Between the two of us, it didn’t take long.
When we were finished, the bounty hunter was trussed tight enough that he couldn’t do much more than twitch. He’d live.
That galled me.
But he’d live.
I hefted him over my shoulder and carried him out of the refrigeration unit, through the cidery, past the spilled crates and the dent his body had left in the cooler door. Outside, dusk had settled purple over the farm, and Lorkin’s truck idled near the path.
I dumped the hunter into the bed hard enough to knock the breath from him.
Lorkin threw a tarp over him.
The static storm that had been threatening all afternoon finally broke over the eastern ridge. Violet and gold light rolled through the clouds without sound. Above us, the thin ring around the planet had started its nightly glow.
It should have been beautiful.
It wasn’t.
Not when a man had crossed half the galaxy to drag my mate back to a cage.
Lorkin braced his forearm on the side of the truck and studied me across the bed. Storm-light flickered over the old scars on his face.
“A human mate,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
He shook his head. “I told you that program would bring trouble. They’re fragile, Kazan. One bad winter. A fever. One fool like this.” He jerked his chin toward the tarp. “And they break.”
“She didn’t break,” I said. “She fought him.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not approval, but close enough.
Lorkin hauled himself into the cab and started the engine. “I’ll take care of this.”
I looked back toward the house.
Maisie was there. Waiting.
Alive.
Mine.
Lorkin put the truck in gear. “Go take care of your mate.”
7
MAISIE
The cutson my palms had stopped bleeding, but they still stung every time I moved my hands. I kept moving them anyway.
I sat on the edge of the hearth because the chairs in Kazan’s house were too big for me, and I didn’t trust my legs to get me into one without making a fool of myself. The fire had burned low. Outside the windows, the static storm washed everything in pulses of violet and gold.
It should’ve been beautiful.
I couldn’t care about beautiful right now.
I’d cleaned my hands myself. Found the tap, stretched up to reach it, and ran cold water over the cuts until the worst of the blood was gone. Then I picked out the tiny shards of glass one by one and tried not to think about the sound the bottle had made when it shattered. Or the look on Kazan’s face when he’d gone after the man who’d come for me.
