Now the only problem is you’ve got to carry it through a hostile garrison without getting caught.
He ignored the voice in his head, even if it was right.
He got the bundle onto his good shoulder, wincing as the contents settled with a loud clank. He stilled and waited, his heart hammering a clumsy rhythm against his ribs.
Still nothing.
The thing rattled every time he took a step, and the metal dug into his good shoulder. His injured arm screamed about the arrangement. He told it to shut the draanth up and kept moving.
Then he stopped.
Yesterday, the team had run the warm-ups before he’d even stepped onto the field. Called marks. Adjusted lines. Made the corrections without waiting to be told. Twelve angry exiles thinking like a unit.
He’d almost been proud of them. Obviously, he’d been careful not to show it, but they were showing willing, and that was more than most trainees he’d had.
Now he was about to burn the whole thing to the ground on his way out.
Without him, they had no coach. Everything would be gone. The team, the reason for the team in the first place. Vaath would wake up half concussed and never know his coach was the reason his life had gone straight back to trall.
He was an asshole.
Yeah, right. But you were an asshole when you were the highest player in the league. No surprise that you’re still one now.
Yeah, at least he was consistent. As coach used to say… consistency mattered.
He shifted the bundle higher and walked out of the stores.
The return trip went faster. There was no need to think now. Speed was all that mattered. At the junction, he slowed, checking the corner before he committed.
Vaath was still there, slumped against the wall. Chin on chest. Legs sprawled. Looking exactly like a guard who’d decided the floor deserved more of his attention than his job did.
Still breathing.
Good.
He stepped over Vaath’s legs, careful not to let the bundle clip the wall, and kept moving. He didn’t look back as the corridor sloped upward. The air changed with it, thinning out, drying.
He hit the release on the outer door, and the heat came through before it was fully open. It was dry, dusty, and also kind of personal. It was the sort of heat that was offended by your existence and did its best to wipe you out. A real piece of work, this planet.
The sky outside was dim and ugly, the stars up there doing their usual draanthing nothing. Four weeks on this planet and he still hadn’t found a single thing worth the trouble.
The door hissed shut behind him as he set off into the darkness and headed down the track toward the landing pads.
A human female was waiting for him.
And he had a delivery to make.
Something slammed into the slabcrete. Hard. The kind of hard that meant either a toolbox or a body. Cait closed her eyes and sighed, she’d had enough issues today. Standing upright, she miscalculated and cracked the back of her head on the open access panel. Pain burst bright behind her eyes.
“Fuc-fudge.” The word came out through her teeth as her hand flew to the spot.
The alien hottie was back. Shirtless, because apparently the return trip had a different dress code—bare-chested, with sweat-slick skin, his arms were wrapped in torn fabric, darkening at the edges. A bulky knotted bundle hung off his shoulder, and he wore that same smug smirk of a man who had personally solved every problem in the known universe.
He dropped the bundle at her feet, and the deck plating shuddered.
“Delivery.”
She shoved grease-streaked hair out of her eyes and looked up at him. “What?”
