CHAPTER 22

CADMUS

T he first thing I noticed about Artemis when she was standing right in front of me was that she was hot. Like, one of the sexiest women I had ever seen, even though her attire was one of the ugliest, most boring things to ever exist. And she was terrifying which created an added allure of danger. And she was still a mystery to me, which made her literally my ideal woman.

And let’s not forget that she’d watched me playing with my dicks before I had the chance to even consider wooing her. Unacceptable.

Now, with my half-risen erections rubbing against her delectable ass as we walked as a closed unit to collect the man who’d already had a taste of her, the friction combined with my jealousy got my blood pumping enough for half-mast to become rock hard.

Not the time, I mentally scolded them, willing them to go back down, but I had to settle for tucking them in the waistband of my pants to keep them from jutting out and stabbing her right up the ass. Just as we reached the infirmary, too.

Definitely not the time.

We did our best to look like we were on official business as we entered the medical wing since fraternisation that didn’t involve studying was strictly prohibited. It had been so long since I’d been able to just have a chat, or flirt, or anything that it was what I was most looking forward to after we left this place in our dust.

Unfortunately for us, it was neither Bromm nor Foryk that we encountered first.

‘What do you want?’ one of their team’s newest – idiotic – additions asked. I’d never been able to decide which of the two were more ridiculously incompetent, and I’d started to think it was a draw.

‘Who’s there?’ came Bromm’s voice right before his face appeared above Idiot Number One’s shoulder. His beard wriggled around his face even more frantically than usual, which meant he was feeling too much anxiety to contain.

Because of his conversations with Artemis, perhaps? If there was trouble in paradise, I was going to enjoy being her shoulder to cry on.

‘Foryk!’ he called into the room, and the lumbering mass of muscle immediately surged forward, needles already in hand. He took one look at us, his gaze moving directly between the gaps in our bodies to the woman hiding in the middle. He immediately jabbed both idiots in the neck then swung around to do the same with the nurse that was currently stationed nearby, preventing her from sounding the alarm. Their mouths gaped open as if to scream, or shout for help, probably both, but they dropped to the floor unconscious before they could release anything more than a breathy squawk.

Then I squawked when the woman I was surreptitiously rubbing against began to glow, and I leaped away in shock.

‘Sorry,’ she said after she dimmed back to normal. ‘I was just looping the cameras in here, too. There’s quite a lot of them.’

‘Looping the cameras how?’ Dorian asked, his confusion evident in the way his head tilted to the side and his thick black brows lowered over his red eyes. I’d always found them a little eery, the colour reminding me of old Tornu horror stories about the monsters of the Forbidden Planet.

‘I just connected to the databases and looped the feed from before. We won’t have much time if someone’s actively watching, so we’re going to need to get a move on.’

‘Artemis, what are you doing here? What’s going on?’ Bromm asked as he approached her, reaching between us to tangle his fingers with hers and looking much better than the last time we’d seen him. She let him, even going so far as to pull him closer to place a kiss on his cheek above his highly active beard.

So no trouble in paradise, then. But damn, did I enjoy a challenge.

Especially if that challenge lit up like she was her own blue little sun. That was a heat I would very much like to explore.

‘I don’t have much time to explain, but our rendezvous point is a no-go, I’m assuming there’s no other plan in place, so if you want out then you’ll have to stick close and help me free those in the facility first,’ she spoke quickly, getting straight to the point.

‘Shit. Okay. We’re leaving now?’

‘Our go-bags are in our dorm room,’ announced Foryk.

‘Leave them,’ said Dorian. ‘We don’t have time to double back.’

‘What about the others? Xander, Markus, T-‘

‘T? He’s the guard you were talking about?’ Artemis all but shrieked in alarm.

‘Uh, yeah…?’

‘Well, I’m not going out of my way to save his sorry ass,’ she snapped.

‘While I want to know the story behind that, we should probably focus on retrieving the others,’ Dorian piped in to bring us back on track.

‘Right, sorry,’ murmured Artemis, looking slightly cowed.

‘Where to now?’ I asked, wanting to wipe that look from her face.

‘Where’s the captain usually at during this time of the evening?’ she asked.

‘Probably at home,’ came a new voice I’d become vaguely familiar with over the past solar. ‘But since his woman was taken he could be avoiding going back there.’

Artemis looked like she’d swallowed a rotten egg when she turned to look at the Tornu guard as he approached. Oddly enough, Foryk mirrored her reaction.

‘I was hoping we’d get to leave you behind,’ the latter mumbled unkindly. In fact, it was as if his intent was to cut as deep as possible, the venom lacing his words deadly.

‘I second that,’ Artemis agreed.

T had always been a stoic, steady presence, almost like a statue in the back of our meetings. Now, however, despite the gas mask still covering his nose and below, there was a flash of hurt when Artemis expressed her distaste of him. There was definitely some history between these two, and it wasn’t the best if this scene was any indication.

‘What are you doing here, T?’ Dorian asked.

His answer didn’t exactly fill me with hope for our successful escape. ‘You’re not being as discrete as you think you are if I was sent to investigate.’ He levelled us with an expression brimming with disapproval, but there was an undercurrent of anxiety there, too.

‘Shit,’ Artemis cursed. ‘We have to hurry.’

‘I’ll get the rest of them and meet you at the hangar bay,’ T suggested, but was immediately shot down by Artemis.

‘Not a chance. I don’t trust you not to run off and spill your guts to your masters. You’re not leaving my sight.’

The vehemence in which she addressed him worried me. The last thing we needed as a group was for contention to build and form as an obstacle to our goals. But we didn’t have time for a therapy session now. We were going to have to find a way to get along long enough to work together, and then I could grab some snacks and settle in for the show.

Artemis was sexy as fuck when she was mad, and though now really wasn’t the time to allow for such thoughts they continued to invade my mind. My horniness would dissipate eventually, but I hadn’t had the chance to finish yet after she’d interrupted so it might take a while… I would probably bust a nut or two if I got to watch her beat someone up. My cocks were already weeping at the thought, only made worse by the mental imagery I conjured to go along with it. No doubt the front of my pants was sticky with precum as it seeped through the material.

My dreams were going to feature the moment Artemis first made her presence known while I was stroking myself, only instead of either one of us covering any body part I would keep pleasuring myself while she watched. I’d look her in the eyes with my own half-lidded and conveying my desire for her while she licked her lips, the thought of tasting me making her pupils dilate and her nipples to strain against her shirt. She’d rub her thighs together in an attempt to relieve the throbbing pressure building in her core…

‘Cadmus!’

‘Huh? What?’

‘That must have been one good stars-damned daydream, but we need you focused.’ Dorian snapped his fingers in front of my face and I smacked them away.

‘Right,’ I cleared the lust clogging my throat that made my voice deeper and huskier. ‘Focused. Sorry.’

‘If you won’t let me out of your sight, at least let me call my contacts to give Markus and Alexander a message. Tell them where to meet us,’ T offered.

Artemis’s face scrunched in indecision, but she eventually nodded her agreement. There was no time to dwell on the mistrust between them, and a leap of faith was necessary in order to continue forward.

‘Tell them to meet us in the hangar bay. I won’t tell you where I docked my ship, but I will say that I have one ready and waiting.’ Her response was terse like even speaking to the oversized Tornu guard was a pain, let alone offering up any sort of information critical to our escape.

‘And us?’ I asked, hoping I hadn’t missed anything important while imagining what Arty looked like out of that awful jumpsuit…

‘We head to the facility, grab Reece and Adara – though be prepared to find them in a… uh… not-so-great state… Then you all help me carry out at least two dozen toddlers. Got it? Good. Let’s go.’

She didn’t give us the option to argue, already heading off in the direction I assumed was where we needed to go. The six of us cadets reformed around Artemis while T trailed at a distance to keep up appearances. We waltzed through the academy without anyone the wiser, barely even running into any guards, and though I noted how unusual that was I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t walk the halls of Nova Academy past curfew, so I wasn’t aware of their shift schedules. For all I knew there were more guards posted than normal.

Yes, I was aware that was nothing more than a weak attempt to convince myself that there was nothing to worry about. Of course I wanted everything to run smoothly, for us to get our friends and the swarm of babies and be gone before anyone was the wiser, but lying to myself wouldn’t change anything.

In fact, it was probably the worst thing I could do right now. These people , my friends – the first real friends I had ever had – needed me to have my head in the game. This wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a simulation. We weren’t playing a video game. This was our reality and each of us would need to pull our weight if we were to get out of here alive. Including me.

Bromm had somehow wedged his way in beside me so that he was flush against Artemis from the back, and a strange twinge of jealousy sparked the adrenaline to flow through my veins at the way his left hand sought out hers, their fingers discretely intertwining out of everyone else’s line of sight. I only caught it because of my position in the formation. It was also how I caught the look of utter disbelief on her face, quickly chased by hope as she glanced surreptitiously at the Griknot royal out of the corner of her eye.

My oddly visceral reaction to the scene shocked me to my core, the surge of jealousy in my veins potent and hot. It was probably just because I had noticed her as a woman and found her attractive, but she was obviously already spoken for and I didn’t like it when I didn’t get what I wanted. It made the chase all that much more alluring when I had to work for it, but this wasn’t the type of scenario that would end well.

I mean, technically when I took whatever I wanted that meant I sometimes took from someone else, but I’d never cared about them missing out before. I didn’t want to take from Bromm, though, and yet I couldn’t shake the images my brain had conjured.

I could, however, shake the entire thing from my mind for the time being while my attention was needed elsewhere. I’d more than likely lose interest soon enough, anyway.

Someone nudged me from the other side, and I physically shook out my limbs to rid myself of these thoughts and feelings. My arousal was becoming a hindrance.

Focus, Cadmus , I chastised myself. This is your chance to prove to yourself and everyone else that you’re not a useless, self-absorbed idiot.

We left the academy without any fanfare, and while I wanted to believe that was a good sign, I knew better. This was the calm before the storm, and we were about to be in for a rough time. T’s presence was a big clue that The Program was already aware of our movements and Artemis’s arrival.

Looking at her now and the way we blatantly protected her, there would be no arguing that lines had been drawn and we’d chosen a side. We’d put all our eggs in Artemis’s basket and were about to face the consequences of that decision. For better or for worse.

But hey, I was always up for an adventure.

If only I’d known just how na?ve that was…