Page 90 of Shielded in the Shadows

It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do in my life, and it hurt so badly that in that moment I wished for my own death, but I unwrapped my tail and forced my arms to let go.

With a startled gasp, she fell.

Hearts thundering in my ears and ice in my veins, I watched her plummet three or four meters toward a pile of debris and partly burned garbage. And I prayed to Byx’s gods and Felina’s goddess as I had never prayed before.

The horrible sound of my mate hitting the trash pile made bile surge into my mouth. And the silence and stillness that followed…

With a few flaps of my wings that were more like agonized spasms, I cleared the pile of jagged metal with less than a meter to spare. I half glided, half fell the rest of the way to the dirty floor of the warehouse, landing somehow on my feet before staggering and nearly collapsing.

Pain in my chest made me look down. In my torment over letting go of Keela, I’d clawed through my clothing and into my own flesh above my hearts without even realizing it. Blood dripped down my fingers.

“Mate,” I rasped.

The little lump of clothing on the trash pile didn’t move.

Jonor stepped into the warehouse through a hole in the wall, aiming a pulse rifle at my chest. The ruined building itself had no lights, but the weak glow of the decaying city around us offered more than enough illumination to see a cybernetic upper right arm where a thickly muscled flesh-and-blood one used to be. He wore armor on his torso and tactical pants with armor plates.

I didn’t have time to wonder why the Vespira’s repulser field didn’t seem to affect him. As he fired, I pulled my own gun and dove for cover behind a heavy, thick slab of collapsed ceiling. His bolt of plasma punched a hole in the floor where I’d been standing a moment before.

Fear for Keela and the agony in my wings made it difficult to focus, but I shoved everything aside and returned fire. My volley of shots hit his personal shield, driving him back against the crumbling warehouse wall but leaving him uninjured.

“I’ve come to collect on your bounty, Tal Noku,” he called out mockingly, drawing out the syllables of my name. “And it looks like I’ll be taking back something else with me as well.”

He fired again—not at me this time, but toward Keela. The shot hit the pile of debris less than a meter from her still form, creating a smoking hole and a small fire. My mate remained motionless.

I clutched at the bond between us, needing to feel her, to know she was alive. And she was alive—I sensed that much—but I felt nothing from her but a strange kind of coldness. Was this how she would feel to me when she was unconscious?

With a snarl, I shot Jonor again and again, but the shield he was using was better than any I’d seen. Where most shields would have overloaded by the third or fourth direct hit, my plasma bolts only rocked him on his feet and made him stumble.

My frustration must have shown, because he grinned. His broken fang was now missing entirely.

“It’s good tech, right?” Even in the low light, his eyes gleamed, wild with a mixture of glee and madness. “I stole it. Stole a stealth ship too. Captain Sjer flushed you out from Trakhan and I followed you here. Your ship is good, but mine is better.”

I glanced at Keela, but she still hadn’t moved. My hearts hurt so fiercely that I could barely breathe.

“Sjer wants me to comm him and report where you are so the whole crew can come get a piece of you, but you’re mine.” Jonor spat on the ground. “I told you I would be the one to skin you alive. So I’m taking your hide back to the Fancy, along with your dying mate. I’ll put her in the medpod on my ship. She’ll be worth something to someone, even when we’re all done with her.”

He was trying to bait me into attacking and giving him a clean shot—I knew it as well as I knew I was going to cut him into the smallest pieces for causing Keela to be injured and threatening her.

Jonor’s gaze slid to the rear of the warehouse where the Vespira remained cloaked. “On the other hand, I like that ship you borrowed from Trakhan. Tell you what: you give it to me and I’ll leave your mate here after I kill you. Maybe she’ll live if someone finds her in time.”

There was no chance he was going to let Keela live, and we both knew it.

“Fuck you, Jonor,” I rasped. “You’re not putting one finger on my ship or my mate.”

All humor vanished from his expression, and his face hardened as he wagged the barrel of his rifle. “Time to make your choice, Tal. Keep fighting, or hand over the ship. Either way you’re dead, but if you make the right decision at least the human might get a chance to fuck someone else someday.”

I’d take a little extra time killing him for that last remark.

Keela groaned. The pathetic and pained sound made my hearts claw at the inside of my ribs. But it sounded exaggerated to my ears, and it clashed sharply with the smug satisfaction and reassurance that suddenly filled our bond with welcome warmth.

When she moved and groaned again, Jonor snarled and swung his rifle in her direction. Why wasn’t she staying still and quiet? Was she trying to distract him and give me an opportunity to attack?

A dark blur shot out of the shadows.

With a hiss that sent a chill up my spine, a rotund creature with opalescent black skin and a wide-open maw full of long, serrated teeth launched itself off a crumbled section of wall and landed on Jonor’s upper chest, making him stagger.

Gods above, it was Zwee.