Marked for Danger (7 page)

And
who
was she?

Gingerly, she moved, tried to get her feet under her. Nausea swamped her, and her throat burned. The metal walls beneath her fingers were cold and unyielding. Somehow she knew she was on a ship. Maybe it was the thrumming vibration that sounded in the background. All the basics were there in her mind: like she was in danger, like she was naked and shouldn't be.

Memories were just out of reach, and her head hurt.
Stop trying
. Escape was her only thought. It never occurred to her to bang on the walls or scream for help. It was very clear that she had to use cunning and silence to get off this vessel.

The lights in the small space fluttered and flared, now illuminating her prison. Bruises dotted her legs and thighs. On her left arm was a burn that still throbbed. It was like an unhealed brand, angry and red. She stared at the shape of it. The burn was the shape of an animal. A herwalk. The majestic bird was native to her home planet of...

Shit! She couldn't remember.

Inside the four metal walls, condensation had built up. The drops of liquid on her face had been water from the ceiling. The room was bare, no furniture, no control panels. The lights were recessed and bolted into the ceiling, as if the cell was made to contain whatever—or whoever—was in it. Something was definitely wrong.

Vid streamers were stationed at the right of the solid, unyielding door. Naked, helpless, weaponless, she faced a daunting task. Get away and find...who?

The door beeped, an alarm shattering the silence. When it slid open, she held herself ready. Whoever it was, she was willing to kill to get away from them.

A shrouded figure stepped into the room. Brown woven material more suited to Old Earth than today's priests covered her visitor from head to toe. His hands were clasped in front of him, and an irritating hum came from the dark recesses of his cowl.

Then the humming stopped, and the figure said, “You are well?"

For a moment, she wanted to laugh. Well? Sure. She couldn't remember who the hell she was, where she was, or how she'd gotten there, but she was relatively intact. Probably a normal person would have asked if this stranger knew the answers to her questions, but instinctively she knew she wasn't normal.

Just as she knew this hooded man was her enemy.

He kept the cowl around his face but removed a handheld from the depths of the robe. “Your reprogramming will begin now,” he said calmly.

"I don't wish to be ‘reprogrammed,’ priest,” she snapped. She should have kept her mouth shut. But the words slipped out before she could stop them.

His head lifted sharply. “Your hostility is misplaced. I am your friend."

She snorted. “Right. Would some clothes be asking too much,
friend
?"

The man was definitely agitated. His fingers flew over his handheld's keypad. “You should be a blank slate,” he muttered. “I need to take a reading. Stand up."

She obeyed him but feigned dizziness, only partially faking it, and stumbled toward him. When he was forced to take her weight, she lashed out, her precision strike hitting his carotid artery. He gasped, a pathetic choking sound.

Without hesitation, she finished him, her small hands crushing the life from him. When he was dead, she searched the heavy folds of his robe and found a laser gun. Fast and furious, she stripped the man of his garb, then pulled it over her head.

What kind of a woman could kill a man and put on his clothes? And what kind of monster could use the laser gun to cut out the man's eyeball so she could pass the eye spectrum?

The desperate kind.

The man's eye was slippery and bloody in her fingers, but she used it to open the door to her cell. Alarms blared all over the ship, and she crept through the corridor quickly.

Though she couldn't remember her own name or where she was from, she knew she was on a Class J freighter and that the lifepods were on the port side. Once she oriented herself, she made a circuitous route toward those pods.

Two men tried to stop her. They died. She sprinted, lifting up the hem of the robe with one hand and firing the laser gun with the other. Noise filled her head, but she didn't stop, didn't think.

Four men guarded the pods. Her back to the wall of the corridor that led to the docking bay, she contemplated her options. She glanced on the wall opposite her and saw an emergency chem canister used to put out fires.

How she knew to cut a hole in the canister and light it, she didn't know or care. It worked, creating a huge blast of gas that burned the men's eyes and caused confusion. That was all she needed.

Quickly and efficiently, she dispatched them, leaving their bloody corpses on the bay floor.

Just as she was entering one of the pods, a voice boomed throughout the ship.

"Kill her!” the voice screamed. “She cannot live."

The voice, familiar and frightening, froze her for a second. Then she catapulted into the pod and activated the release. Her fingers flew over the controls, instinct and memory joined for a moment. The pod exploded from the bay, and she careened through space.

A planet was just in front of her, but she didn't even consider landing there. She aimed for the opposite direction. Laser fire lit up the sky on either side of her.

She smiled grimly. Hitting a pod was rather like hitting a leder coin tossed in the air. Difficult to lock onto and difficult to shoot down. Still, it was a harrowing flight, and she fought to control the pod.

She found a gate. Manmade wormholes that helped men travel in an instant, bypassing light years of black space. The mother ship loomed behind her, but she sped toward the gate heedless of the strain on her systems.

She entered the gate going too fast, too hard. The force of her entry sent the pod spinning through the corridor. She was going to die.

If she bounced off the edge of the gate's tunnel, she'd be tossed into black space. A glimmer of hope existed. Even as the pod twisted and spun, she noted coordinates on a gate exit within a few clicks of her present trajectory. She flung her weight against the controls, trying to get the thrusters to take her that extra distance.

The pod flew out of the exit at tremendous speed and suddenly spun around furiously like a top. She hit her head, then her nose. Blood streamed down her face, and she desperately tried to gain control, but it was no use.

A planet loomed in her viewscreen, and she accepted the fact that her pod was going to plummet into its atmosphere and disintegrate.

Consciousness faded, the blow to her head making her dizzy. She fought it, unwilling to die with her eyes closed. But it was too much.

As she drifted into oblivion, one name was on her lips. “Xandros."

Fuck, fuck, fuck
! Xandros flew the shuttle, burning the engines, straining the shields in the atmosphere of Nariad, an odd planet devoid of an established outpost. But here, he'd used his bond to Carina to follow her.

When he'd seen the ship she was on, he'd almost panicked. He'd only been on the
Destiny
once, and it wasn't an experience he wanted to repeat. Father Pestori was a nutcase with sycophants and Primarian assholes surrounding him.

He'd known the minute she was awake. He'd sensed her cold determination to escape and the danger she'd risked to do it. Every second counted, so he'd hacked into the
Destiny's
systems, disrupting their sensors and making Carina difficult to pinpoint on their own ship. When her lifepod shot out from the port side of the ship, he screamed after her.

She'd hit the gate too fast and too hard, and when he'd exited the gate, he watched, horrified, as she careened toward Nariad. There was only one thing to do. He flew the shuttle directly under the lifepod and matched its speed. Then, straining, he started to pull the two connected vessels up to avoid a crash on the surface.

He wasn't going to make it. Electricity sparked, and he lost navigation. The shuttle shuddered like it was going to shatter into a million pieces. Somehow Xandros held on, keeping the shuttle and the pod on track.

They hit the ground hard, and Xandros jerked in his seat, his body flung against the straps. He threw up his arms as the nose of the shuttle slammed into the dirt. Metal and plastic shards rained on him, and the shuttle's outer hull creaked ominously.

Finally, the forward motion stopped, and the scream of grinding metal faded. All Xandros could hear was his harsh breathing. Gingerly, he removed his safety straps and crawled out of his seat. It took several kicks, but he got the door opened, and dropped onto the ground.

This hadn't been part of the plan. Shaun had stayed on the ship with Leo and Princess Sera in case Xandros screwed up and needed a rescue. Well, it looked like he was going to need one.

The lifepod had slid off the roof of the shuttle and shot several hundred yards through the trees. Xandros picked his way through the thick vegetation to the lifepod. Vaguely, he became aware he was growling, a low dangerous sound that vibrated through the woods.

Metal was no barrier between Xandros and his marked mate. He ripped it away and started to lift Carina out of the pod. Remnants of a robe were still burning, and he had to tear the cloth off her, praying she wasn't burned beneath it. Finally, he was able to pull her from the smoldering ship. His heart wrenched at her nakedness, her fragility. Her hair had been viciously hacked off. There were needle marks all over her body. He was stunned that the Brotherhood had been able to do such damage in such a short time.

He almost physically stumbled under the weight of the guilt. He had believed she was safe for the time being, since the prophecy stated the Brotherhood had to own her soul to rule the universe. What had they done to her?

She didn't move as he carried her to a clearing beside the shuttle and stared at the wreckage. His com was out. No calling Shaun or Leo. The question became who would find them first: the Brotherhood or his friends.

Finally, Carina stirred in his arms, and he shifted her so she would be more comfortable. Her eyes opened, and he experienced such relief he thought he'd cry from it.
It's just the hormones. The mark makes it seem like something more than it is.

"Who the hell are you?” Her voice was hoarse.

He stared at her, and his stomach plummeted. Mind wiped. Why hadn't they thought of that one? Having all her memories, her personality, everything, removed was the one way to own her soul, wasn't it? It wasn't a common tool, but the Brotherhood had been known to use it to control the disobedient and to punish detractors. He closed his eyes and groaned. “Shit."

"Normally, I'd make some crack about someone named ‘Shit,’ but I'd rather know what the fuck you think you're doing touching me.” Now her tone was sharp and dangerous.

Gently, he slid her out of his lap and against the tree. “Seeing is believing.” He rose and dropped his pants.

"Is this foreplay, because—” Her gaze focused on the herwalk branded on his inner thigh, one wing unfurled around his cock. Her hand automatically covered the matching mark on her right arm. “Who
are
you?” she whispered.

He pulled up his pants and knelt down, not touching her. “My name is Xandros. I am your marked mate."

Her forehead wrinkled, and she blinked. “What does that mean?” Her gaze narrowed. “It's a trick."

He shook his head. “The Blueshift Brotherhood mind wiped you."

"Priests,” she said, her nostrils flared and her mouth compressed in disgust. Her fingers shook when she lifted them to rub her temples. “And that's why I can't remember things."

"That's why.” He scanned the forest. The nearest settlement—if you could call it that—was only a mile away, but the information he had on the population was sketchy at best.

"There's a blanket in the lifepod,” Carina said interrupting his thoughts.

He immediately fetched the blanket from the pod and wrapped her in it. Just that slight touch made his mark burn and need shoot through him. One thought dominated his brain.

He'd almost lost her.

It shouldn't have mattered. He'd marked her to track her, to keep tabs on her whereabouts. He'd believed that a mate mark was...just a mark. But the almost overwhelming need to possess her had driven him further than he'd ever thought he'd go and overridden common sense and his usually strong sense of self-preservation.

All the myths Xandros had been told about the mate mark were true. The rage existed; he'd felt it. Proximity increased the need. He could sense her; somehow he was connected to this enigmatic woman. It meant the other myths were true too. Like the one that stated marks were made when a male desired to dominate a woman in the deepest way. Just fucking wouldn't create the bond.

And that meant he'd had strong feelings for her even when he hadn't known her.

It scared the living shit out of him.

Carina stared at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?"

He pressed his lips together. She didn't have a clue. “Do you remember what mate marks mean?"

"No.” She licked her lips and blinked. “What do they mean?"

He shook his head. “It doesn't matter. I'll wait until you remember."

Xandros still knelt beside her, his hands on the folds of the blanket he'd wrapped around her. When he started to pull away, her hand shot out and gripped his. “What if I never remember? Please."

Her plea almost wrecked him. He stood and yanked her to her feet. “Let's go."

He dropped her hands and strode through the trees in the general direction the shuttle's nav had shown the settlement to be. Move. They had to keep on the move.

"Where are we going?” She was breathless, and he couldn't wait for her to catch up. He wasn't sure what he'd do if they stopped.

"There's a settlement this way. We'll try and find a com to call my friends.” He pulled her behind him ruthlessly.

"Just a minute,” she said in a harsh tone and tried to yank her hand away. “I don't know who the hell you are. I don't know what this mark means. And I don't like being dragged around."

He stopped, turned to face her, and she bumped into his chest. His whole body went on sexual alert, his mark hot and burning. The trembling that rippled through her when his hands gripped her shoulders only made it worse. He gritted his teeth. “You want to know who I am?” He dug his fingers into her flesh. “I am your only hope of survival."