Chapter 2

Mitnick

I roared when my palms slammed into the force field of my cell, and sparks flew. It burned against my skin, but that bite of pain was not enough to stop me from doing it again and again. They stole my mate from me; they took her! I flared out my wings and slammed my palms against the force field. My instincts were all-consuming; a single-minded focus immune to any attempts at rational thought.

Not only had they stolen my sleeping mate, but they had locked me up, and they'd taken all my weapons and my tools. I was useless in there, locked up tighter than tight, and felt powerless. It was not a feeling I relished when I was always the one in control, the one holding all the cards. I should be with her, I should be there when they woke her. She was my mate.

"Look at yourself," a dark voice said coolly. The male's voice preceded his arrival in front of my cell, but I knew who it was without seeing him. The Sineater. His arrival finally jerked me away from uselessly raging against the force field that kept me locked up. He was such a cold, threatening presence that my instincts tingled, jerking me back from the brink of insanity.

Look at myself? I was a mess, raging against technology when I had far better means than my fists to deal with a simple force field. I had not been thinking, my mind fixated bashing through my obstacles to get to my mate. That wasn't me, that wasn't how I normally operated. His words were like ice water down my back, shining a light on how crazy my instincts had made me.

They had not stolen my mate; they had taken her to see the doctor to heal her. If I acted calm now, I could see her soon. Then I glanced up into the Sineater's silver eyes and my stomach shrunk, my hearts clenched painfully in my chest. That was not the gaze of a male ready to show mercy. He looked cold, unforbidding, and a sardonic smile curled his mouth.

I froze in place, my wings closing snugly behind my back. Without my cloak to cover them, I felt exposed, but it was more than that; it was him. That's how Sin made anyone feel when he turned that gaze on you, and when his symbiont prowled on four legs in front of my cage, I knew he was feeding. Feeding off me. His favorite meal was the dark, negative feelings of everyone around him. I imagined I could see the symbiont swell in front of my eyes, though rationally I knew that wasn't true.

"Let me out of here, Sineater," I demanded, hiding my unease behind a cool facade. He stood in front of my cell in a military at ease pose, his legs braced slightly apart, and his hands clasped behind his back. His gray skin glinted silver beneath the bright overhead lights, faintly hinting at markings lying just beneath the skin. Even in my dire predicament, I felt my curiosity piqued at the sight of those. They looked just enough like some kind of script to make me wonder what was written on his flesh, or if it was just random happenstance.

"Let you out?" the male laughed, but the sound was cold, mean, and it rankled my frayed nerves. For a moment, my instincts, my battle rage, tried to take over again, but I managed to stay in control this time. I bared my teeth to show him my displeasure and raised the feathered crest on my head in a threatening display.

"Yeah, let me out! I'm in control now. There's no reason to keep me here." I wanted to demand he take me to my mate but swallowed those words, certain that they would make him more determined to keep me locked up. They thought I was a threat to her, but they didn't understand. I could never harm her. My sole purpose in life was to keep her safe, to protect her in any way she needed me to.

"No," he said, drawing out the word while he finally moved to cross his arms over his chest. His eyes gleamed at me, charged from all the feelings he was drawing from my flesh. But finally, his symbiont stalked away from the force field to sit at his side. A big hound-like creature with a sharply pointed snout and large ears. It gleamed like quicksilver, bright and beautiful, and also very deadly.

That thing made the Sineater so powerful that he was undefeated in a fight, invincible, and it healed him too if he did get injured. The Sineater was the closest thing to an immortal that existed in this galaxy. He was primordial and terrifying, but he was also part of the Varakartoom's crew, and he'd been loyal to our captain, to all of us. It never seemed that way, but the Sineater took care of us, of our moods. Already, I felt lighter, stronger, and far more in control. Not for the first time, I wondered what it cost him to absorb all that darkness from the rest of us.

"So where did you find her?" he drawled, and my mating heart pounded fiercer in my chest. I tapped my sternum thoughtfully, relieved that I could stay on top of my instinct to lash out this time. What did I tell him? The truth? Or would it be better to say I'd only recently found her? I was still debating my options, and ignoring the Sineater's growing glare when the Captain arrived.

"Leave," Asmoded barked angrily, and for the first time I remembered that the Captain and his Second-in-Command weren't currently on speaking terms. The Sineater's suspicious nature had nearly caused the captain to lose his mate only a short time ago. I grinned at his gray face and he knew exactly what I was thinking, but I didn't care.

With a slight baring of his teeth, the Sineater spun his heels and stalked from the brig without so much as glancing at our captain. His symbiont flowed after him with an unnaturally smooth stride, something I was certain a creature with actual joints could never achieve. When they were gone, it felt like a cloud had been lifted from the room, a dark, thunder-laden cloud.

The Captain slithered up to the front of my cell with his long serpentine body, his black scales glittering with hints of gold and bright green along the edges. I squared my shoulders, stepping into an at-attention pose by reflex at the sight of him. I only just refrained from offering him an instinctive salute. None of us on the Varakartoom were military. We were a mercenary outfit and did not stand on such ceremony, but most of us did come from military backgrounds. Not me, but the habits of the others had seeped in.

"Mitnick, what the blazing suns are you up to?" he said, his eyes zeroing in on my face. He looked upset, angry enough that he might throw me off the ship at the next port of call. I made my feathered crest lower, flattening it against my skull, and pressed my wings tightly against my spine to make myself look less confrontational. I had not cared about that with Sin, but Asmoded held the fate of my mate and me in the palms of his hands.

"She is my mate," I said, and somehow those words left my mouth with a possessive snarl. I fought to control that tone when it made him glare; I needed to stay calm. I needed to prove to them that I could be trusted to be let out of this damn cell. "I just wanted to heal her, and a chance to claim her."

Those were not the words he wanted to hear; I could tell from the way his expression tightened. If he had skin like my species did, I would see the veins pulse at his temples. His scales made that kind of tell impossible to see, but I sensed it. I tried to backtrack. Which word had triggered his anger?

"Claim?" he said coolly. "That's not how it works." I raised an eyebrow, my feather crest rising halfway while I cocked my head. It was an invitation for him to explain. A mate was yours. They were sacred, and claiming was what you did. Every male knew this. And now he was saying the opposite?

"You stole her from the vault, Mitnick. You stole her from Batok. And you kept her hidden in your damn quarters for an entire year while she languished in stasis!" He harshly slashed the air with his arm, then jabbed a finger at the force field. "You betrayed our trust, you betrayed hers. You don't deserve a mate."

My wings shivered against my back, and if not for the Sineater who'd drained most of my rage from my body, I would have mindlessly tried to attack. No, he was wrong! I did what I had to, to save her, to protect her. They would have taken her from me if I'd brought her to Dravion, and I had healed her. She had not languished; she'd come so far from the painfully thin creature I'd found.

"Please, Captain," I said to him. "If that was Mandy you'd found in that vault, you would have done the same! She is my mate. I would do anything to protect her!" Anything she wanted, I'd move the heavens to provide it for her. But I would not let anyone take her from me, that was the one thing I could never allow.

Maybe I was imagining it, but it seemed to me like Asmoded's eyes softened just a fraction. I pressed my advantage. "She was at death's door. The stasis pod was her only option. Please. I just wanted to keep her safe. Let me out, let me see her. I need to know she's all right. Did she wake up?" That was too much. His expression shuttered, and I knew I wasn't going to like what he'd say next.

"You're not getting out. Mitnick, you broke the rules. You need to tell me everything about where you found her. Does Batok know you have her?" He was concerned about a threat to the ship, about a Crimelord who'd been climbing the ranks over the past year. He had leaped from just a minor lord to one of the bigger players in the quadrant now that Drameil was dead and gone.

I understood that, but I'd done my own threat assessment; that was my job. I knew we were safe. There was nothing to worry about and I told Asmoded as much. We'd stolen a lot of valuable ores from that safe and several of his slaves. If anything, that should enrage him more than the human he'd simply left to die.

My fists clenched at my sides and I hurried to tuck them behind my back so Asmoded would not think I was losing control again. "When?" I asked instead, "What do you want me to do? I only did what I thought was right."

Asmoded sighed, his hand going up to massage the nubbed ridges that formed his brows. He looked tired, and I felt a pang of guilt. His mate was recovering in med bay, and I didn't know how long I'd been down in the brig. Was Mandy up yet? Or was the captain now responsible for two healing humans? I muffled a growl. No, my mate was my responsibility, not his. I'd make him see that, when he let me out of here, I'd show him that.

"I don't know," Asmoded said eventually. "I need to think about this. You should have come to me for help right away. You risked Harper by not taking her to a doctor. But I understand how powerful that mating drive is. You still can't see her, Mitnick. She needs time to recover."

Harper. Was that her name? I liked the sound of it very much; it sounded exactly right. I'd had almost an entire year already to get used to the dual beat of my living and mating hearts, and still, it startled me when my mating heart thumped harder, wilder. Adrenaline tingled through me, a battle readiness. Or maybe this was intended to prime me for mating, rather than fighting.

I met my captain's eyes and forced myself to nod politely. "I understand," I said, though I really didn't. It was simple: she was my mate, and I needed to be at her side. But I knew that's what he wanted to hear me say, so I said it. I would bide my time, I would find a way around this. Thinking out of the box was what I was good at. There had to be a way to be present for my mate, even if this stupid force field prevented me from being there in the flesh.

The Captain's gaze was full of suspicion at my answer, but when he turned and started slithering from the room, his shoulders lowered. "Your mate is fine. She woke up and is now rapidly gaining strength. Don't worry." Then he was gone.

The concession surprised me, but I greedily soaked up any information about my mate. So she was awake at last, and she was doing well. Relieved at that news, I sank down on the cot at the back of the cell and contemplated my next move. Harper. Such a beautiful name as befitting my sleeping beauty, my little Novi. No longer asleep now, and I was dying to speak to her, to discover the color of her eyes.

I touched the left side of my head where normally my visor and computer interface clipped to my skin and curved around my ear. With it, I could connect to any computer aboard the Varakartoom, and pull up every security feed. I also used it to control my drones, but the interface visor and drones had both been confiscated. They thought they'd tied my hands by doing that, but they were wrong. Now that I was fully in control of my instincts once more, I had many more options at my disposal.

I was not Ysathae, the gifted engineer who ran the Varakartoom's engine room with a tight fist, but I knew every single blueprint of this ship by heart. I glanced at the walls that surrounded the brig and knew that I could access the force field and turn it off. That was going to have to wait unless I discovered that my mate was in danger.

The cameras then. I would start with those. I rose to my feet and flared out my wings, and under the guise of exercise, I quickly got to work. Accessing the right panel under the cover of a wing, setting up a loop for whoever was watching, and then I was in for real. Every camera on the ship at my fingertips.

It was the work of a moment to pull up the feeds for the med bay so I could get my first look at my mate while she was awake.