It did not happen that way.
They went to the surface. Havik followed. They ordered a meal. Havik invited himself to their table.
Sitting across from Vanessa, he took in all the subtle changes to her person. Her eyes were harder, as were her words. The years apart forged her into a survivor. If she had such a fighting spirit when they were mated, his father might have respected her and not poured poisoned lies in her ears to drive her away. Perhaps she had always been so, but he failed to notice.
Selfish, just as Ren said.
Whatever he had hoped to achieve from intruding on Vanessa and that foolish male—Jaxar, what a ridiculous name—he did not expect to gain a fledgling friendship with Vanessa and her engineer. Nor did he expect to feel relief when she refused to return to him.
She informed him she had a new mate and zero interest in returning to their empty marriage. Her response confused him, but he explained Kaos’ lie. Surely that would settle the matter.
It did not.
He had found his mate and lost her again. She wanted to be friends. He did not know how that would even be possible when a grinning fool with horns—Horns! How preposterous! —stood beside her.
Then he spotted a suspect smuggler on the street. Wanting to prove himself more capable than the grinning fool, he roped them into following the suspect.
That ended poorly when they were captured by the smugglers and thrown into a holding cell with the Terran male he now wanted to shake until his teeth rattled in his empty head.
“I said I would bring you to a medic. I made no promises about keeping you from harm,” Havik said, moving toward the male, menace in his every step.
The male scuttled behind the examination table, pressing himself into a corner. “Va-Vanessa won’t like it if you hurt me. She paid good money for me. I’m her investment.”
The male—Teddy, that was his name—had been a colleague of his ex-mate but they were hardly friends. In fact, the male antagonized and insulted Vanessa in front of two Mahdfel warriors, proving the male’s idiocy.
Vanessa was too kindhearted. She ignored the insults and paid a disgusting amount of credits to buy the male’s debt from smugglers.
A waste of credits, in Havik’s opinion. Perhaps if Teddy had paid the slightest bit of attention to his captors and had information regarding their recent ports of call, contacts, or even their next destination, he would have been worth the money.
Havik ran a background check on the male and discovered several outstanding warrants from Earth. Teddy was a common criminal, running from the consequences of his actions.
“They’re not going to care about me. I’m small-time,” the male said, a sneer on his face.
“True. Your offenses are nonviolent, but criminals apprehended by a Mahdfel warrior receive particular attention,” Havik said, baring his teeth in what he knew was not a reassuring smile. Menacing. Threatening. Disturbing as fuck. Vanessa had once claimed his smile was all those things.
Color drained from the male’s face. Terrans were too easily intimidated.
A lost mate found and lost again, accompanied by a lead that went nowhere.
At least the day would not be an entire waste. Justice would find one criminal.
Thalia
Alien beer tasted weird. Not bad, simply different enough that Thalia almost forgot she was drinking at a bar filled with aliens, floating in space with nothing separating her from the black void but a few inches of metal and goodwill.
Thalia took another disappointing sip, the taste sour and floral on her tongue, which seemed like the perfect beverage for her lousy day.
First, being betrayed by the person who took her off the streets when she was thirteen should not have been a shocker. Nicky was not what anyone would call stable or a good guy. He was a small-time criminal, teaching kids the fine art of burglary and pickpocketing, then pimping them out when they got too old to climb through teeny-tiny windows.
Not a good guy. Thalia knew that. But auctioned to aliens? Who does that?
Second, after being sold for an insultingly low price, she was not a fan of being shoved into what was essentially a giant freezer for three fucking years. She had been twenty-three when she went in, so did that make her twenty-six now? Or was she still twenty-three? Thalia had legitimate time travel questions and no one to ask except aliens.
Third, she might have screamed a little bit when she woke up from the deep freeze, surrounded by aliens. They looked about as excited to see her as she was to see them. Their grumpiness wasn’t a reflection on her or the panicked screaming. They were aliens, gibbering away in another language. Panic was a reasonable response.
Slapping at the alien doctor and knocking over a tray full of suspicious-looking syringes and chemicals? The dude should have known better. At least there was a human nurse on staff who talked Thalia through the panic and confusion of being thawed out from a three-year stint in a stasis chamber. Pro tip: people aren’t meant to be in stasis that long. The chemicals build up and have a weird effect on the brain.
They were Mahdfel, at least. While she had never seen a real Mahdfel alien in person, she assumed they were better than some random alien off the street. Er, out of the sky? Anyway, Doc approved of them, begrudgingly.
Which was point four, being tossed out on her ass by the aliens who rescued her from the slavers. Sure, being rescued was great. Hooray. Being shipped back to Earth little more than a week after waking from stasis? Not cool.
Thalia had no money, a newly registered identity chip, and she still felt foggy in her head from the
