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“Yes, I’m sure you were amazing.” She laughed and caught my gaze. “Maximum Good Hunter had dinner.”
My lips twitched. “Good. I’m sure the surviving burvoles will tell their children scary stories about him for generations to come.”
The cat meowed in agreement and pranced ahead of us to the shed, his tail held proudly erect.
I rolled open the door and popped open the flyer’s canopy. Vivv and I took the front two seats, with the kreecat on her lap. Once the flyer’s glass top had closed around us, I used the tiniest amount of power to roll the craft free of the shed and out into the backyard.
Vivv looked over at me, her eyes full of hope and fire. “We’re really doing this. You’re really taking me off world.”
“I really am.”
She smiled at me, really smiled for the first time, all wariness erased from her features.
She knows. My heart raced, my tail vibrating to life.My soul’s breath finally knows she can trust me.
The engine roared, and we lifted into the air. My heart soared as well. This was it—this was the thing that would win her trust for good.
A soul-deadening silence fell, and the control panel went dark. We dropped with a sickening lurch, slamming into the ground in a teeth-rattling thump.
Max yowled, squirming where the straps held him to Vivv.
I spun toward her. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Her eyes flashed fire, but her hands were steady as she worked to release the kreecat. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” I pounded at the dashboard, frustration eating at me. We’d been so frekking close to escaping! No matter what I tried, none of the controls worked.
I reached under my seat and pulled the emergency lever. The seal of the canopy popped as it disengaged, but without power to the mechanized lifters, it didn’t open.
Frek me. I shoved upward, my horns clacking against the glass, and pushed with all the strength of my legs.
The hinge mechanism groaned as I forced the canopy to move, and the glass top inched upward. I shoved again, my neck complaining at the strain even as my thighs burned.
Vivv stood, her arms stretched overhead to help.
With the squealing complaint of metal on metal, the glass roof hinged upward another few feet, then stuck. Good enough.
The kreecat leaped down to the ground with feline grace. I climbed out and offered a hand to Vivv, who asked, “What’s the plan?”
“It must be an electrical short of some kind.” I had to hope it was both obvious and an easy fix. If we didn’t get off the ground in the next ten minutes, we’d lose our rendezvous window.
The door to the engine compartment slid open, and I searched the visible wires and connections. Nothing. Frekking nothing!
“Imagine my shock when I saw the surveillance footage,” a voice said behind me. One I hadn’t heard in years. “My own son, breaking our people’s most sacred covenant and returning to Zaar as an unmated male banished to Roam.”
Vivv whirled, her fists raised.
Shock rooted me to the spot even as an icy blade of pain pierced my heart and stopped my breath. My mother. I’d wanted to see her for so long, yet in this moment, I dreaded doing so. What would her face show? Remorse? Anger? Or worse… a chilling nothingness?
But my mate needed me—I couldn’t indulge in personal hurts. I turned.
Mother’s face still resembled mine—we shared the same nose and eyes—but more creases bracketed those eyes. A few lines of silver graced the inky black hair pulled back in a warrior’s braid. She stood almost as tall as me, and muscle covered her shoulders and chest, attesting to the fact that she still trained. My father was the thinker of the family, but my mother had always been a warrior, even if her real battles were fought with words.
She stood tall, her shoulders back, her expression carefully shielded. She’d always called it her battle pose, the one she adopted when addressing the Senate or dealing with other politicians.
It hurt—frek, it hurt!—to see her using it with me.
“You disabled the flyer,” I said.
