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“It’s going to work out. I promise.” Chen comforted her umbra wolf, matching her tone with the love and care she transmitted through the wolfbond. It didn’t completely take the edge off Nujalik’s distress, but Chen didn’t entirely believe it herself. This wasn’t a great plan, and being here meant she wasn’t protecting her pack, but if it worked...
She didn’t want to get ahead of herself.
Nujalik shifted inside her carrier, the change in weight forcing Chen to rest the box on the ground until her wolf had settled. Nujalik hated the carrier, a sentiment Chen shared. They had to keep up appearances, though, and a loose wolf looked dangerous.
Plus, the polarized light mounted inside the carrier made Nujalik visible. No one could doubt if she was inside.
Nujalik huffed, and her displeasure was a dissonant scratch along Chen’s perceptions. It matched the vague, rotten-eggs smell that lingered in the air, faint as an afterthought. She adjusted her grip on the carrier and stepped off the tram. The mercenaries had chosen a perfect spot for the exchange to take place, she could give them that much credit. Plenty of cover around to hide their numbers, but a nice clear open area in the middle that would turn into a killing field if something didn’t go their way.
She walked down the short path to the old terraforming plant. From what she could see, it looked like part of the moon’s atmospheric complex—one of a dozen or more plants around the world that had worked to increase the oxygen, scrub out most of the sulfur, and pump all-important water vapor into the sky. Like most of the plants in the Three Systems, it had been closed down longer than she’d been alive. On Khonsu, essential components had been salvaged, leaving only the framework of buildings around an empty, parklike commons.
Chen stopped walking about a third of the way into the green-blue grass and set the carrier down next to her. She didn’t have long to wait. A pair of mercenaries dressed in high-end adaptive camouflage and obvious dispersion vests stepped out of one of the ruins. One of them pushed a bound Priddy in front of him. Even at a distance she couldn’t miss the limp in his step or the dried blood on his face.
Anger flared at her sense of helplessness, for not being able to protect him and for the way Priddy and the mercenaries had put her in this position. She picked up the carrier and took two steps before the lead merc called out for her to stop.
She froze. “You’re calling the shots.”
“Indeed.” She could hear the smirk behind his mask, and she resisted the urge to punch him in the mouth. It wouldn’t help anyone and might just get them all killed. He knelt and peered in the front of the carrier. “They really are beautiful creatures.”
“Wish I could say the same.” She looked at Priddy, who seemed to waffle between relief and horror at her presence. Hopefully Nujalik could share some of her calm with him. This would work out. It had to. “I thought we agreed that you’d hand over the doctor unharmed.”
“I said no additional harm would come to him, once you’d agreed to our little exchange. All of that unfortunateness happened prior to our conversation.” The merc waved his hand dismissively as he stood up, hefted the carrier, and crossed back to where his partner waited. He nodded at his associate, who produced a combat knife and cut the ties on Priddy’s arms.
The doctor rubbed feeling back into his hands and stumbled forward, but the second mercenary stopped him.
Chen grimaced at the leader. “You win. Take the wolf. Let the doctor go.”
“I’m staying.” Priddy’s voice was rough, quiet, and unexpected.
She glared at him, willed him not to fuck this up. “That’s not an option, Doctor. The exchange was agreed to.”
“Not by me.” Priddy took a step back. “These mercenaries don’t have anything like the facilities they need to keep an umbra wolf in good health. I’ll stay, so I can keep tabs on her. The wolf is too delicate to risk her being injured through neglect. She’s family, and the pack is forever.”
Chen kept her face calm, but her chest was a mess of emotions. He hadn’t picked those words at random. She wanted to know what he meant by them. Wanted to understand if he’d pledged himself to her wolf, or to her. Or both. With luck, she could still get all three of them out of this situation long enough to ask him.
The mercenary leader shrugged. “Well, that’s unexpected. We’ll still be taking your wolf though. We upheld our part of the deal. Not our fault that the doctor prefers us to a group of rangers who’re likely to vent him into space for treason.”
She shifted her weight forward, prepping to move, and the mercenary raised his hand. A red dot appeared in the center of her chest. Chen didn’t know what kind of weapon was on the other end of the laser sight, but she was also pretty certain she didn’t want to find out. Priddy spotted the marker and shouted, “No!”
“We’ve got the wolf, and since you’ve volunteered to stay with us, Doc, the ranger’s unnecessary. Plus, I’d hate to risk her coming back in a rage in the middle of the night. Then I’d be left with nothing.” The mercenary looked at her, his eyes almost sympathetic. “You understand. It’s nothing personal.”
He closed his fist.
The red dot moved, fast as an eyeblink, and the merc’s right knee evaporated.
Chen tapped her omni, and the carrier turned off, losing power to both the polarized light inside and the field that closed off the front. On the periphery, gunfire exploded from a half-dozen locations at once as firefights started up.
Nujalik blurred out the opening and leapt to bite down on the hand of the second mercenary. He dropped his knife, but Chen could see his other hand reaching for the falling weapon. She charged forward, but everything seemed to move at normal speed while she was in slow motion. The merc caught the handle of the blade and brought it up toward Nujalik in a single, lethal arc.
Where Priddy stepped into its path.
She hit the mercenary at full speed, taking him to the grass as Priddy stumbled away. Kneeling on his chest, she cracked his head against the ground, once. Twice. Then he was still.
Nujalik headed for cover at the edge of the commons. Chen stopped long enough to grab Priddy into her arms, then followed her wolf toward shelter. Once she could set him down inside one of the building walls, she tugged her comms earpiece out of her pocket, booted it up, and hooked it over her ear. “I’m in. We’re safe.”
“Sorry about that,” Grenville responded immediately. “Their sniper had a bolt action. Only one shot at a time. Can you imagine? I mean, I could count the number of times on one—”
“Not the time, Specialist.” May jumped into the conversation. “Alpha is cleaning up the west and south. Inouye and I found where they may have been bivouacking. How’s the doc?”
She looked at Priddy. His face had gone ashen, and he held a hand pressed to the wound in his side. He looked at her, then at Nujalik. He whispered, “Tell them I’m okay.”
Chen rolled her eyes. “He took it in the chest. He’s hurt pretty bad, but he’s awake enough to say stupid shit.”
“Sit tight,” Grenville said. “I’m on my way.”
Chen nodded, then reached out and gripped Priddy’s other hand. “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. What were you thinking?”
“Couldn’t let Nujalik get hurt.” He tried to shrug but ended up coughing from the pain.
She helped him lean back to relax the pressure on his wound. “Stop talking. Help’s on the way.” Her belt med-pack wouldn’t have a patch big enough to work with the wound he’d received, so they just had to sit tight for Grenville to arrive.
With luck, he wouldn’t take much longer.
#
JAVAD GROANED. HIS mouth tasted like he’d been chewing sand, and he couldn’t muster enough saliva to swallow. He couldn’t feel the wound in his side—the traumatic pneumothorax, he reminded himself—which meant they’d pumped him full of enough painkillers to make certain the pain wouldn’t wake him up. He took a deep breath, stopped when he felt the pull in his skin, and let it back out.
He could feel Nujalik nearby, the wolf’s tentative attention making sure he was awake before a hefty weight landed on his feet.
“No!” Chen snapped. “You know better.”
“It’s okay,” he rasped, and opened his eyes. “I’m awake. And she asked first.” As dry as his mouth tasted, his voice sounded even worse. Chen put a cup near his mouth and lifted his head enough that he could drink from it. The water helped soothe his throat and made it easier to swallow.
Her face looked drawn as she watched him. “I’m not going to get used to that, you know. Not right away.”
“What’s that?” He settled back against the pillows and closed his eyes before running his hand over the bandage at his side. The wound was tender, but the stitches felt close together and tight, the dressing full, almost overcautious. He smiled. It couldn’t be more identifiably by Dr. Bajusz if she’d signed it.
“You being able to communicate with my wolf. A lot of people assume that the wolves broadcast to anyone nearby.”
“They don’t.” He nodded. He recognized the sense of it but hadn’t thought about it. “The wolfbond keeps it from devolving into chaos.”
“Right. It’s hard for a unit to be combat-ready when we’re waist-deep in each other’s feelings.” He heard Chen shifting and opened his eyes to find her close to the bed. She smiled at him again. “I don’t want to exhaust you. You’re supposed to be recovering. If you want us to go—”
“No. Please stay.” He scooted up the pillows slightly. “There’s nothing worse than just laying here.”
“We didn’t catch your guy. Ratliff?”
“Yeah. Liam Ratliff.” Not catching him was bad. It meant he could still threaten his family. “My family,” he croaked out.
“Are fine, including your sister. We might not have caught Ratliff, but we’ve got plenty of data proving he was there. And enough communications data to tie him to mercenaries. The survivors are being remarkably cooperative.” Chen’s grin was understated but spoke volumes. Mercenaries had a reputation for self-interest, after all. “It’s more than enough to hand over to the Joint Council to pursue Ratliff as a criminal. He won’t sleep free for long. As for anyone else involved—intelligence is combing through everything we collected now. The initial data was easy, but it will be weeks before they finish up a full search.”
“What about other moles?”
“They’ve taken a soldier from supply chain into custody. I get the impression that there might be more on other ships in the constellation, but for now it’s done.”
“About that.”
“Save your strength,” she responded.
“No. I really need to say some things. When I saw you and Nujalik... When I realized what I’d done had the potential to hurt you both...I made bad choices. I thought I had been acting to keep you from getting hurt, and the opposite happened.” He rubbed his face with one hand, could feel the tubes in his arms dragging as he moved. “I was wrong.”
“You were,” she agreed. “And selfish.”
“Yeah.”
“But at the same time, some of that is my fault. I wall people out. My blood family made it hard for me to trust other people. I don’t like to do the hard work of talking to someone else and would rather just accept the status quo. Even when it’s bad for me. Even when it’s hard for Nujalik.” At her name, the wolf crawled partway up the med-bay bed and wedged herself between Javad and the rail.
He managed a chuckle with only a slight wince, then reached down to scratch between the wolf’s tufted ears. “So what do we do about it?”
“An umbra wolf will occasionally pick a second person to share with; it’s rare enough that even a lot of rangers consider it a myth.” She threaded her fingers into Nujalik’s coat as well, brushing against his hand so all three of them could touch each other. “It can be a very intense experience.”
Javad nodded. “I can imagine it would be.” He gestured to the glass, and the two of them went through the elaborate ritual of him taking another drink of water. “I’m used to being a workaholic, and I’m not good in social situations. I can fake it because of the restaurant work, but I’m lousy at it.”
“I have a better understanding of my wolf’s emotions than my own.” She chuckled. “Though I guess so do you. Told you it would take some getting used to. I just think that if Nujalik likes you enough to want you as part of her chosen family...there are worse foundations to start from.”
Javad let that sink in. Both the offer and the idea of what their relationship could be. A flash of fear wicked across his back with a chill damp. “Is my presence on the ship a distraction? A security risk? Do I need to be reassigned?”
“Your omni’s part of what was collected by Intelligence. And the fact that you didn’t get flagged during your background check has prompted a deeper security review of both military and civilian personnel in the constellation. The commander has decided to leave it up to you if you want or need to be reassigned though.”
“We can table that for now. And as for us...” His stomach clenched, and he felt Nujalik’s comforting warmth wrap around his fear and ease it. The wolf couldn’t take it away, but she could help bear the weight. “I can’t promise that I’m not going to screw this up. It’s entirely like me to do something selfish or stupid out of my desire to drag things into the light.”
Chen’s hand squeezed his gently. “If we’re issuing warnings, then I can’t guarantee I’ll share things with you. I’m better at companionable silence than examining my feelings. And even if I wanted to tell you everything, some stuff will be classified. It’s a big change for me. But I can promise to try.”
“A lot of people have gotten started with less than that,” he admitted. Holding her hand sent a warmth and comfort throbbing up his arm like a shared heartbeat. Nujalik twisted to rest her chin on their clasped hands.
Chen laughed—her real laugh, unguarded by concern or worry—and it broke down the last of the barriers between them. He could, faintly, feel the bubble of her amusement at the other end of the wolf bond, carried by the umbra wolf that connected them. “I may have forgotten to mention that we’re a package deal. It’s both of us or none.”
That prompted a whole new wave of fear; knowing he had the capacity to heart not one, but both of them. A cool, damp nose pressed into his palm, a wordless question curling up the fledgling bond. He could hurt them both, but he also had the potential to make them both completely happy. Something that he would make a life’s goal of if he needed to.
He smiled, tugging her hand slightly to bring Chen closer. When she did, he rested his forehead against hers, relishing the perfectness of the three of them together. A triangle of fear and joy and anxiety and love. The last one most of all. Javad tilted his head, leaning up to kiss her with all the energy he could muster, until his breath burned and the wound in his side ached even through the painkillers. It was worth it. He could feel Chen’s worry echoed along the bond, could sense Nujalik’s patient calm reminding her he was okay.
“I wouldn’t want it any other way,” he whispered.
Nujalik shifted again, careful to stay on his uninjured side. The umbra wolf’s smug happiness wrapped around him like a fluffy tail.
“You say that now,” Chen muttered, brushing his hair back from his face.
“I’ll say it always.” She described the bond to him as finding the other half of herself, and he finally understood. With the two of them in his life, he felt complete. It was exactly as wonderful as he’d hoped it would be.