Ayden waved a hand at the wide stretch of glass overlooking the intense battle. “Our mission has already succeeded, Ronnan. We are fighting as brothers with Raas Kaalek and his horde. They have accepted us and welcomed us back into the fold. Isn’t that what we wanted?”

  I thought of my father’s insistence on the Vandar bloodline. “It is not all.”

  Ayden scoffed. “We have already achieved more than our fathers did. Their desire for vengeance may have been our catalyst, but it does not have to define us anymore.” He gripped my arm and turned to face me. “We are no longer the lost Vandar. We have done what our fathers could not or would not. We have reunited our horde with the hordes of our Vandar brothers. What we do next, and how we live our lives, is no longer defined by those who came before.”

  I allowed myself a shaky breath as I met my majak’s gaze. There was a very good reason that Ayden was my most trusted advisor. He could see what I was blinded to by my determination to fulfill my role as Raas.

  “The only reason you were not Raas is because you did not desire it,” I told him.

  “And because I am not the pendayq that you are.” The edges off his lips quirked as if he hadn’t just leveled a hardcore Selkee insult at me.

  I choked back a laugh. “That would have earned anyone else time in the oblek.”

  My majak shrugged. “I am not anyone else.”

  I pivoted back to the battle, my majak’s words echoing in my head. He was right. I had done my duty as Raas. I had led my horde to Vandar space and negotiated our place within the Vandar empire. We were no longer exiled or forgotten. Did I owe it to my father to sacrifice even more?

  I thought of my mother, who had not been Vandar. Had she been less brilliant or beautiful because of it? Had I loved her less because she wasn’t Vandar? I growled at the treacherous thought, anger burning within me.

  My love for my mother could not be tarnished because she was Selkee, just as my love for Sloane could not be denied because she was human. My heart stuttered in my chest. Was it possible I loved Sloane?

  I gave my head a rough shake. I had become infatuated with her the more time we spent together and there was no doubt that she provoked my desire more than any female had, but love? The ache in my chest made my weak mental protestations crumble like stone beneath the heel of an iron boot.

  “It is done, Raas.”

  I was jerked from my thoughts by my battle chief’s booming voice. I spun toward him. “You found her?”

  “We have located the Valox fighter that we repaired and enhanced.”

  My pulse tripped, but I tempered my excitement. “You are sure?”

  “The Vandar enhancements we made to the ship made it possible to trace, Raas.” He gave me an almost imperceptible nod. “It is her.”

  I swung my head back to the view screen. “Let me see.”

  Instantly, our view honed in on a small, ship that wasn’t as shiny as the others. It was flying beside another Valox ship. Her rebel friends, I assumed.

  For a moment, I considered leaving her. She had begged to leave and return to the fight. Maybe being with the Valox was where she belonged. Then I spotted the fleet of Zagrath fighters zeroing in on the two Valox ships.

  “Target those imperial fighters,” I yelled over my shoulder as I ran for the exit.

  “Raas?” Kaiven called after me.

  “You have command,” my majak told him as he ran after me.

  I glanced at Ayden as I raced toward the hangar bay. “You don’t have to follow me, majak. What I’m doing is something you should be advising against.”

  “That’s why I’m coming, Ronnan.” A wicked grin spread across his face. “I cannot let you have all the fun.”

  Chapter

  Thirty-Eight

  Sloane

  “Another one bites the dust,” I sang as I shot up another Zagrath ship. The influx of enemy fighters had meant that I’d had to distance myself from Cassie and Thea’s ship, but almost as soon as the ships had arrived, the Vandar had picked them off one by one. I’d been able to finish off the last ones, but I owed the invisible horde a debt of gratitude.

  I scanned the battle, searching for Cassie and Thea’s ship, but it was hard to see through the explosions and red lasers slicing through the blackness. One thing I did notice was the reduction in the number of imperial fighters. Even the ones that were still zipping across the sky were heading toward the hulking gray battleships, and not toward the heart of the fighting.

  “That’s right, you bastards. Run away like the cowards you are!”

  My chest swelled with pride. I was part of the reason their forces were depleted, and it felt good. Killing imperial soldiers made it easier to ignore the heat blooming across my chest and the marks etching themselves on my skin. I hadn’t explained to my friends that it wasn’t a tattoo they’d spotted. How did you tell someone that you’d gotten mating marks from a guy who’d dumped you?

  I hadn’t even known it was possible to get the Vandar marks if you weren’t seriously attached—and I definitely wasn’t. I scratched at my flesh, wishing the marks would disappear. The last thing I needed was a reminder of a guy who’d tossed me aside. I groaned. Maybe they’d fade once we were farther apart, or once I returned to my regular life and was far away from the Vandar.

  “If not, I’m going to be wearing a lot of turtlenecks,” I grumbled.

  The blinking light on my console drew my attention, and I accepted the incoming transmission as I flipped my ship around and flew in an evasive pattern. “I’m surprised you didn’t just patch into my comms system again, Thea.”

  “It is not Thea.”

  I twitched at the sound of Ronnan’s distinctive voice, the velvet purr sending heat sizzling across my skin. “Oh.” I tamped down the nervous flutter in my chest and made me voice emotionless. “What do you want?”

  “It isn’t safe for you out here. I’m coming to escort you to safety. Vaes!”

  A laugh burst from me. “You came to get me, and you expect me to obey you? I’m not under your control anymore, Raas. And I thought we were done. You were fine with me leaving your ship earlier.”

  There was a heavy silence from the Raas. “I was hasty. I should not have let you leave.”

  “Because I can’t take care of myself and you think I need a big, strong Vandar to babysit me?” The heat of desire that had danced down my spine had now morphed into anger. “I’ll have you know I’ve been doing just fine out here by myself.”

  “I am still responsible for your safety,” Ronnan growled. “I promised Raas Kaalek that the Valox would get their pilot back safely.”

  “Still trying to protect your pawn?” I shook my head, disgusted that I’d believed for a moment that this was about something more than Ronnan’s precious mission. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. I’ve been fighting with my Valox friends, and they’ll tell the Vandar that you released me. You got what you needed from me, right?”

  There was more silence.

  “Thanks for fixing up my ship, by the way. It hasn’t flown this fast in ages.” To prove that, I gunned the engine and stopped on a dime, flipping my ship over so that I was facing the other direction, and was nose-to-nose with his ship, which had been behind me. Even through the glass of his cockpit, I could see the stern expression on his face.

  “You are welcome.” He let out a heavy breath. “Sloane—“

  “I’d love to hang out and chat, but I just saw Cassie and Thea.” My stomach lurched as I spotted a group of Zagrath fighters surrounding them. “Gotta go save their asses!”

  I disconnected our transmission, flipped my ship again, and flew through the battle toward the other Valox fighter. The imperial fighters were chasing them in an attack formation. My friends were doing a good job of evading them, but they were outnumbered. I zoomed in from behind, blasting the two fighters in the rear and sending them both spiraling off with their engines burning.

  “Miss me?” I asked, as the comms connection crackled to life.

  Thea’s rumbly laugh engulfed me. “You could say that. Thanks for the save.”

  “Anytime.” I clocked a massive Zagrath battleship a bit too close for comfort. “How about we bug out of here?”

  “Yes, please,” Cassie’s voice was more high-pitched, which told me she was more nervous than usual.

  I flew alongside my friends’ ship, waving at them. Then my ship jolted, as if I’d flown into a wall. What the hell? My console showed no impact or malfunction. I glanced back over at Cassie and Thea. Both of their eyes were wide as their ship lurched.

  It only took me a heartbeat to realize that we were both being pulled into the Zagrath ship.

  “You wanted to find the Zagrath,” Thea said dryly, as our ships were tractored toward the gray vessel.

  “I take it back,” I rubbed my sweaty palms on the front of my flight suit as I thought of what I’d heard happened to rebels taken captive by the empire. Then I scratched the prickling skin on my chest and thought of Ronnan and how cold I’d been to him. “I take it all back.”

  Chapter

  Thirty-Nine

  Ronnan

  My conversation with Sloane had not gone how I’d intended. No surprise that she hadn’t been receptive to my attempts to remove her from the battle, but I hadn’t expected her to so easily dismiss me. Her accusations that I’d had no issue letting her go when she was on the ship had stung, but she hadn’t been wrong in thinking that. She’d only seen what I wanted her and my Vandar raiders to see—a strong Raas who was not influenced by a female. The truth was anything but that.

  “Raas?” My majak’s voice prodded me back to the reality of being beside him in the cockpit of a raiding vessel in the midst of a battle.

  “She is right. The Vandar will know we released her in good faith.” I huffed out an irritated breath. “I cannot force her to do anything anymore.”

  “Return to the horde?”

  I clenched my jaw, resisting leaving Sloane unprotected. Protection she did not want, I reminded myself. I would have to accept that she no longer needed me—or wanted me.

  Before I could agree to return to our warbird, I spotted Sloane’s ship taking out a pair of fighters that had been chasing her friends’ ship. Tvek, she was as good a pilot as she’d claimed. Part of me wished to stay in the battle just to watch her artfully maneuver her ship but watching her would only make the regret inside me grow.

  Where would I find a female who would challenge me the way she had? Would a Vandar female be as knowledgeable about battle strategy? Would they be able to beat me at Zindar?

  It took me a moment to register Sloane’s ship becoming immobilized. I peered through the laser fire at the pair of Valox fighters, cursing when I realized that they’d both been caught in a tractor beam from the nearby Zagrath battleship.

  “The imperial battleship is dragging the Valox ships inside,” I said, as I punched in an intercept course.

  Ayden cut a glance to me. “What can we do, Raas?”

  My first instinct was to order the hordes to destroy the Zagrath vessel, but Sloane’s ship was too close. It would be incinerated in any explosion big enough to take out a battleship. The tractor beam itself was too strong to break and getting near it would mean being pulled in as well.

  I emitted a growl as I considered our options. “We are in a raiding vessel.”

  My majak glanced over his shoulder at where a team of raiders would normally stand, waiting to rush onto an enemy ship with axes drawn. “With no raiders.”

  “We do not need a team to extract a few humans.” I revised our heading to approach the underbelly of the imperial ship. “All we need are our raiding clamps.” I touched a hand to the hilt of my weapon. “And our axes.”

  “Your plan, Raas?”

  “We cannot allow the empire to take the Valox females.” The thought of the sworn enemy of the Vandar laying a finger on Sloane turned my stomach. “They are resistance fighters. If the Zagrath wish to break the resistance, it makes sense that they will try to extract information from its fighters.”

  Ayden made a low sound in his throat, voicing both his disapproval of the Zagrath and his distaste for what they might do to Sloane and her friends.

  “We will board the ship as if we were raiders, find the females, and take them from the ship,” I said as I instigated our invisibility shielding.

  “I do not wish to question your strategy, Ronnan, but how will we move around a Zagrath ship without being noticed?” He flicked a hand at our bare chests and battle kilts. “From what I understand, the imperial soldiers wear significantly more clothing than we do.”

  I slid my gaze to the leather strips parting to reveal my thick thighs. My majak had a point. We were not overpowering the Zagrath with our raiders. As only two Vandar, we would need to rely on stealth and cunning more than brute force. “We will adapt our plan once onboard the vessel.” I glanced at my axe. “Blood might flow.”

  Ayden nodded, as we flew closer to the hulking gray vessel. Neither of us were a stranger to violence or bloodshed. If it was needed to save Sloane and her friends, we would not hesitate.

  Our ship skirted underneath the enemy ship, and I found a vertical protrusion. Then I used our raiding clamps to secure us to the hull and cut a hole through the thick steel.

  With our own ship’s controls locked, Ayden and I took up positions and prepared to board the vessel.

  I stole a glance at him as the final cut was burned into the hull, and the scent of scorching steel filled the air. “For Vandar.”

  He met my gaze with a fierce one of his own, reminding me that he was still a highly trained Vandar warrior with a thirst for battle. “For Vandar!”

  I led us onto the ship, quickly assessing where we were, which was exactly where I’d hoped we’d be—in the lower storage area along with stacks of crates and rows of iron barrels. Our raiding clamps emitted power signatures that muddled sensors, so even if our presence was detected, the Zagrath wouldn’t be able to determine that their hull had been breached. I was counting on fluctuations in a remote storage area during a battle being ignored.

  “Vaes.” My skin tingled as I held my axe in both hands and motioned with a jerk of my head for Ayden to follow me down a corridor.

  When we rounded the corner, we stopped short as we almost ran headlong into a pair of Zagrath soldiers. They were beefy males who appeared to be guards, but they hadn’t been expecting us. Without pausing to think about it, I knocked one out with the flat of my blade then flipped it around and whacked the other with the heavy handle as he turned to run. Both collapsed in heaps on the floor.

  “You didn’t kill them,” Ayden noted as I bent down.

  I scratched at my chest, the tingling sensation I’d felt moments earlier now an uncomfortable burning. I started to remove the dark uniform from one of the unconscious males. “We need their uniforms, and I didn’t want to be covered in their blood.”

  My majak stared at me, his eyes widening.

  “You have a problem disguising ourselves as the enemy?”

  He shook his head. “No, majak.”

  I noticed that his eyes were fixed on my chest where I’d been scratching. I peered at my own flesh, and my heart lurched. My mating marks were extending up my neck and down my shoulders.

  “You have found your true mate, Raas,” he whispered almost reverently.

  I’d found her, and I’d pushed her away and into the clutches of the enemy.

  Chapter

  Forty

  Sloane

  “You don’t need to shove,” I grumbled, as an imperial soldier propelled me from my ship and into the vast hangar bay of the Zagrath battleship. I didn’t want to gape, but it was hard not to stare at the soaring ceiling crisscrossed with gleaming chrome beams. Staircases hugged the walls, with dark-uniformed soldiers clomping up and down them. Unlike the hangar bay at the Valox base, the floors here were shiny, despite the number of boots I assumed goose-stepped across it on the regular.

  Part of me was shocked that the empire had been able to hide battleships of this magnitude and staff them with enough remaining imperial soldiers, while another part of me wasn’t at all surprised that the galactic empire which had controlled the galaxy for generations had been able to rebuild itself enough to strike back so swiftly after its demise. Still, my gut twisted at the reality of the return of the empire.

  “Where do you want this one?” The solider jamming a blaster in my back asked, as he approached a straight-backed officer peering at an electronic tablet.

  Without glancing up, the Zagrath waved a hand. “Put her in the brig with the other ones. Someone will get them for interrogation soon.”

  I swallowed hard when I heard the word interrogation. I hoped I’d be tough enough not to crack under whatever brutal techniques they planned to use.

  My fears were momentarily forgotten when I was shoved toward two familiar figures. I had to suppress the urge to squeal and throw my arms around Thea and Cassie, when I saw them between a pair of grim-faced soldiers. Thea’s black braid fell down her back, which was ramrod straight, while Cassie flicked her blue hair from her face nervously.

  My chest swelled with affection for the friends who’d come looking for me and even brought a Vandar horde to secure my freedom. Then I remembered that we were all headed for interrogation.

  “Sorry I got you into this,” I said in a low voice once we were pushed together.

  “It’s not your fault,” Cassie assured me, darting an arm around my shoulders and squeezing before the soldiers could notice. “You didn’t know the Zagrath would appear.”

  “Maybe she did.” Thea gave me a nod. “And maybe if we and the rest of the resistance had listened to her earlier, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

 

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