Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

HAVOK

D rekking Tekklans. They’ll do anything for money, but this time they went too far. Building a defense shield for the Grud was one thing, but casting a net in Galactic Alliance space that disables ships and pulls them into the gravity of the nearest Coalition planet pushes all acceptable boundaries of neutrality. They’ve chosen sides, clearly. The Alliance will retaliate.

If I can escape and warn them.

Drekk. Stuck in a cell in the underground caverns on Grudan is not where I planned to be this week. I promised my sweet sholani and younglings that I’d be home for Christmas. I still don’t understand all the nuances of the holidays that Jade and her sister insist we celebrate, but celebrating them makes my sholani happy, and that’s all that matters. That, and the younglings, both ours and the eeshone orphans. We are the only family they have, and Jade makes sure every one of them knows they’re loved.

It’s my job, my honor, to make sure she knows she’s loved .

Just thinking of her, my Little Citrus, Crispin, and the other younglings makes me dig faster, harder, but the cave floor is more rock than dirt. It could take weeks or months to tunnel beneath the laser bars that keep me in this cell.

Unacceptable.

I sit back against the cave wall and twirl the obsidian stone between my fingers. Little Citrus gave it to me after her class took a trip to the chain of dead volcanos separating the northern and southern continents. She kept a second stone, one of the same composition, for herself.

That green glow is where the memories are held, Daddy.

I love that she calls me Daddy. I’m not her biological father, but I’m the only father she’s known for most of her seven years. No matter how old she is or how much she whines that I should call her Clementine, her given name, she will always be Little Citrus to me. Crispin, who is only five, already looks so very zyanthan, despite his mother’s genes. Though his skin has lightened recently. My eeshone genetics at work.

I don’t know how Cris will be accepted later in life, as my people are not very forgiving, but I know Jade will always fight for him, as will the rest of my crew. They are all my family. Mine to love, mine to protect, and the reason I will not die here.

“Zyanthan pig, what do you have there?” The grud outside my cell asks, the glow of his deep-set yellow eyes intensifying as he focuses on the piece of obsidian. He flexes his claws for show. He’s the male who beat me unconscious yesterday, demanding information about ship placements, agents, anything tactical. I gave him nothing.

“A stone,” I answer, tossing it in the air and catching it. Toss, catch. Toss, catch. The grud’s scales shift over green skin as he watches. He’s agitated. Good.

A snarl echoes through the chamber as the guard’s lips curl back and he bares pointed, rotting teeth. They can do damage, but not as much as those claws which he’s been sharpening against the cave wall all morning.

“Toss it to me,” the grud orders. “It’s mine now.”

My eyes remain on his as I toss the stone in the air again and again. “Come and get it,” I bait him. He’ll see what tangling with a Zyanthan warrior means when he doesn’t have five guards restraining me.

Take the stone, Daddy. When you go to work. It will save all the memories.

There are many memories I won’t share with my Little Citrus, or even my sholani. They’ve experienced enough horrors already. Little Citrus likely doesn’t remember any of her time on Earth, but I know my sholani does.

There are times she senses my mood and knows when a mission has not gone well. She coaxes me to talk, despite my desire to protect her. She is my one. My heartmate, and the person who knows me better than any other, including my teammates, males who would die for me, as I would for them. But my sholani… I’d give my soul to save her.

I hold the stone up higher, taunting the guard.

I will bring you stories from where I travel when I return, Little Citrus. I do not need a stone for this.

Memories to take with you, Daddy. So you don’t forget us.

One last toss into the air before I slip it into my pocket, a move the grud does not miss. A move which angers him enough to rise from the rock on which he sits.

I could never forget you, or your mother and brother. But I will take the stone, because each time I look at it, I will know I carry a piece of you with me. And that when I return home, you will tell me all that I’ve missed.

Including if I’ve done something wrong, like painting Cris’s horns red.

Yes, even that.

Even now, I wish to laugh at the memory of her innocent expression and the grimace of my mate who stood behind her, washing the red paint from our son’s horns.

But I won’t laugh in front of this grud. He deserves no part of the memory, even my laughter.

“Give me the stone, Zyanthan.”

“Come take it, Grud. If you dare.”