Page 57 of Vindicated

"Off the ship."

Off the ship? Was he planning to send us off in a transport while a battle was raging? Were things on the warbird that desperate?

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why did they hunt down this horde? Is it because we’re on it?”

Even as I asked that, it didn’t make sense. We were a bunch of theatre types. Sure, we might have supported the rebellion, but I couldn’t imagine that we were worth risking a Zagrath battleship over. He didn't answer, and the muscle ticking hard in his jaw told me he wasn't going to. Not now.

We wound through the warbird at a punishing pace and spilled out into the hangar bay, which was as chaotic as the rest of the ship. Fighters roared off and burst through the energy field while ground crew sprinted between damaged ships that limped back in trailing smoke. Lorken steered us toward a waiting transport, practically shoving my friends up the ramp ahead of me.

I had one foot on the ramp when a voice boomed from behind. “Stop where you are, or I will shoot."

I froze. Lorken went rigid beside me, his hand tightening around mine as we both turned.

An older Zagrath officer stood a short distance away, blaster raised, flanked by two soldiers. But it wasn't the weapon thatmade my stomach curdle. There was something in the shape of his eyes and the set of his mouth that seemed eerily familiar, although I was certain I’d never encountered him on Kashara.

His gaze was locked on me as he cocked his head to one side. “You look so much like your mother.”

The words lanced through me and robbed me of breath. My mother? Then I knew without a doubt that the enemy officer facing off against us was my father.

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” he continued. “Then just when I was sure I’d tracked you down, the Vandar swooped in and took you.”

The world seemed to tilt sideways. Was I the reason all this was happening?

Lorken stepped in front of me before I could so much as draw breath, his body a wall between me and my father. “She is not yours to take.”

The officer's mouth curved, the smile almost tender. Then he shrugged lazily and fired. The blast hit Lorken and threw him backward into the transport with a sickening crack as his body hit metal.

I screamed his name as one of the Zagrath wrenched me away and handed me off to my father. All I could think, as I was forcibly dragged away from Lorken, was that I had killed him.

Chapter 49

Lorken

Pain came before sight, a dull, throbbing pressure that radiated from my chest outward until it split my skull. I became aware of the cold steel of the deck beneath me, the acrid stench of scorched metal, and a voice calling my name from a distance. A very great distance.

"Raas." Dawz's face swam into focus above me, his brow pinched and his lips thin. "Do not move."

I tried anyway. The moment I attempted to push myself up, a bolt of fire lanced through my chest and stole the breath from my lungs. I fell back with a hiss.

"I told you not to move." Mymajakpressed a finger to my sternum, holding me down with little effort. "You were struck."

"My chest?”

"Your arm." He nodded toward my left side, and only then did I register the scorched flesh along my bicep, the putrid smell of burned skin mingling with smoke. "The blast caught your arm as you turned to shield her. You struck the transport hard when you fell.”

It came back to me then, all at once. Athena. The hangar bay. The Zagrath with the raised blaster who smiled before he’d shot. A wave of dizziness crashed over me.

You look so much like your mother.

"Athena." I forced myself upright despite the pain tearing through my ribs. "Her father. That man was her father, Dawz. He took her."

"No enemy ship has left the hangar, Raas." Dawz kept one hand on my good shoulder, steadying me as the world tilted. "None have unlatched from our hull. Zarn has been informed and has ordered every bay sealed until we find them.”

I should have found comfort in that. Instead, unease coiled tighter in my gut. My brother was brilliant in battle and in a crisis, but he had made his opinion of Athena clear enough. Was he getting some darker satisfaction in seeing my war bride proven exactly the threat he'd suspected her to be. But if no ship had left, that meant one thing above all else.

"She is still aboard," I said, and something in my chest eased even as the wound in my arm throbbed in protest. "If she has not left the ship, we can find her. We can save her."

"That is what I have been trying to tell you," Dawz said, though there was little patience in his tone. "If you would stop trying to exacerbate your injury, we can go after her.”