My head was still groggy from being drugged, and my blood boiled that she had knocked us out. I scrubbed a hand down my face, remembering us all waking up on the floor, and it didn’t take long to work out what she’d done.
Ella’s flight path had been easy to follow as well since all our ships shared the same database. With a few taps to select her coordinates, her journey flicked up on my screen. But I didn’t need it to know exactly where she’d gone. To understand why she’d stooped so fucking low.
My heart had shattered at hearing her cries, and I felt like the worst person in the universe when we tore her away from her dad. It broke me, but her running from us like we were monsters wanting to hurt her, fucking hurt me.
Taking a deep breath, I recentered myself. I clenched my jawline but reminded myself why she did it.
Desperation to get her dad.
Instead of talking to us, she did the unthinkable.
Guilt chewed on my insides because I should have guessed she’d do something stupid.
“How in the hell’s galaxies does she know how to fly a ship?” Derrial hissed, his words clipped and sharp. He flopped in the front passenger seat near me.
“Give her credit. She’s been watching everything we do, teaching herself, learning. And desperation does funny things to people. Thing is...” Corran said from the back where he attempted to make contact with her ship, apparently, not only had she learned to fly a space cruiser, but she had also learned how to switch off the comms. “The ship practically flies itself if she selects the last destination we flew to. I told her so myself when she suddenly seemed interested in how to fly the ship. I should have suspected something then.”
“Yeah well, hurry up and get us there already,” Derrial growled my way. Fuck, he had a temper on him, but we were all just as tense.
The faint vibration of the ship thrummed under us, and we lifted off. I wasted no time and hurled us forward.
“Well, I can’t get ahold of her,” Corran hissed. “I’ve initiated the comms destabilizer. Better no one detects us since we have everyone after us.”
Derrial ran a hand down his face and huffed loudly, his knees bouncing.
All I could do was focus on flying, avoid heavily populated air space, and pray to the universe Ella hadn’t been captured by the Council or the Khonsu.
Flashes of Ella filled my mind, her bending over in the forest, me ravishing her, seeing her naked out in public had me burning up. I wanted so much more time to really show her pleasure, and how I could make her scream with arousal. The memories in my mind were uncontrollable, repeating over and over until they drove me insane.
Her scent still clung in my nose, and her moans echoed in my ears as I thrust into her over and over.
Life taught me to never get too close to anyone, to not believe in deep relationships that lasted. My past partners never worked out. We ended up in arguments, with differences, and it was easier to walk away. Always easier to walk away. But this was different with Ella. She’d somehow crawled under my skin and now I’d lost myself with a human woman when so many odds were stacked against us. I refused to let myself think of the future when we’d be lucky to survive today.
Focus on the here and now.
Save her.
Get to a safe place for all of us.
Everything else could wait for later.
“What if she’s captured?” Corran asked, his voice pensive.
“Then we go and rescue her, we do whatever the fuck we need to until she’s with us and safe. That’s what we’ll do.” Derrial didn’t move but kept his attention out the front window as he spoke.
“How far are we from reaching her?” Derrial barked.
“Five minutes tops.”
“Make it two.”
Silence suffocated us, and we cut through the sky, the reflective shields up, masking us, meaning to anyone looking toward us, they’d only see the sky, the charcoal clouds promising a storm.
As we finally cruised over the landscape of the Khonsu’s territory, I spotted our other black cruiser down amid the woods, finding no sign of Ella.
To our right sat the compound and sheds, while on the far left, the mountain sat where Ella had run up.
I commenced our descent in a small clearing not far from hers. The surrounding trees would cover us hopefully from detection. At least until we rescued her stubborn ass and ran.
Derrial cleared his throat, while my gut clenched with dread. Was she okay?
With a small lurch, we landed. Unbuckling myself, I shot to my feet and raced into the main cabin. I dragged open the weapon compartment latch and my mouth dropped. “Why the fuck is this container empty?”
“We haven’t really had the chance to load weapons,” Corran growled.
“Fine. We do this the old-fashioned way. Corran, you check the other ship for any weapons.”
I shook my head and did a double check of our surroundings through the heat sensor monitor. Once I saw that it revealed no one in near proximity, I hit the door button and it slid open.
We rushed outside, my muscles tense, my senses alert.
I ran through the woods toward her ship. Please don’t be dead. Derrial and I surveyed the perimeter, keeping watch while Corran entered the cruiser.
Moments later, he emerged. “She’s not here. No sign of struggle.”
Good. That meant she may not have been found yet.
Stalking the grounds, we pressed on, targeting the shed where Ella had found her dad, knowing it was exactly where she would have gone.
“You know the protocol,” Derrial muttered. “Get Ella out of here the moment you see her. Leave without the rest of us if needed, just evacuate her. Understood.”
Corran and I nodded.
I’d never leave without her.
A high-pitched scream came, violently ripping through the air.
Moving faster, we burst out from the treeline, emerging into an open field. Up ahead lay those three sheds.
Ella emerged from around the corner of a shed with a man I recognized from the cell, the man we’d torn her from...her father, and together they ran in our direction, their faces fear-stricken. Behind her, four Khonsu guards charged after her. Big sons of bitches, pounding the ground with long strides, moving with greater speed than I expected for someone their size.
My heart slammed into my throat.
She glanced toward us, her eyes widening with hope, silent words falling from her lips.
That’s right, keep running, kitten.
We ran toward them.
The monsters were almost upon Ella and her father. They were moving too fast.
I darted forward, a war cry bursting from my lungs. My fists curled, feeling nothing but raw adrenaline. A Khonsu with a shaved head and the reddest eyes I’d ever seen was within arms' reach of Ella.
I propelled myself forward and launched past Ella and up at him. My fist connected with the side of his head so hard, the crack shuttered up my arm. But he fell.
Stumbling to my feet, I ducked a swinging punch from another Khonsu and rolled out of reach. I shot to my feet and attacked the brute, my fist connecting perfectly with the roaring Khonsu’s face. He stumbled backward from my strike, and I threw a curved kick into his gut to help him along. His feet caught on a patch of grass, and he fell head over heels. Fuck yeah, that was what I liked seeing.
I spun around as the guards started to climb to their feet. Up ahead, Derrial lunged onto the back of another guard who had Corran pinned to the ground.
Ella and her dad kept running past them, and all I could think was that I had to get her out of here.
Priority.
A roar sounded behind me, and I jerked around to see a horde of savages pouring out of the main building. They were coming in our direction like a fetid wave of sewage. Some kept their humanoid form, others morphed into four-legged monsters with black leather hides. They were damn fast. Bastards.
I spun on my heels and ran. This wasn’t a fight we’d win. There was no shame in running away.
My feet punched the ground as I sprinted after Ella and sucked in air rapidly. Veon was becoming a dangerous and ugly planet, no longer feeling like my home. Things had changed so much in the last couple of decades, all because of the Khonsu invasion and our Council’s response to hide in the cities while these monsters slowly grew in numbers, kidnapping women from around the galaxy to breed with.
I burst into the woods, following her and her father. She was swinging left and right through the woods like she’d lost her way to the ship.
But I didn’t have time to chase down a lost girl. Our time was almost out.
Closing in on her, I swept an arm around her side and swooped her against me. “Faster,” I shouted toward her father noting that his clothes were ragged, his flesh bruised and covered in healed wounds. The Khonsu had tortured him for fun, for blood, for anything they needed. Fucking vile things.
“Run faster or we die,” I barked the order, needing to get them both to safety.
“Thane,” she cried with relief in her voice, her breath racing, eyes wide and terrified.
I dashed toward her ship as it sat closer. Slapping my palm over the sensor, the door slid open with a swooshing sound, and we rushed inside. A sudden surge of exhaustion rattled through me and I stumbled on my feet. I dropped Ella on her feet and darted to the controls as the door shut closed.
“Don’t hurt us,” the man’s shaky voice pleaded, his body so frail and thin.
“Dad.” She scrambled to her feet and threw herself into her father’s arms, crying uncontrollably. An ache settled under my heart to hear the sorrow in her whispers, to finally find her father after he’d gone missing so long. Once she settled down, she’d ask questions… so many questions about how her dad ended up here...like if we knew anything about it. I swallowed down the boulder in my throat and my head spun, but I couldn’t collapse now. Not fucking now. I refocused on getting us out of here.
The cruiser hummed beneath me, and we started to ascend.
“What are you doing?” Ella’s footsteps padded toward me in a rush. “What about Corran and Derrial? You can’t leave them.” Panic strangled her voice.
“They have the other ship.” I’d find out as soon as they escaped in their ship. We soared higher, and I glanced down to the ground.
Ella was crying and her sorrow sent a spear into my heart. “You can’t leave them behind. We just found out that my dad was alive and rescued him, we can’t now lose Derrial and Corran.”
“You should have thought of that before you drugged us. Now come here.” I leaned over and grabbed her arm, bringing her closer to the window. “Look down below. What do you see?”
She leaned over, staring at the field, at the army of Khonsu running toward the woods. “Where are Derrial and Corran?”
“Exactly, they got away. We’re trained warriors, kitten. You don’t need to worry about us, but you scared the hell out of us. What were you thinking running off like that?”
She faced me and fresh tears tracked down her cheeks, her chin quivering, and my heart melted.
“I’m sorry.”
“Kitten, please don’t cry. Take your father into the back room as he looks ready to pass out. We have food rations filled with vitamins his body will need and it will help him sleep.”
She didn’t move at first, but as if my suggestion took a second to sink into her thoughts, she rushed into the back to her father, and I focused on flying us out of here.
I rapidly punched in our coordinates and flicked on the masking shield over the space cruiser. A small green flash in the bottom of my screen told me the other ship was engaged and ascending. I breathed a sigh of relief.
I hated seeing Ella this broken, but what her actions taught me was that she was a danger to all of us because she was reckless. And that was something we needed to rein in if she intended to survive on Veon.
Already exhaustion swept through me, and the energy I used to fight had diluted my last reserves. There was only one way to address that… something I hated but I had no choice. Return to the Council lab for an antidote.
If I didn’t pass out first.