Page 157 of Tempting Fate

I watched with a numb detachment as another ship swooped across the sky. The T-shaped craft descended, growing in my vision like a threatening bird, and hovered above us.

So this was Redtusk’s ship, and I was going to space too. Only not with Airida.

Just as it felt as if my heart was being torn from my chest, a bizarre sensation gripped my very atoms.

Redtusk held me tighter, a growl rumbling out of him.

Then our feet lifted from the ground. We floated, caught in a strange, unnatural weightlessness, rising up and up in a glowing green haze.

A heady, desperate giggle escaped me. Abducted by aliens.

The dark interior of the ship grew closer and closer until it swallowed us whole.

CHAPTER SIXTY

Everyone's Problem

Airida

MY ONLY THOUGHT was Imani. Not what came next. Not that I’d been captured. Not the whirr of the engines so loud I could barely think. Just her.

I fought against my captors, giving everything I could, but even had I been in peak condition, not exhausted and sore from the last days in the caves, the bitter truth was I was no match for two kri’ith.

The last thing I saw before the ship doors closed was my beautiful mate in the hands of that foul male. Wild rage bubbled up, spilling out in ferocious growls and another round of struggling that would leave my muscles in agony later. I didn’t care. I forced one arm up and bit the fingers wrapped around it. Flesh gave way under my teeth, and he gave a pained shout.

My satisfaction was short-lived.

One of them kicked the backs of my knees, and I fell to the floor. “Stop skikking struggling or I swear to the gods this will be much worse,” the female snarled. “Stalker wants you alive. She didn’t say anything about unharmed.”

The bounty hunter.

My stomach roiled with nausea. I stopped struggling. Instead I took in my surroundings, the dim, red lighting that flickered in places, the panels that looked so much like a junker, the wiring hanging down in haphazard clumps. Nothing like the shabby but well-kept Dorimisa. Was this thing even safe?

The pair dragged me to the bridge. As my captors strapped me into a roughly rigged harness at the side of the room, I stared at the third member of the crew, a wiry nebaru barely taller than Imani. He wore his mane in a high, flowing tail, and his chin hair was bound into a long, thin pillar.

He gave me a brief glance and jabbed a slender, blue finger at his console.

A small holodisplay shimmered into life, revealing a darkened room and the faint outline of a sapient.

The comm crackled, and a rasping yet ethereal voice said, “Do you have him?”

“We do, Stalker, we do. Do you have my payment?”

Chills shuddered over my spines. Sweet, blessed Kri, this could not be happening.

The bounty hunter gave a grating snort. “Of course. Meet me as planned.”

The captain shared a sly glance with his crew. “We could delay. In light of your—

“I have been fractured, not incapacitated,” Stalker hissed. “Now unless you have anything important to tell me, go. I need to rest. Leave some of the bounty for me to play with.” The holo-image winked out.

Too much talking. Too many strangers. But I couldn’t afford to get overwhelmed. Show me a sign. Show me hope.

The captain turned to me with a wicked grin that turned my stomach, then waved a hand to the empty stations. “Hurry up. Take off before they catch us.”

Wait. Catch us? They? My chest clenched. My friends were coming.

The female kri’ith thudded into her chair and punched the controls, sending lights flaring across the ceiling console.