Page 78 of Shielded in the Shadows

“Close.” He dropped a kiss on my lips. “Sparring in the cargo hold. I had Byx’s people put down a mat, but it’s a lot smaller than the one aboard the Nivilus. There’s not much room to move around. We’re sure to end up practically on top of each other.”

“I don’t think there will be much ‘practically’ about it—at least not if I can help it.” I wrapped my hand around his tail and stroked, making him growl, then grabbed the datapad from his hands and started flipping back through the files. “Now, where’s that map of the Aiphelevia?”

CHAPTER 19

JARRIX

Saistea wasn’t as bad as I’d envisioned. It was much, much worse.

In fact, I would have walked down any alley on pirate-run Yavamir and felt less uneasy than I did standing at the Vespira’s hatch beside my mate, making last-minute adjustments to our disguises and weapons before leaving the relative safety of our cloaked ship and stepping out onto this gods-blasted planet.

Like many worlds with immense income inequality, Saistea was sharply divided between its few wealthy citizens and the rest of the inhabitants. Most of the planet was urbanized—so much so that rather than individual cities, it was one enormous city with sectors further divided into districts and zones.

The elite traveled between the ports, luxury hotels, casinos, brothels, arenas, and other destinations in private flyers and never set foot, tentacle, or any other part of their bodies on its soil or pavement. Residents of moderate means avoided the ground as much as possible, hiring flyers from one of the many agencies that seemed as common in the cities as food stalls. Only the poorest lived, worked, and walked at street level, taking their chances with not only the gangs who controlled entire sectors but syndicate-run patrols who were as likely to rob and kill an unwise pedestrian as assist them.

If I were alone, I would have turned to shadow, slipped through the streets to Orqiel’s quarters within the Aiphelevia, obtained the necessary information, canceled the bounty, and disposed of the male’s corpse without being seen and leaving no trace. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d completed a mission in such a way, but it would have been my most satisfying.

I’d made the offer to Keela, knowing it was a futile endeavor before I spoke. She’d smiled, given me a few pats on the cheek, and holstered another blade without a word, which was the response I’d expected. Our mate bond let me know that far from being angered or insulted by my suggestion, she’d merely been amused. She knew I didn’t expect her to agree.

That didn’t mean I wanted her walking these streets any more than she wanted me to do so. And that was perhaps the biggest surprise offered by our bond thus far: that the strongest emotion in Keela at this moment was a fierce possessive protectiveness.

The warmth of it filling my chest blazed stronger when she grabbed a handful of my cloak and yanked me down to her height so she could give me the most ferocious kiss we’d ever shared, followed by a bite to my lower lip hard enough to make me growl with desire and my cocks leap inside my trousers.

“If it comes down to getting our answers or us both leaving this planet alive, we choose to live,” she said, gripping my cloak tightly so she could stare straight into my eyes. “I am not going to die in this shithole and neither are you. That is an order.” Her lips curled up. “In fact, make that ground rule number nine: We don’t die on any shithole planet or space station. I’ll have Siber add it to the list when we get back to the Nivilus.”

“Understood, Captain.” I cupped her face with my gloved hand and brushed her nose with mine. “My star. I follow your lead wherever you go.”

“Then let’s do this.” She gave me one last little kiss and let go of my cloak.

We’d taken Byx’s advice and set the Vespira down in the burned-out shell of a building in one of the city’s derelict warehouse districts near the Aiphelevia. The structure must have once housed some sort of manufacturing plant before the planet’s industrial output collapsed and the syndicate’s interests became the only businesses that mattered.

Scans indicated few beings ever ventured into this building except for small feral animals. Lumos astounded us by smugly revealing the vessel was capable of emitting a low-level, virtually undetectable energy field that had the effect of dissuading living things from coming near. The AI set the radius to encompass the building and the streets along its perimeter. Keela and I each got an update to our wristcomms so they emitted a modulated signal ensuring we wouldn’t be affected by the repulser field.

“Shame we have to return this ship to Byx,” I said. “It’s got all the best toys.”

Keela slid me a look. “I’m going to tell Siber you said that. Prepare for ice-cold cleanser cycles and bugs in your food.”

“I’ve dealt with worse.” I grinned. “Plus, as you so frequently point out, I am a bat. I like bugs.”

“Not the ones she’d put in there.” She poked my chest. “Don’t insult my ship, you scut. Or I’ll be forced to find a new first mate-slash-medic-slash-weapons master to replace you.”

Beneath my cloak, my tail lashed. “The hells you will,” I rumbled.

With a laugh, she pressed her hand to the scanner next to the hatch to unlock it. When it opened, a blast of warm, fetid city air blew in, tinged with a hundred odors, none of them pleasant. The arboretum on Trakhan had never felt so far away. I tried to focus on the scent of my mate over the stench of industrial waste and urban decay.

Keela put on her gloves and activated her biomask. I checked my own gloves, tapped my earpiece, and did the same before we stepped out of the ship. The moment the hatch closed behind us, the ship’s sounds became dampened by the cloaking tech. Even standing next to it, my sharp ears detected only a quiet hum. Absolutely astounding.

I glanced down at my mate and smiled at her little bounce of anticipation. “You’re lovely, little dragon,” I murmured, my voice much deeper and more gravelly than normal.

She grinned. Her biomask displayed a mouthful of sharp teeth.

After much discussion, we’d chosen to disguise ourselves as a Haboori male and a Fortusian female. Keela’s face still appeared human and she’d retained her red hair, but thanks to the biomask her eyes were red with vertically slit pupils, her nose wider and flatter, and her flesh was orange and red with a distinct scale pattern that emulated a Fortusian equatorial dragon.

My skin was now cobalt blue and my hair silver. My size, my prosthetic fangs, and false forward-curled horns also made me instantly recognizable as Haboori—as long as my cloak stayed on to cover my other horns and my tail.

We were posing as a heavily armed arena guard and his mate who worked as a bathing attendant in the Aiphelevia. The Vespira’s state-of-the-art clothing synth had no trouble creating duplicates of the uniforms worn by the arena’s employees. Our false identity chips—provided by Byx, programmed by Lumos based on the latest intel, and implanted by me—should get us through one of the many employee entrances without raising suspicion.

Side by side, Keela and I made our way from the ship to a hole in building’s sagging wall. With every step, our boots squelched and crunched through sodden debris and detritus. With the benefit of enhanced vision through our biomasks, we avoided the most unpleasant puddles, but Keela’s right boot ended up partly coated in a corrosive dark green goo that had to be cleaned off immediately.