For Callie,
Our chances of meeting were slim, so I’m pretty sure
the universe gave us to each other on purpose.
Thank you for being my friend.
Chapter 1
TESS
Where’s Daniel Ahern?
My leg bounced under the table as I discreetly scanned the crowded restaurant for the hundredth time. Our contact wasn’t here. Fashionably late crashed and burned a good forty minutes ago, and I was ready to take care of my own business now instead of his.
“Ahern’s not going to show,” I muttered tightly into my com.
“We don’t know that.” Shade’s deep voice rumbled softly from his wristband into my earpiece. My eyes flicked over to where he sat, meeting his honey-brown gaze from across a sea of heads and indistinct chatter. “Sit tight.”
I took a deep breath, trying to settle my jangling nerves. Movement blurred in my peripheral vision. My lungs squeezed as I darted a look at the door. A soberly dressed unsmiling trio walked in. Not who I was waiting for.
“You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin,” Shade murmured. “Act normal. Eat your soup.”
I scowled. My lunch had a better chance of landing on Shade’s head than in my stomach if he told me to eat again.
“I can’t.” My necklace picked up my almost inaudible whisper, transmitting it not only to Shade but to Jax and Fiona, who were somewhere outside, and to Merrick, who’d stayed on the ship. “We shouldn’t even be on this mission.”
Shade’s soft grunt of agreement didn’t change the fact that we were stuck. “Can’t say it seemed as though we had much of a choice.”
No, and that was just one of the weird things about it. We weren’t spies. The Endeavor wasn’t a ship housing soldiers and moles. We were Nightchasers on a big old cargo cruiser, rebels who brought food, medicine, and other supplies to people who needed it around the galaxy. This wasn’t a mission for us. So why did the head of the rebel council suddenly decide that we were the ones who needed to go meet some guy about freeing his incarcerated wife from the Dark Watch?
I toyed with my soup to look busy, little surges of adrenaline spiking inside me and keeping me on edge. I’d been here for an hour and had worked up a sweat and lost my appetite—the opposite of what you wanted in a restaurant where the food smelled so freaking good.
While Shade polished off his lunch, I used my spoon to poke at a few recognizable vegetables and what the menu called beef. Steak and beef were just generic terms for red meat these days. I didn’t know what kind of cattle—another generic term—they raised on Korabon for food. I’d never been here before, had never planned on coming. Shouldn’t be here now. Time was running out.
I set the spoon back in the bowl. A glance toward the basket of thickly sliced trigrain bread made my stomach flip over, rejecting even that. Anxiety killed my appetite as fast as a Dark Watch patrol showing up and barking out “Background checks!” to everyone in the room.
Shade sighed. “Baby, it’s more suspicious not to eat.”
I sighed back at him. “It’ll make the return trip if I try.” The few bites I’d managed weren’t sitting well. “Do you really want a soupatastrophe on your hands?”
His quick smile blazed across the room. It ignited a little flame in my chest that helped ease some of the tightness there. “Given the choice, there are other things I’d rather have in my hands.”
“I didn’t say in, I said on. There’s quite a distinction.”
“Ah. My mistake.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin, probably hiding a grin.
I mashed my lips together and forgot to be nervous for a second. I even managed a bite. Just one, though.
Shade took a moment to look at me hard. I got the message he couldn’t say out loud over the coms. Eat. Keep your strength up. He and I were the only ones who knew I’d drawn more of my unique A1 blood.
Or maybe it wasn’t that unique. Maybe these Mornavail I’d heard about were out there somewhere, healing faster and never getting sick. Like me—an evolutionary step up. And also like me, hiding from the Galactic Overseer, who wanted our blood to create an army of super soldiers.
Fun times across the eighteen Sectors. My grimace had nothing to do with my soup this time.
“My picture was just all over a database for bounty hunters. Now, you have my enormous bounty on your head. How can you eat?” We should be lying low and delivering the food we still had for the Outer Zones, not sitting in a restaurant on a highly monitored rock.
“I may be new to life in the Dark, but I’m a fast learner. Fresh food only comes around so often in a space rat’s life. It’s tragic to waste it.”
“Shade’s right,” Fiona whispered over the coms. “Eat the damn soup,” she hissed.
“Shhhh!” Jax scolded quietly.
A laugh churned inside me. Briefly, my eyes collided with Shade’s again. It was hard not to focus on him. A handsome man treating me to a meal in a not entirely shabby establishment had never happened before today. Too bad we couldn’t sit together and only one of us had an appetite.
“Fine.” I steeled myself and took a bite so that everyone would stop hounding me. “Happy?”
Shade huffed, evidently unconvinced.
I forced down another mouthful, chewing and swallowing carefully. At least my battle with the soup got my mind off Ahern. And the food would do me good. The six bags of blood I’d taken from my own veins in as many days hadn’t totally wiped me out, but I hadn’t been able to completely shake it off yet, either. Beef—or whatever this was—would help.
The two women occupying the table next to Shade’s threw him flirty glances and leaned over to ask him a question about desserts. The waitress immediately joined in, having already attempted to draw Shade into conversation twice. I got it. It wasn’t often that tall, dark, and smoldering sat alone in a restaurant.
They finally left him alone after deciding on a choco seed dessert loaf to share. The waitress went to get it.
“Wow, you really are a wanted man,” I grumbled, a hint of tartness in my voice.
Shade’s small snort vibrated over the com, tickling my eardrum. “I want their dessert.”
“You are their dessert.” He was six foot two of solid yumminess with a healthy appetite, broad shoulders, a square jaw, and scarred knuckles that said I can protect you with my bare hands. I’d even bitten him and knew for a fact he tasted good. “But trust me, neither wants to share.”
Humor sparked in his eyes, and for the first time in an hour, I forgot why we were here.