Page 14 of Commander’s Mate

“That is not an answer.”

“No,” I said. “It is war.”

She flinched, but not away from me. Away from the truth.

I wanted to soften it. I did not.

“Inside,” I said.

This time she obeyed.

The shuttle lifted under fire seven minutes later with too many bodies aboard, too little seating, and air thick with sweat, fear, and disbelief. I stood near the ramp, one hand braced above me, watching the women huddled on the deck.

Harper sat with Scarlet, Zoe, and Nora. Kyanna Guryon held Sowia and wept soundlessly now that rescue had become real. A dozen others stared at us as if waiting for the price.

There would be one.

Freedom always had a price.

But not the one they feared.

Harper looked up and caught me watching her.

I should have looked away.

I did not.

Her cheeks colored. Her chin lifted as if daring me to make something of it.

Mine, my instincts whispered.

Not yet, my honor answered.

Maybe never, if she chose otherwise.

The thought was a blade.

I accepted it.

A mate taken from chains could not be claimed like salvage. If solmatu meant anything, it had to mean more than biology. It had to mean reverence. It had to mean restraint.

Even when every breath of her scent made restraint feel like pain.

“Docking in fourteen minutes,” the pilot reported.

“Tell Dreadnought One to prepare overflow spaces and medical intake,” I said. “And warn Admiral Degatu we are bringing more than the governor’s daughter.”

“How many more?”

I looked over the stolen, shivering, living souls packed into the shuttle.

“Everyone.”

Chapter Four

Harper

The shuttle smelled like metal, overheated air, cold fear, and a hundred bodies that had stopped pretending they were not terrified.