After that, things moved shockingly fast. Shackles removed, some kind of injection given, and then we were ordered to get going. A tight two-hour window was given for us to complete the task. I wasn’t quite sure what was expected of me when Flack rose to his feet. I’d been hauled along but otherwise ignored. When Flack rose and began walking, I was certain I was supposed to simply follow.
I took one step, and the dirt, twigs, and oddly star-shaped nuts that littered the clearing crunched sharply beneath my bare feet. This was going to be extremely unpleasant to walk on, but I’d take it if it meant getting out of here. Of course, Flack wouldn’t let me take much more than two steps and, heedless of everyone watching, suddenly picked me up and threw me over his shoulder.
I feared my skirt would lift enough for the pistol to be seen, but he clamped his arms around my thighs to pin me against him. Then he jogged away so quickly that nobody even had the chance. That already felt like escape; each step he put between us and the pirates waiting in the clearing made the hope for freedom surge in my veins. I could taste it then, the escape, the plan he supposedly had to get us out of here. For the first time in forever, I was off the ship, and there was a whole world to disappear into.
“You okay, my sweet?” Flack asked, not even winded after carrying me at a fast pace through the woods for what had been over five minutes by now. He must have waited to be absolutely certain we were out of hearing range before he spoke to me. Now he halted and began lowering me in his arms until he held me in front of him, our eyes able to meet. His were glowing with barely banked excitement, and I felt the steady thump of his heartbeat against my breasts.
“I think so,” I whispered. “What now? What are we going to do about that?” I raised a hand to indicate the collar sitting like an angry black mark around his neck. I couldn’t bring myself to name it; it was that distasteful. It made my stomach roil with painful memories.
He smirked like it was nothing. “Oh, that? Not a problem. Let me take care of it right now.” He put me on my feet very gently, his hands lingering on my waist until he was certain I was steady. His fingers gave me a gentle squeeze around my waist as if to say, I love touching you, and I can’t get enough. Then he stepped back and, with a flourish, bowed for me. His grin was so wide I knew he had something good planned.
I think this might be the first time I’d seen him shift in daylight, or what passed for daylight beneath the shade of all these trees. His body rippled, changed, and then shrank before my eyes. Oh, I got it now. When he finished reshaping, he was the tiny little fox that had first slipped into my hideyhole on the ship. Cute, but so small that the big slave collar hung around his neck all the way to the ground. When I went to my knees in front of him, I could lift it straight off without any trouble at all. He yipped cheerfully, wriggled his body, and wagged his plumed tail, and then he grew.
He kept growing until he was the massive fox that had barreled to the rescue when I’d been cornered by Xathena. From tiny to massive, he now towered over me. His snout was as long as my forearm, his fangs terrifying, but his big, mobile ears somehow still equally cute. He plucked the collar from my fingers with that fanged maw, crunched down on it with a growl, then dropped it to the forest floor.
A moment later, he’d shifted back into human shape, still somehow dressed in black pants and boots. I hadn’t paid the right amount of attention to him, I realized, to figure out how he didthatparticular trick. Shouldn’t the clothing have fallen entirely off him when he got small, just like the collar had? He’d definitely been fully naked last time...
He spread his arms out as if to say, “Tada!” for a magic trick he’d just performed. He might as well have; it did look like magic to me. How was one man able to take shapes of such incredibly different sizes? It didn’t seem possible. I clapped softly for him as I let the full weight of my relief wash over me. With the collar off him, there was nothing stopping us from vanishing into the forest without a trace, was there? Had we done it, escaped?
Flack picked up the now-broken collar with a curl of distaste around his pretty mouth. He reached into the broken control unit and tore tiny internal components free, only to hurl them with a whip of his arm deep into the forest in one direction. The collar was hurled the other way, scattering the pieces so they would be extremely hard to recover. “With that sorted,” he said, “ready for a fun ride?”
I wasn’t quite sure what “fun ride” meant in his book, but the twinkle in his eyes only promised good things. I’d learned torecognize that look by now: naughty with a hint of mischief. He shifted back like he was quicksilver, shedding his human form so easily it felt like I’d barely blinked. A fox the size of a pony, he was as tall at the shoulder as I was, and covered in that thick, lush white fur. His tail was tipped with black, and his ears and eyes were rimmed with the same dramatic shade.
It was breathtaking to stand face to face with a beast this large and dangerous. He was distinctly fox-like in shape, but looked as deadly and dangerous as a wolf, or some other big predator. His ears wiggled, his tail wagged, and that made all the difference. When he moved, it was so sleek, but then he dipped into a playful bow, tongue lolling, and wriggled before he rolled onto one shoulder and threw all four massive paws up in the air. I giggled, my hand slapping across my mouth as the sound escaped, because damn it, that was cute. It was also bizarre behavior for a beast this size; it just didn’t look right.
When he bounced back up, playful as a puppy, he padded toward me with a tail wagging so wildly I could feel the wind it generated. Perhaps he was simply showing me I had nothing to fear, but I had a feeling he was also acting out a little just because he enjoyed being his big, predatory self. When he went to his belly in front of me and jerked his pointy snout toward his back, I finally got the “ready for a ride” statement from earlier. He wanted me to climb onto his back…
It was also the first time I truly looked at his hindquarters and realized he was still covered in black panels of armor. His hind paws were also encased, protected by what had previously been his boots. Somehow, they’d stretched, shifted, changed; exactly in the same way his body had. Whoever had created that armor, they’d known exactly what they were doing to make it work forFlack’s needs. This essentially meant I was eye to eye with a fox wearing pants, and that kept me giggling as I moved to his side to do as he wanted and climb onto his back.
I’d gone horseback riding a few times before, though I’d never really taken lessons. Riding a massive fox was nothing like that, and I struggled to find something to even compare it to. For starters, he was just shaped very differently, and the fur that covered him was extremely thick and shaggy. The fur was so thick that, when astride his back, it took a moment for his warmth to seep through into my skin. When he moved, it was also with much faster, more fluid motions, agile in a way a horse’s body simply never could be.
I had to cling to handfuls of fur to stay on his back, lying low against him to keep my balance. His pace, when he broke into a trot, was very steady and even, so his back barely swayed as he ran. Those massive paws and long legs ate up the ground like it was nothing, dirt and trees blurring when he picked up speed. It was, despite the even pace, not entirely comfortable. His back was straight and too smooth, so I constantly felt like I might slide down the side and fall off.
It was exhilarating anyway. The best ride of my life. To go that fast, and know that each long step took me further away from the pirates, it gave me a sense of freedom and joy that brought tears to my eyes. Running through those woods atop his back, it was special; it made me feel like we were flying. He’d done it, he’d fulfilled a promise I’d scarcely been able to believe when we first met. I’d never take freedom for granted again. It didn’t even matter that I had no clue where he was taking us, or what we’d do now that the danger was over.
Then, through the trees in the distance, I could see a change: more light, and the gentle, undulating slope of the mountain rising beyond. A building appeared as we got closer, and Flack began to slow his ground-eating pace. It sprawled in a U-shape, surrounded by tall walls and several outbuildings. A building much like a massive estate, a mansion meant for parties and extravagance.
This had to be the place where the diamond was kept. All at once, something akin to betrayal began to unfurl in my belly. A first hint of unease, a horrible feeling of impending doom. He’d taken us to the one place I thought we didn’tneedto go. Did he want to steal the diamond anyway? And if he did, what else had he been hiding? Had I chosen to trust the wrong man after all?
Chapter 18
Flack
I halted at the edge of the border I’d scouted the day before. Irena was a gentle weight on my back, one I relished with every breath I drew into my lungs. Still under the cover of dense shrubbery, my current height gave me an unimpeded view of the complex. I tilted my head back, lifting my nose into the air, and inhaled deeply. There were many scents here, and they all told a story.
When it came to the security of this place, what I cared about most were the patrolling guards themselves. I took a moment, simply standing there, to map out their paths and timing to confirm it was the same as yesterday. Standing in place was making my mate impatient, however. She slung her leg over my back and began to slide down my side to get back on the ground. I did not like that. Her tiny feet were unprotected by shoes, vulnerable to anything sharp lying around. The strange trees on this planet dropped spindly sort of nuts, and they littered the ground everywhere.
Shifting, I stretched back into my human shape. I wanted to warn her about the sharp things on the ground, but those words froze in my throat when I completed the change and saw her face. She was pale, but that was not a surprise; she hadn’t seen sunlight in months. It was her eyes, big and brown, that warned me something was seriously wrong. My heart began to pound inside my chest in response, but I knew enough about people to know this was no external threat. Something was causing her distress, and perhaps it was even something I’d done.
Catching her hand, I found it cold to the touch. I drew it toward me and tried to warm the small digits between my hands. She wouldn’t have it, resisting my gentle pull and curling her hand into a fist by her side. She was definitely mad at me, and I’d never had my Irena upset with me before; not like this. I lowered myself to my knees at her feet, my gaze fixated on those shocked brown eyes, my voice hoarse as I asked, “Tell me, what did I do wrong? How have I upset you, my beautiful mate?”
She narrowed her eyes at me and shook what appeared to be her shock off with a huff. “I could have sworn we were in the middle of escaping, not staging a diamond heist…” She flung her hand in the direction of the mansion, and I caught that little fist by reflex. Drawing her fingers to my chest, I pressed them there, hoping to impress upon her the sincerity of my loyalty. I could see now where her mind had leaped, and she couldn’t have been more wrong.
“Why not both?” I drawled, a smirk curling my mouth that did not draw an answering smile to her face. Frowning, I refused to let her free her hand, keeping it pinned to my chest instead. “We are being tracked. Not very accurately, but a droneiswatching the movement of our life signs. There is only one true way to escape,” I said. I tilted my chin and nodded toward the mansion. “Remember that tattoo on my leg? It’s a map of that place, and that includes escape tunnels. To shake Dimon and his crew entirely, we must go through there.”
“Oh,” she whispered, “that’s… that’s not what I expected.” She eyed the mansion again, but she stopped pulling on her hand to free it. I took that as a good sign and shuffled a little closer so I could place my free hand on her hip. Her scent was beginning to gather around me now that we’d stood in place for a while. Itwas no longer getting whipped away by the wind as I ran, and it began to tell me little clues: a taste of betrayal, a hint of fear, and the bitter taste of failure. She had gotten lost in her head and thought the worst, and that shot pain through my chest. Had I not gained her trust by now? Did she not believe I would go to the ends of the galaxy for her?
“My sweet, that diamond is not important the way you are,” I assured her. “I would never endanger you to get it, never. There is no treasure in this galaxy more precious than you. Understand?” I had never said such things and meant them with every fiber of my being before. I discovered then that there was a curious kind of vulnerability to saying it. I’d exposed something very important, and in the process given her the power to hurt me; to reject me.
