“Hon, we never do.”
“Yeah. Thanks for that, Abby.”
Tens gaze sharpened, and he frowned at me. I raised an eyebrow, and couldn’t help teasing him.
“Girl’s talk. Nothing to concern you boys.”
“Cold,” Abs said. “You’re not very nice to my man.”
“No, Abs. Would you like me to be?”
“Mind your manners, child!”
Mack came over and set his hand on my shoulder.
“When you’ve finished pissing everyone off, d’you think you can turn your head to working out how we’re going to deal with the wolves on my ship?”
“Your ship, Mack?”
His grip tightened.
“Don’t you start with me, girl, or I’ll be putting you over my knee.”
“Sure, Mack. You and whose army?”
He just snorted, given we both knew he didn’t need one, and then he changed the subject.
“The ship, Cutter. How do we take back control, without getting ourselves killed?”
“We take the control center, and then fly her the fuck away.”
“With a belly full of wolves?” Tens scoffed. “Now, who’s not thinking it through?”
I gave him a tight smile.
“Control room is easy enough. The crew seats turn into emergency stasis pods, right?”
“They’re not calibrated for wolves.”
I raised my brows.
“Then you’d better get busy, hadn’t you?”
“I’ll help,” Abby said, and I wondered when Tens had ever needed his hand held. “Mind your own business.”
I raised my hands, even though Mack and Tens probably hadn’t heard Abby’s last remark.
“Fine. You go help Tens, Abs. Let us know when you’re ready. Mack and I can work on the passenger problem.”
“We could kill them all,” Mack said, and I stared at him, remembering Rovan and the squad, missing the feel of having pack all around me, horrified at the thought of killing them all.
“I’m your pack, girl,” Mack said, and I ducked my head, blushing red to the roots of my hair. He didn’t let up. “Tens is your pack.”
I saw Tens still, felt his presence in my head, felt Abby alongside him. Mack kept going.
“Rohan and that damn dog are your pack. The rest are only wolves.”
I wanted to tell him that wasn’t it, that, yes, he and Tens and Rohan were my pack, but that the wolves…I sighed.
“They said they would seek me out when the contract was over.”
“All the more reason to kill them, now.”
“No. I think we should let them live.”
“We need to find out what this contract is, first,” Tens added. “Star Shadows are loyal to the letter of the contracts they sign.”
“Like us?”
Mack shook his head.
“Not like us, girl. The wolves will take any contract that doesn’t go against lupar interests.”
“And they’ll come after anyone who hurts those interests,” Tens added, like Mack needed reminding. “We don’t want to kill them, boss. Not if we can help it.”
“They will also keep coming,” Abby added. “The only way out from under the contract is to take out the patron. If he cannot honor his obligations, the wolves consider the agreement nul; it’s written into their contracts as a standard.”
“Don’t you two have some stasis pods to recalibrate?”
For once, Mack sounded annoyed, and I wanted to know why—and, this time, I didn’t let the idea that he’d shut me out, put me off.
“What’s up, Mack?”
“They’re right, and I don’t like it. Can’t protect my crew if the threat’s still out there—and I wanted it to be simple. If we don’t get rid of the contract, it won’t matter how many hunt packs we kill; they’ll just keep coming.”
“And eventually the whole pack will come to avenge their losses, and it will call in favors until it will be like the entire universe is after us.”
Mack glared at Tens, and then shrugged.
“Because it will be. The Shadows can pull an awful lot of power, if they need to. Abs is right; we need to kill the contract…just as soon as we get the ship back.”
He sighed.
“And we have to do it without killing a single one of these sons…”
He stopped, looked at me.
“That’s a term you can’t use, Cutter. Just so you know. The wolves take it personal.”
I nodded. I could see why, and it occurred to me that not a single one of the warriors I’d encountered had been female.
“Shadow females are rarely seen off-world—and those that are, are to be feared.”
Okaay… It looked like I had some research to do.
“So, how do we do this?”
Mack looked at me.
“First we get rid of the command crew. That should take down the Hunt Master and the command sectors.”
“Except for the Pack Leaders.”
“Yup. Except for the Pack Leaders. Those should be locked in the barracks with their squads, and locked out of our systems. The only problem is that Stepyan had a lot of toys in that area, and some were made for blowing large holes in resilient alloys.”
“Like ship hulls.”
“If they’ve a mind to.”
“Fuck.”
“That is one way to put it.”
“Can we gas them?”
Mack gave me a wide-eyed look.
“What part of ‘we can’t kill them’ didn’t you understand?”
Given I’d raised the point, none of it.
“The part where I’m not killing them, because maybe sleeping gas will do the trick?”
“Abby?”
“Girl has a point. I’ll look it up.”
“I thought you were helping Tens.”
“I can do both.”
“Show-off.”
“Why, thank you, sweetheart.”
“Can you secure the files they took, while you’re at it? I don’t want an emergency burst putting those out in the market place.”
“Actually, we don’t want an emergency burst of any kind. We can lock them down on board, but we probably can’t hold off a boarding party, as well, not if they come in the numbers they usually use for retrievals.”
I’d seen the numbers they’d used to take down a single mercenary ship—three squads of twelve, and a command crew. That seemed to be overkill to me. I didn’t want to see what they’d do if they thought they needed more firepower. Mack raised his eyebrows.
“They start with
