Such reactions were the reason Que’s people stood superior. Emotions were dangerous.

  It had taken the Axirlan years to tame her, to break her habit of simply taking whatever she wanted because she could. She had needed a purpose, he created one for her. And in turn, her existence gave him purpose. Since the universe had aligned them, their lives had been enriched. He was fortunate to find a companion that did not possess the minuscule lifespan of a typical frail human. They had already shared almost a century of earth time together, though she had slept through several decades when it was necessary.

  It was cyclical. Quinn’s physiology would drain her of all energy, forcing her into a deep sleep that sometimes lasted years. On more than one occasion, Que had preemptively cajoled her into a cryotube when her behavior grew erratic.

  Yet even in her hibernation there was something fulfilling in having her all to himself. Vulnerable in cryo, he knew she had faith in him to watch over her until she could be trusted to control herself. A new landscape always helped, a new cycle far from the humans she fought to avoid.

  Life on Pax was hard, it was uncomfortable; it was the perfect distraction for her. It also offered access to the byway in case she felt they needed to flee. He’d lost her a few times in situations such as those. Of course he always found her; they were wired on the same wavelength. Sometimes she came willingly when he called. Other times it required—urging. Fortunately for him, the best way to pacify her was to mount her.

  Six different times he’d had to shoot her first and take her as she was bleeding, when she was weakened, until her mind recognized him through the bloodlust and grew soothed. There was no other mating he’d ever known like hers. Sometimes it almost seemed he could feel what she offered beyond the sexual urge and physical gratification. She loved the aggression displayed by his species in coitus, never once questioned his methods, begged or commanded depending on her mood.

  In her far more promiscuous days, he’d sat back and watched her experiment with a multitude of partners. It was always a beautiful show, but none made her sing no matter how rough they had been. They were all too weak, she was too strong. Others did not fulfill her in any capacity beyond transient physical pleasure.

  Amongst his species, long-term human companions were unheard of. They were too frail. But they could bear children and were sometimes kept for that purpose—which made her posing as a slave very believable. Yet the gods had never seen fit to grant him offspring with his human, no matter the offerings or prayers given. Que had never voiced this concern to her, but once he had laid the warmth of his palm over womb as he pumped his seed into her body, vocally entreating his gods for a child.

  The look on her face... Que did not understand emotion, but he knew the expression for human heartbreak. His warrior had felt vulnerable. He’d inexplicitly weakened her when his role was to make her stronger. In that tick of time, he thought he might comprehend the sensation of regret.

  It had never happened again.

  In the decades since, Que had ascertained certain topics about his companion were best understood by observation. She was sterile and she had not known until he’d put the realization of a long unfulfilled desire of his into her head. For a creature with so much power to be powerless in that very basic way, it led her to do some strange things. Her obsession with slave children, how she watched them, furtively saw to them as if he didn’t notice was one such example. Quinn also went through cycles where she collected little trinkets, hanging things about to make her quarters appealing. Often times such behavior was a precursor to a loss of composure.

  She would grow edgy, snappish, would confess to a craving to hunt far more than she already struggled with. Each time Que put her in cryostasis before she had a psionic explosion or mechanically went on the warpath again. A few years monitoring her brain waves and, once her system regulated, he would wake her and she would smile.

  Que preferred her smiles to the frowns. The female’s expressions were intriguing, but the smile was worth the effort to draw out. The sound of her laughter was also enjoyable, the shriek of her yelling far less pleasant. Fortunately it was something she seldom directed at him.

  Once this next twenty-five cycle interval they would be separated was complete, Que decided he would bring her a gift to earn a smile—perhaps a pet or the colorful reproductive portions of a plant.

  Chapter 4

  A large party of Sudenovan mercenaries drank heavily near her stage. Undulating, hanging upside down from the fabric, Quinn trained her attention on the bristling males and tried not to sneer. With battle-marred armor and the stink of various species’ fluids mixing with unwashed Sudenovan, they were disgusting. Already arguing amongst themselves, all it would take was for one to reach for their weapon and all hell would break lose. But it was more than just the riled males—Swelter was teeming with mercs, rival gangs, criminals, the room simmering with the wrong mix of contenders.

  When a fight broke out—and it would—the numbers would be thinned, but riots might follow that could harm her delicate home. Glancing to Drinta’s balcony, Quinn found the Tessan watching, amused, as if taking in a performance piece. The bitch-queen should have named the dump ‘The Coliseum’ considering how much she enjoyed lording it over the contenders of her pit. Then again, that was a human word, and Drinta was a reptilian, cold-blooded creature, hatched far from the imperial colonized system where old earth rotted as it swung around a white star.

  Spinning down the fabric, toes pointed and body arched, Quinn landed on the black liquored slice of shadow, sweating under strobe lights. Eyeballing the crowd, she could not help but be troubled. There were too many newly blooded mercenaries in the room—the balance purposefully off—and Drinta, she looked positively gleeful standing over a powder keg that could rip Pax apart.

  An army had been mustered, patched together from anyone with ties, with debts, or who sought to gain from the Mistress of Pax. The bitch-queen had called in favors.

  Something was going on.

  Quinn had heard no rumors, sensed nothing in the emotions of those around her except the usual: greed and paltry desire to get their dick wet... or whatever sex organ they had. There was a lack of anticipation which accompanied war; patrons seemed bored, others just hungry, even irritated to be there.

  No, the congregation was not in preparation of battle. But the Tessan Mistress was taking a calculated risk allowing so many conflicting species, guilds, and criminals to collect... as if she were demonstrating just what kind of nightmare she could call on.

  So what prompted such a display of power?

  Hatred for politics aside, the answer mattered. Quinn found Drinta necessary; the Tessan was skilled in keeping the violence in balance, keeping Pax running. Should the bitch-queen lose the station, any other who took her place might not be so easy to live with. A new ruler might ruin Quinn’s serenity, force her to leave.

  What figure would inspire Drinta to draw such an unruly crowd to such an unstable place?

  If the answer was the one Quinn feared, she would have to flee, and Que was not there to follow her. Running without him—sometimes she’d lose her way. Once it had taken him six years to find her. The things she’d done without his influence had not been her proudest moments. She’d slaughtered an entire penal colony some bounty hunter had been foolish enough to dump her in. She’d been long gone by the time the one who’d offered the outrageous reward might fetch her, the only thing left behind, wreckage and the dead. Her regret was not in killing so many horrible men and women. It was that once she’d started, she couldn’t stop.

  She’d left the rot and gone after gangs, bandits, unsavory governments… rampaged until Que found her. Thousands had died simply because she was in a mood.

  Loss of control made her just like them—one of the sheep.

  Pinching the bridge of her nose, Quinn slunk back into the dark, out of sight of the customers, and began to worry. It had been only three cycles since Que had gone and he would not be back to share his wisdom for twenty-two more. Her Axirlan always had a sense about these things; should her anxiety be unfounded he would reassure her. If she was correct, in perfect calm he would take her away, and together they would start all over again somewhere new.

  But she enjoyed Pax. Quinn did not want to leave.

  “Are you feeling alright?”

  Glancing at an unfamiliar male pleasure slave, Quinn gave a dry, “No.”

  The unknown looked worried. “Don’t let them see you hiding. You’ll get the lash.”

  There was something so ironic in the ancient way slaves were punished on Pax. She might actually like the lash. “Who are you?”

  “Sasha.”

  Annoyed, Quinn reached for the vial of water in his hands and sucked it down as if it had been for her. “Sasha is not your name. Sasha is the name of the slave I usually perform with.”

  The near naked man shrugged. “I was told it would be easier for the patrons to recognize my place if I took the name of the one who was sold.”

  “Of course you were.” Quinn had liked original Sasha—he was mute. “What was your name?”

  “Sasha.”

  “Well, Sasha.” She drank the rest of his water. “Welcome to Swelter.”

  “I’ve worked in worse places...”

  Doubtful.

  A pretty smirk came to the man’s face. “Come on. My keeper is in the crowd.”

  She took his offered hand and let him tug her to standing. For a human mind—especially one of a slave—the male’s thinking seemed a bit too sharp. But he did not smell of the empire, nor did she sense he knew her. He just wanted to work.

  Lips curved into a friendly smirk, Quinn asked, “Were you collared as a child?”

  The answer of, “Yes,” was paired with a dazzling grin displaying white teeth against ebony skin.

  He was lying. Whoever new Sasha was, he was no more of a slave than she.

  Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth, Quinn did not release his hand. The moment grew awkward, uncomfortable, until the man’s smile diminished. She leaned closer. “You have the grip of a true aerialist. I’m eager to see what you can do.”

  The dimples were back. “Just try to keep up with me.”

  Laughing, tugging him towards the partition to retake the stage, they appeared hand in hand, smiling and grand. Twenty minutes later, new Sasha was a heap on the ground, neck broken from a terrible fall. She played the shocked slave, sliding down her fabric showcase to be quickly contained by an overseer.

  As if it were nothing, the fresh corpse was dragged away. No one in the crowd seemed to care; no keeper complained.

  He may have had nothing to do with her, he may have been security or a spy for Drinta’s crowd, but new Sasha was an unsettling factor. In Quinn’s experience, unsettling factors had to be removed—immediately.

  As soon as the stage was cleared, she was shoved back up by a rough Tessan overseer who felt free to fondle her in the process. For the following hours she performed alone, watching the crowd watch her, tensing when the rumble of ships through the byway stopped jolting the station.

  The intoxicated masses did not seem to notice the loss of vibration over the blaring music. Either that or they didn’t care the very heartbeat of Pax had stopped.

  No one in. No one out.

  Closing her eyes, Quinn pulled in a breath, reminding herself to remain calm. After all, the probability it had anything to do with her was incredibly slim. Pax was in the middle of inhospitable space, far from the sheep. Swelter was not a hub, it was an end destination for disreputables like her. The distant Irdesian Empire, there was nothing on Pax for them—not even nearby human planets to convert to their power.

  Her paranoia was misplaced, that is what Que would tell her.

  So why shut down the byway? Why pack the crumbling station with creatures itching for a fight?

  On cue the long simmering brawl began; shots were fired, tables thrown. Slinking down, Quinn kept a keen eye on the perpetrators, on drunks who engaged, on factions, in search of a pattern, a hint. The waving surge of reptilian Tessan, the Axirlan, the squat power houses of Sudenovan warriors with their tusks and war calls—not to mention the human traffickers—began to expend built up aggression, seemingly enjoying the fight as much as they had enjoyed the show, nothing more.

  There was no organized coup.

  Half veiled by the long red spider silk, Quinn’s eyes went to the mistress’s balcony to find Drinta. The mistress frowned, her tail swished. Drinta looked intensely aggravated when she should have been pleased.

  It only took one breath for Quinn to recognize her mistake.

  Everything—all of it—had been one clever distraction. The aggression of the horde, the suspicious new dancer—all fed to her by a brilliant tactician to keep Quinn looking in all the wrong places when she was uneasy, to keep her questioning and in Swelter to watch when she should have been stealing the nearest ship and jetting off into hyperspace.

  Behind her, the masterful rumble of a smooth tenor explained, “Either you can go to him, or he will come for you.”

  Turning, the muscles in her neck strained from the effort it took to move slowly, violet eyes found a face of great beauty standing in the shadows. A Herald so close, all she had to do was take five steps and his neck would be in her grip.

  She could rip it right off his shoulders…

  Words were spoken softly, Quinn almost temperate. “Is it that you want to die?”

  The Herald stood solemn, golden, as he spoke again. “He is waiting.”

  The image of the man in question crept to the forefront of Quinn’s mind, every detail flawlessly remembered. Only once had she seen him in person, down a long hallway deep in the compound where they had been created, tested, educated, and used: Condor. During the long ago glimpse, her body had still been that of a child’s, the male full grown, but the second her prey was in her sights her undeveloped form had frozen. She’d had his attention as well, every part of the man focused on the little girl.

  All those decades ago he’d had the nerve to look upon her as if fascinated, almost tenderly. Her handlers had reacted in a panic at the unintended meeting, the small hallway between her and the man thick with tension and drawn weapons. They’d expected violence. As a girl, she’d loved to circumvent their expectations in ways which kept them questioning. So, she’d turned her head and walked away, increasing the confusion—because unlike that asshole, she wasn’t a sheep who did as she was told. She’d made herself greater than her programing.

  “Tell your Sovereign I told him to fuck off.” In an odd way the warning was well meant, even passed forward in a tone of voice that affected self-control.

  It was ten times harder to turn away from temptation in that moment then it had been over a century ago, yet somehow she managed to tear her eyes from the Herald instead of ripping him apart as she’d been trained to do. The hitch in her step, the near stumble, betrayed her struggle for composure. Under her own power, fighting the compulsion to instantly hunt and slaughter, Quinn slipped through the brawl and out of the chaos in Swelter.

  The hallways were as mad as the club. Dodging bodies forced her to focus past the hunger, but each bump of her shoulder, each leer, was less than calming. Those who tried to take advantage of a solitary pleasure slave found no mercy. But her kills were clean, mechanical—unfulfilling in their quickness—so snapped necks might not feed her desire to rampage.

  Quinn was very careful, breathing in a steady rhythm, ignoring what already clawed her insides—the compulsion, the itch to seek out Sovereign and break every bone in his body, absolutely unaware of how truly exposed she was. It was the rage that blinded her, Quinn screaming offence that Sovereign still pursued even after so many decades. That he dared, after the amount of carnage she’d repeatedly left for him to find when he had pressed too hard or she had carelessly come too close.

  Measuring inhalations, calculating the options available, Quinn moved in a lizard’s path through the corridors. With the byway offline possible escapes were limited. In a stolen ship, under stasis, she could drift through the stars. But it would take years to reach any destination the Empire wouldn’t think to search, she would lose Que, and chances of interception were incredibly high should Sovereign have ships at Pax under his power.

  There was her cryotube full of the little Tessan boy. She could sleep there, at the cost of his future and his life. Still in sensor range, the second the Tessan’s heart began to beat the collar would activate and kill him. She could not do that. Sovereign would find her in a floor by floor search anyway.

  With the burn growing in her veins one thing seemed inevitable, the thing she was foaming at the mouth for, simply to face her quarry where she would kill him, and then snuff out every life on Pax once the bloodlust took over.

  Blinking, something wet fell down her cheek. Quinn wiped it away, pressing her back to the slimy corridor wall.

  Another mindless rampage... she couldn’t allow it.

  Her life on Pax was over, her decade of near peace and all future years at an end. There was only one worthy option; she would offer herself up while she still had the strength of mind. Sovereign would finally kill her, tens of thousands of lives would continue, and she would not become a mindless slave to impulse.

  A roll in her gut and Quinn found she could practically taste his trail, followed the echo of him to her rooms. Outside her dwelling she rolled her neck, trying to remember all Que had taught her. Freedom required constant control, constant control required diligence, diligence was enforced by calm.

  But Quinn was not calm. She felt cornered, she felt angry; mostly she felt the need to open the door and launch her body at the tyrant. After all, should not he too have to face consequences and suffer? Quinn had given him a hundred years of life. Clearly they’d been taken for granted if Sovereign was foolish enough to trap himself on a derelict space station with her.