Chapter 11

Min-Ji

"Are you okay?" I demanded to know. Kalani was the picture of health, but I had to ask because she had been trapped for close to a week, with nearly twenty testosterone-fueled guys for company. I could only imagine how many fights she had to break up and how badly she craved a nice hot shower and some privacy with her mate. I could handle a lot, but I was pretty sure that I'd go crazy if I had to spend that much time with the aspirants, the hunters, or any of the single warriors.

"Min-Ji! I am so happy to see you!" The beautiful woman threw her arms around my neck and hugged me tight, a grin splitting her face, eyes twinkling. "I tried blowing open the door, but I think that caused the rock to collapse." She pointed at the tunnel and then tapped the strange rifle she had slung over a shoulder. She had found that weapon in another underground cave system, and it was a powerful laser weapon. However, like my pistol, the charge was running low.

"Those super creepy spider robots welded the door shut. It wouldn't budge without a bit more power." I glanced at Corin, who was always easy to spot because his scales were such a pale blue compared to his brethren. Luckily, my mate had a whole lot of firepower at his disposal. Who knew that his favorite hobby, blowing things up, could come in so handy? Then my thoughts turned gloomy when I realized I couldn't think of him as my mate. He'd made it clear unless something major changed, we couldn't be together.

"Hey, hey! Are you okay? Where'd you go, honey?" Ah, I'd missed the way Kalani always took care of everyone and how observant she was. She was a lot like Corin in that way, but more like the stern, motherly type. Vera's second in command when it came to running the human side of things at Haven. I had missed her. I threw my arm around her neck and hugged her again with a sigh.

"Nothing we need to worry about right now," I said. "Come on, let's get everyone sorted so we can get out of here. We need to get back home. Everyone's been so worried! And Farah and Zeidon are fine. They managed to find their own way out of this place. Safely." Well, it had been an adventure fraught with peril, but they'd made it, and that was all that mattered.

The only shadow to the festive mood that filled the ranks was the sight of Reid being carried out on a stretcher improvised from spears and furs. Kalani explained to me in a low voice about the gas that had been pumped into the room at one point. He was the only one who had gotten sick, and she wasn't quite sure how that could be. Like Kalani and me, Reid had all the same inoculations and immune system boosters. He'd served in the UAR just like we had, though both he and Kalani had been court-martialed and fake-executed like the rest of the humans here.

Krashe and the anxious Water Weaver male were in the lead, holding Corin's lavender map between them. It appeared they were going to try to locate the strange lab with the doorway into Haven, the one that Farah and Zeidon had been held. It was the fastest way back home, and they'd need to unseal the door from this side if we wanted to have full control of everything down here. I shivered, thinking about the creepy, crawling bots and the Revenant beasts that prowled the tunnels. I hoped they'd clear them all out, or that Corin could somehow get them under his control.

"Ekkire is the best pathfinder we've got with us," Kalani said with certainty as she pointed at the green scales of the Water Weaver male. I vaguely recalled that those green males liked to roam far and wide and that they had an uncanny sense of direction. "But it will still be a while. Plenty of time for you to tell me everything."

I opened my mouth to tell her that she'd have to wait until we were alone, but I was interrupted when Corin sidled up to us. He'd been with Reid and the stretcher as we traveled, but I'd watched him approach each male over the past few minutes and wave his hand device around. "Quick health check, Kalani," he said, pretending that I wasn't there.

Triff beeped from inside my arms, and I ducked to put him down, annoyed when the bot followed Corin to the next person ahead of us after a quick "you're fine." "So, whatever that gas was, it didn't even linger in your system. Do you know why Reid got sick?" I asked, looking over my shoulder at the stretcher and the man's pale, sweaty face. He looked like he was in pain, a grimace contorting his features.

"Have you heard of the Shadow Unit?" Kalani asked. I rolled a shoulder to invite her to keep talking. I'd heard the name. It was something whispered about in the ranks, but not really something confirmed to truly exist. "Gene experimentation, nanobots, cybernetic enhancements… I think Reid must have been part of that unit. You've noticed that he's just as strong as a Naga, right? It's the only explanation for how he can keep up with them."

I tilted my head and looked again, but he didn't seem as impressive as the mysterious, fabled Shadow Unit soldiers. He looked pale and sick; he was in pain, and honestly, he looked like he was dying. It wasn't good. Then I recalled watching Reid and Corin spar, one of my favorite things to do, and realized that Kalani was right. Reid had uncanny reflexes, and he shouldn't be strong enough to be a match for any of the Naga. They were just too big for that to make sense.

"Now, enough distractions. Tell me, Min-Ji. I know something's up with you because you're normally far more cheerful than this." Kalani's stare was piercing, and I squirmed as I walked. I wasn't getting out of this conversation, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to tell her about Corin and his obsession with staying away to keep me safe. I was tempted to think of that safety in quotation marks. Was I really safe, or was that just an illusion in his head? Maybe he worried for no good reason.

I found myself spilling another big worry instead, the words rushing out easily once I'd opened that particular floodgate. "You know I was the pilot that flew the shuttle here, don't you? I was the one that got us crashed." And no matter how you looked at it, not all of us had survived. Farah had nearly died at the bottom of a lake. Other pods had fallen out of the breaking ship and been lost. It was a miracle that Charlie had survived that kind of landing. We knew at least one human had died because Naomi had reported seeing a human head-on carried by a Bitter Storm Naga.

Kalani flapped a hand at me. "Pfff, that old news? I know how the UAR works, Min-Ji. I was part of it." That was… anticlimactic, to say the least. I stared at her face to see if she was saying something other than what she was thinking, but her long-lashed brown eyes were dead serious. Then she smiled, and that tilt to her mouth made my stomach swoop with the first hints of relief. She meant it.

"I didn't know," I said fervently. "I swear to you, Kalani. I didn't know what the Praetor was transporting until I was ordered to fly that shuttle. Our sensor readings went haywire near Serant, and then…" I flashed back to the shuttle and those moments when I made the choice to shoot my superior officer. Jackson had deserved everything he got, but I had still played a part in killing him. I was no killer. I was just a transport pilot.

"Min-Ji," Kalani said, and she picked up my hand to squeeze it tightly. It made me jerk my eyes back to her face. I hadn't even been aware that I'd looked down at my feet. "The UAR compartmentalizes everything; it's how they stay in power. I understand. You got some hostility when we first got here, but that wasn't fair to you. We were all just reacting to an awful situation. Some of us"—she glared at poor, unconscious Reid—"needed someone to blame for a bit."

Reid had definitely been the most vocal about distrusting me, but he'd been friendly and welcoming after we'd settled into Haven. He'd never brought up my role as the pilot to Zathar and Vera, and they had never accused me of anything. Still, I felt like at any moment someone could remember and decide to banish me.

"I shot him, you know," I rushed to say, though my attempt to stop Jackson didn't really feel like enough. I'd known for a while, before the crash, what we were transporting, and I had still kept on flying. I hadn't known what to do to fix it. "I shot my navigator because he was going to steal one of the pods to better his odds of surviving the crash." I still remembered what it had smelled like after I shot him, the taste of it on my tongue, and it made nausea rise in my stomach.

Kalani smirked. "Good. See, you have nothing to worry about. You're a good person. You tried to get Cosima out of her shell, you're always there for me, and I know you're always willing to be Naomi's test person for new foods. You're one of us."

It had been a thought when I'd joined Corin on this rescue mission that freeing Kalani and the others would help me fit in. But I hadn't been necessary; I could see that now. Kalani never held my role in the crash against me, and those words were a balm to my soul. It didn't soothe the ache that Corin had caused, but it eased the other jagged pieces inside me.

When I looked away, my eyes collided with a pair of mercury ones. My belly clenched with a surge of something else, something closer to desire. Yearning, maybe. That look told me he'd heard everything, that he'd paid attention to every word I'd said. The small nod he gave me felt as rewarding as Kalani's "You're one of us."

***

Corin

That was one mystery solved, maybe even the whole problem. Kalani did not seem to have any issues with what Min-Ji had just told her. That was good. She was going to need her friends to keep her company; it would help her pick her life back up once we returned to Haven. She had a place, she fit in, and she'd be safe.

I swiveled my head left and right as I glanced at the aspirant Haven members who made up most of this party. Good, strong warriors who had been cast out from their clans because they had not found their mates after a certain amount of time. Males like Zathar, Iave, and me. Though some of them, like Ekkire, the Water Weaver, had simply joined because they were curious. The Water Weaver clan did not cast out their males for not finding a mate.

They were going to pursue her, the one available female. After I'd tasted her, I couldn't stand that thought. I never could, if I was honest with myself. If I wanted my mate to be happy and safe, then I had to leave. But Haven depended on me; I was vital to running its systems and repairing everything. I couldn't leave, not until it was all restored. I didn't know if I could stay that long—and stay away.

Then there was Reid. His situation was grave, and I didn't have enough knowledge to know what was wrong with him. Looking at the readings on my handheld device now made me realize that I had never treated him before. All the humans, even most Naga at Haven, had been in at one point or another for a scrape or bruise, or a bout of sickness. Not Reid.

Something foreign was in his system—that was obvious—but I couldn't tell if it was one or two substances. It didn't look like a sickness, and it seemed to be destroying him from the inside out, and I had no way to stop it. I had to consult with Artek; a full Shaman might know.

My hand went to the metal disk dangling from a leather cord around my neck, and a wave of sadness rushed through me. That disk was my invitation, and the Shaman council had not formally withdrawn it, even after the Thunder Rock Queen had stopped me from returning to my training. If I'd had more time to study, I might have been able to help Reid. I felt inadequate, trapped in a life that shouldn't have been mine.

I glanced back at Min-Ji, and my chest grew tight when I saw that she was smiling and talking cheerfully with Kalani. Iave was right behind them, not talking, but still part of the merriment, because his mate kept smiling at him. I didn't want to be jealous of my friend, but I was. If the Queen… If I'd finished my training… Things could have been different. I could have been there with Min-Ji. She could have been mine.

"We found it! This is the lab," Krashe's call at the head of our traveling group went out, and I took the opportunity to focus on what I could do: explore the lab and help the warriors unblock the door from this side so we could return to Haven. I'd have to come back down here to inventory all these experiments and relics too, to make sure nothing was dangerous. "Sweep out," Krashe ordered. "Make sure the Revenant's head isn't in here."

I switched into hunting mode along with the other warriors and easily fell into place among them, familiar and comfortable with the hunt, even in a place as spooky and strange as this one.