slapped her hand across her mouth to try and grab those words back. Was she flirting with him? The emotionless alien who was happy to kidnap her until she suggested a better plan? The man who would probably kill her if it seemed like the logical thing to do, whether she deserved it or not?

“I needed information,” he said, “so, yes. I supposed I did have my way.”

Thank God for translators. Whatever she’d said must have lost the playful tone, or maybe he just couldn’t hear it. The smart thing now would be to just let this all lapse into silence, but something inside of Sierra couldn’t do that. She wanted to know more, and since she’d only know him for a day before leaving this planet and never seeing him again, now was the time. “What did you mean when you said you sacrificed your emotions? Did you used to be able to feel?” That had to be too personal for a near stranger to ask, but the night and the mission fostered a false sense of intimacy and Sierra had always had bravado in spades. Still, she didn’t expect Raze to answer. If she’d been asked something as nosy as that, she would have shut the conversation down in an instant.

But maybe the emotionless thing meant that Raze didn’t sense those boundaries. He was quiet for a moment before speaking, his tone even and unbothered as it always was. “Yes, I felt emotion until I turned thirty. Two years ago. I made the choice of my own free will. There is nothing to regret about it. It simply now is.”

She tried to imagine what it would be like to feel nothing and couldn’t. But pity would be wasted on Raze. “Why did you need to do it? You said something about lengthening your life?” Lifespans differed among species, but given what she could see, Raze didn’t look like he was on the verge of keeling over.

“It isn’t something to be spoken of.”

Of course not, not when she got to the interesting bits. “Got it.” The dim lights of the village at night were becoming clearer and brought the conversation to a natural end. “We’ll cover more ground if we split up. How about I come in from the west, you from the east. We’ll meet in the middle before dawn and find a place to hole up once activity gets too much for us to do any more searching. Sound good?”

Raze looked at her like he wanted to open her up and scan her to see if she was being honest. She was sure he was going to nix the idea, and as the seconds marched on, it got harder and harder not to fidget. A full minute passed and he finally nodded. “Very well. Good hunting.”

Sierra took off without giving him a chance to have second thoughts.

***

It was unwise to let Sierra go alone. Raze didn’t doubt her ability to take care of herself, she’d more than proved capable against him. But as she trotted off, he knew that she could easily disappear and he’d never see her again. Toran might say that was for the best. She brought something out in him that he couldn’t understand. He’d spoken more to her in an hour than he had to most of his fellow Detyens in the past two years.

And every moment he spent by her side hurt. It was a soul deep ache that he shouldn’t be able to feel, and yet it was there, ripping him in two as surely as a finely-honed blade. If there was any sense in the universe, the pain would let up the more distance they put between themselves, instead, it only transformed into a harsh pull, urging his feet west towards her. In two years, he hadn’t felt any urges, and he’d forgotten how hard they were to deny, when his body screamed at him to do one thing and his mind knew he must do another.

He needed his control back, needed to stabilize before he found Toran and Kayde. They couldn’t know about Sierra and what she did to him. What if Kayde had the same response, these strange, impossible pseudo-feelings and excruciating pleasure and agony from physical contact? He’d cut off Kayde’s hand before he let him touch Sierra. And if Toran saw her as a threat to the legion, he needed to protect her, to keep her hidden before some other warrior hunted her down and took her out before she could weaken any others.

He knew. He knew that these responses were irrational. Knew that if he chose not to take the human out, he should at least keep his distance. But that wasn’t going to happen. There were a few hours until sunrise and anticipation licked through him, excitement thrumming at the thought of seeing her again.

A human denya.

He recalled the wonder in Toran’s voice as he relayed the story. Was that what Sierra was? The denya of some unknown Detyen? He’d never reacted this way to the denyai at headquarters, but none of them were human. Perhaps he’d react this way to any of the alleged human denyai.

Or perhaps she is yours.

That way led to madness far beyond instability, and Raze refused to consider it. Whatever pull he felt towards Sier—the woman, it was because of the abnormal situation and had nothing to do with her. He set aside thoughts of why he’d reacted so poorly to her touch and why a part of him longed to reach out and see if a second round would be just as painful. He wasn’t even certain whether he wanted it to hurt or not.

Want. No, he could not want anything. He had his mission and his people. That was enough, it had to be.

As agreed, he entered the village from the east. There wasn’t much to the place. Three roads ran more or less parallel and were crossed by another three roads. Housing was a mix of poorly constructed buildings and broken down space ships that had been recycled into houses. A few pirates still caroused, but given the late hour, they paid him little mind, more focused on mind-numbing substances and sex. But the woman with one of those carousing pirates caught his eye. She studied him for several long seconds, watching him walk in the shadows. She wasn’t there by choice. Her clothes were threadbare and torn, her hair dirty and knotted. A bruise covered half of her face. But her eyes had a hint of defiance he’d seen in survivors.

And she looked at him like she knew he didn’t belong. He stared right back at her, practically daring her to raise the alarm. But the pirate dragged her into one of the buildings and the moment was lost. At another time, on another mission, he would have followed after to stop whatever was about to happen. But he had no place to hide her, no way to save her. And saving her would only hurt whatever other women they’d captured and decided to keep. Raze didn’t need intel from home to tell him that the slavers brought the women here for… entertainment. It was what slavers did, and Raze found some measure of satisfaction in destroying them out in the black of space.

But on Fenryr 1, the slavers’ home turf, with no team and only a small ship, Raze could do nothing to help. Not yet.

Was that why Sierra was here? He’d told her nothing of his mission, and she’d done the same. She had no reason to be after the data on the Lyrden, but the woman he’d seen was human. Maybe the humans were doing something about it. Or perhaps she was some sort of mercenary on a rescue mission. It doesn’t matter, he told himself. Find Toran and Kayde and get out.

He couldn’t recall ever being so distracted before. He took a deep breath and brought his mind to a sharp point of focus, imagining his meditation chamber back at headquarters and the equilibrium he could find there. When he opened his eyes back up, the world righted itself, the colors more muted and sounds tamer. He could breathe again, even if now he was conscious of some missing piece he’d never before noticed. It didn’t matter. This was what he was supposed to be. Temperate, focused, alone.

Given the layout of the settlement, he took the streets methodically. The shadows were long in the bright moonlight and there were nothing like streetlights to illuminate his path. Some of the ships and houses had lights attached to the outside, but this late, most of them were extinguished. He could almost imagine that this was a simple traveler settlement without the dark underbelly of rot, but the occasional pained moan or scream disabused him of that notion.

They deserved to be burned to the ground.

That wasn’t why Raze was here and he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind. The first street he crossed yielded no clues to the whereabouts of his men. He doubled back to make sure and ended up where he’d begun with no more information. On the second street, he heard a group of pirates talking and stood in the shadows to listen, but they spoke of a past raid on a faraway planet and made no mention of two captured Detyen soldiers.

He’d just passed one of the cross streets when something caught his attention. A larger space ship that didn’t look as decrepit as the rest stood ringed in light with two guards at the entrance. That seemed to have potential. From the shadows, Raze couldn’t make out much, but he couldn’t get a closer look from the ground without being seen. He surveyed the surrounding area and made a choice.

There were no men on the roof, so if he couldn’t go on the ground, he’d go through the air.

He scaled the side of an adjacent building, slipping twice as the shadows played tricks with the hand and footholds that he could make. His arms began to burn as he pulled himself up onto the roof of the building and he walked with light feet to the other edge, feeling exposed by the openness of the roof. But none of the guards were looking up and he crouched low to try and keep the attention away from himself.

The structures sat close together and a few running steps and a jump saw him on top of the old ship. He could hear sounds coming from the inside and for a moment he let himself believe that he would find Toran and Kayde, barely worse for wear. He took a moment to steady himself before entering and pushing all expectations aside. This was the job, it was time to do it.