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  Peyton climbed into her seat and only realized as they were lifting off that she wasn’t freaking out about the flight. Maybe it had to do with an entire day spent flying the day before. Or maybe it had to do with the fact that she trusted Dryce to get her safely to their location. She never would have expected that, but no matter what her personal issues were with the man, she knew he was exactly the warrior that any person should be glad to have by their side.

  Location 2 was a few hours’ flight away from their camp. Peyton sat back in her seat and watched the landscape under them rush by, almost enchanted by the lush leaves and beautiful colors of her home. She’d never known how magical Earth could look from above, and while her fears were being held at bay she wanted to enjoy it.

  She and Dryce didn’t talk, and the tension of the things not said, and the things they’d said the night before, hung in the air. She didn’t know why she felt so bad about it all. Nothing she’d stated was false. He was a known player, someone with a new lover every night. Why should she think he wanted to change just for her?

  Why should she care that he didn’t have a good answer?

  It wasn’t like she wanted him. Okay, it wasn’t like she wanted him out of anything but the most animalistic lust. That was something she could satisfy with anyone. Like DF, who was waiting for a date when she got back.

  So why did it make her a little ill to think of anyone but Dryce?

  Peyton wasn’t going to think about that now. And if she had her way, she wouldn’t think of it ever. She was going through some sort of weird transference, wondering romantically about DF while forced to spend all her time with Dryce. No wonder she was confused.

  An alert beeped, startling her out of her unwanted thoughts. She sat up straighter in her seat and looked over to see Dryce with his eyes narrowed as he looked at the display.

  “What is it?” she asked. There were hundreds of different warnings that the machine could give them, but Peyton only had the ones pertaining to mechanical failure memorized. Thankfully the series of beeps playing now didn’t sound anything like that.

  “We’re picking up some unexpected comm waves. This close to our location and they might be from hostiles.” Dryce was all business now, the flirt from last night gone in the wake of the serious job they had to do. “I’m running a more thorough check. We may need to divert to our secondary landing location.”

  Peyton nodded like her agreement had any effect on the situation. Dryce was the one who had to make these decisions, but right now she had no reason to argue. “How far out is the secondary location?” She’d studied the maps before they’d left, but the information had all tangled together in her mind and she couldn’t recall all the details.

  “Ten kilometers from the target. Any closer and the cloaking is liable to fail.” Dryce didn’t look at her while he spoke, his entire being focused on monitoring the alarms while he flew the helicopter.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” She hated to be useless, and sitting in the passenger seat and looking out the window while Dryce managed so many tasks made her wish she knew how to fly with any skill, just so she could take one responsibility away from him.

  He pushed a monitor until it swiveled towards her. “Read that out when it comes in. And tell me if the number on that gauge goes over fifty-seven.”

  She did as she was told without asking why she was doing it. He could explain the finer details later. Right now she just had to deliver information as quickly and clearly as possible. In a handful of minutes the first report came in and Dryce’s mouth tightened as she read out a stream of numbers and a list of information she didn’t understand.

  Give her an alien engine any day and she could piece it back together. What she was looking at now may as well have been Ancient Greek.

  The helicopter jerked to the left and Peyton let out an undignified eep and clutched the sides of her seat before they righted themselves. Dryce muttered an apology but didn’t spare her another thought. Peyton took several deep breaths, trying to get her suddenly roiling fears out of control. She’d hoped the panic would stay away, but, of course, a person didn’t get over her fears in a day. She clutched the seat tight and did her best to bottle up her emotions. She’d deal with the fallout later.

  Though her sweating palms and the sudden ice in her veins were not signs that her emotional control was working.

  “Read me those numbers again,” Dryce demanded, harsh enough to snap her out of her momentary fear.

  She glared at him, but her expression softened when she saw only concern in his eyes. She’d bet all the money in her bank account that he didn’t need the numbers again, he just wanted her to focus on something other than her fear. So she took a deep breath and told him the readings, and when he thanked her, she did her best to remain calm.

  “Hostiles?” she finally asked, once the immediate flurry of sensors and readings had subsided.

  He gave a half shrug and spared her a glance for a second before looking back out in front of them. “Someone’s down there. No way to know exactly who until we are on the ground.”

  “Did this mission just get a lot more dangerous?” Because now she wasn’t certain whether she wanted to keep flying in the death trap or land and hunt down the possibly armed aliens intent on destroying the planet.

  “It was always dangerous,” her companion reminded her. “But you’ve got me. No one out there stands a chance.”

  She should have laughed at his confidence, should have found it ridiculous. Instead all Peyton could do was smile and hold that reassurance close. For whatever reason, she was almost convinced when Dryce told her that no harm would come to her, and she’d much rather be by his side than stuck out here alone.

  They had a job to do, and he was going to make sure that it got done.

  Chapter Eleven

  Something felt wrong from the moment Dryce and Peyton touched down. A feeling of expectation hung in the air around them, like at any moment things could explode and foil all of their plans. Ten kilometers sounded like a far enough distance when Dryce and the team had been making their plans, but now he wished they were a hundred kilometers away. He hated leading his mate into danger, hated that there could be hostile forces waiting for them at the other side of the forest, and there was nothing he could do but stand at Peyton’s side and do his best to shield her from harm.

  “Put this on.” Dryce held out a vest he’d pulled from the storage compartment. It was thick, a little heavy, and embedded with several safety features that protected the wearer from blaster fire and other minor weapons.

  Peyton studied the material then looked up at him. “A shield? Why aren’t you wearing one?” She shucked off her jacket, put on the vest, then put her jacket back on.

  “They can interfere with the electronics in the blasters. Makes shooting accurately impossible.” And there was only one vest. Space on the helicopter was limited and protective gear could take up a lot of room. They had the basics, but a vest like what he’d given to Peyton was top of the line, not something doled out on every mission.

  Peyton bit her lip and glanced down at the dark material. “If it interferes with electronics, I can’t wear it while I’m doing my job.” She reached for the hem as if to take it off, but Dryce held a hand up to stop her.

  “Then take it off when you’re working and put it back on after. I don’t want you getting hit.” Blaster fire wasn’t usually fatal, but it hurt like all the hells and if he could save Peyton from any pain, he’d do whatever it took.

  His denya didn’t mention how dangerous it would be to stand in hostile territory without the vest, but he could see the thoughts spinning through her mind. He packed up his gear and Peyton took what she could, but they traveled light. The hike to the site would take some time, but they’d be back at the helicopter by dark, and they didn’t plan to take much back with them after they investigated.

  The hike wasn’t silent, though they didn’t do much speaking. Birds chirped and
the wind rustled through the leaves, but still Dryce felt that something was wrong. He wanted this mission to be over as soon as possible, but there was no way to finish it without possibly engaging with hostiles. Normally he’d look forward to battle, but not while he walked at his denya’s side.

  He didn’t know how Raze did it. Sierra was out there somewhere with the team and she could just as easily be cut down as any of them. Raze would lay down his life before he let that happen, but sometimes losses couldn’t be prevented.

  “Are you okay?” Peyton asked, laying her hand gently on his arm. She tipped her head up at him, eyes wide as she studied his expression.

  Dryce didn’t know what he was giving away, but he couldn’t focus on the things that could go wrong with his brother. He was distracted enough focusing on keeping Peyton safe. Worrying about things he couldn’t control would only split his focus and make things worse.

  “I’m fine,” he replied, wincing as the lie passed his lips. A person didn’t lie to their denya, not like this, and it wounded his soul to do something even so minor. And it only compounded the hurt he was feeling from keeping the other half of his identity from her.

  Peyton narrowed her eyes. “I don’t think you are.” She spoke quietly, just as aware as him of the danger they could be in at any moment.

  Dryce could lie again, but he sensed that would lead to an argument, and they’d already argued enough. Besides, if he was going to concentrate on their surroundings, it was better to get out the other side of this conversation as quickly as possible than to keep evading. He sighed and scanned their surroundings by habit before answering. There was no one but them and the forest, no sense of hostile forces at all.

  “My brother is on this mission with his denya. I don’t know how he does it. She is in just as much danger as him, and it must be driving him crazy.” Because if it wasn’t, Dryce desperately needed to ask him for advice on how to make it through.

  “Denya?” Peyton asked, brows scrunched in question.

  “His mate. They’ve been together since just before we all came to this planet.” If he could avoid it, he wasn’t going to explain the denya bond or the denya price, not right now. If this conversation was distracting, he could only imagine how bad it would be to explain that he’d die at the age of thirty if Peyton wouldn’t claim him.

  “That’s not very long,” she replied after a loaded moment of silence.

  “Time is irrelevant when it comes to the denya bond. Raze has walked out into danger with the only person in the universe meant to be by his side, the one he is bound to protect. I do not like to think on what he’s going though.” Would it be easier or harder if he and Peyton were fully mated? At least he could be sure of her then, be sure that she wanted to be by his side and share in his hardships. But he’d heard stories of what it felt like to be truly mated, truly bound, and he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to risk that connection to enemy fire.

  “She’s a soldier, right?” Peyton clambered over a fallen tree branch and almost tripped when she made it to the other side. “It was the talk of the office for at least a week when you all showed up, and we talked a little when we were preparing for the mission.”

  Soldier. Spy. Close enough in this case. Dryce nodded.

  “Then she’s probably not happy about the thought of being left behind,” Peyton pointed out. “I’m not exactly jumping for joy being out here, but I belong in a lab. If I’d trained for years and then some guy was telling me that I couldn’t do my work because it’s dangerous, I’d slap him upside the head and talk some sense into him. Or kick him to the curb. Whichever’s easiest. They might be fated to be together or whatever, but that doesn’t mean that their training and responsibility is just going to disappear.”

  Logically, that all made sense. But the denya bond had nothing to do with logic.

  “Let me guess,” she continued, tossing a grin at him as if this was all hypothetical. “If you could manage to restrain yourself to a single mate, you’d keep her locked up in a padded room and only allowed out when the building was secured by no less than five—no, ten!—warriors.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head as if she could imagine this scenario she’d conjured up.

  Dryce looked at the forest around them and glanced back at Peyton. Now would be a moment to tell her. If only to prove that he would never try and stop his mate from being herself. “I would have no trouble ‘restraining’ myself to a single mate.” He shot her a pointed look, but Peyton seemed able to brush it off with a shrug.

  “Are you sure? No more clubs? No more groupies?” She laughed, but there was a serious question in her eyes, as if she didn’t want the answer to matter as much as it did.

  “No one but my denya.” Dryce stopped walking as he said it, turning fully toward Peyton and giving her the full weight of his gaze. “I haven’t sat idly by waiting for the day I recognize my mate, but once I’m hers, I will seek no others.”

  What use was a promise if she didn’t know he was making it to her?

  “Peyton—”

  A crack echoed around them, a tree branch snapping and crashing through the trees. Dryce pushed Peyton behind him and raised his blaster, ready for trouble from any direction. They moved forward carefully, but when they got to the fallen branch, there was nothing to suggest that it had succumbed to anything but the wind. Still, they walked more carefully and this time in the utmost quiet. Sound could carry strangely in the woods, and Dryce didn’t want to alert any potential hostiles to their presence, especially not just so he could confess his feelings. There would be time for that later.

  PEYTON’S GAZE KEPT snagging on Dryce as they covered the last kilometer to their destination. Tension thrummed through her with every step they took, a confusing mix of emotions from what he’d said to her and the fear that the enemy could be lurking behind every tree branch.

  For a second back there she’d been convinced that Dryce was going to confess something massive. Something she wasn’t sure she could believe, and something she feared that she wanted more than she ever would have expected. But how could she want to be the playboy’s mate?

  If she hadn’t been so worried about tipping off whatever enemy lay in wait, Peyton would have cursed. She couldn’t wait to get back to the real world, and that had only a little bit to do with the amount of danger she and Dryce were in. She needed to be around people that weren’t the hopelessly sexy warrior that had taken up residence in her mind and tempted her closer and closer to sin with each passing minute. Sure, he said he’d be satisfied with a single mate, just like her father had said he’d be happy with a life on Earth. People didn’t change, not something as fundamental as that. She shouldn’t be hoping that Dryce belonged to her. She should be grateful that he wasn’t trying to.

  They found a spot to observe the location from and once he was satisfied, Dryce handed a set of binoculars to her. Luckily whatever her vest did to deflect blasters didn’t seem to affect the electronics of the binoculars and she was able to take a look. Unlike their last location, this one had clearly seen recent activity. There wasn’t a road, but on the far side of the central building there was a break in the trees where it looked like some of the foliage had been cleared away. It wouldn’t be difficult for a vehicle in hover mode to make it through that.

  And the building itself was a bit of a hint that something was up. They were far away from civilization, hours by ground from the nearest major city, and the map she’d looked at only listed a few towns within a hundred kilometers. This area had mostly gone back to nature over the last century and the people who’d once called it home were long gone. But the building in front of them wasn’t old, not as old as the remaining towns around here. No, it looked like a small warehouse or garage and couldn’t have been around for more than a year or two. The forest ate things up quickly out here, and unless it was constantly maintained by whoever owned it, the animals and trees would have already been working to destroy it.

  A gentle hum in t
he air tickled Peyton’s ears and she shifted the binoculars until she found what she expected. “They’ve got generators,” she said. It was the easiest way to maintain power in a place like this, but they were useless for stealth. Even the quietest generator hummed loud enough to be heard across a clearing when there were no other noises to drown it out.

  Dryce took the binoculars back when she handed them over and looked where she pointed. He made a humming sound and took in a few more things before packing up the binoculars and pulling out a small tablet that fit in the palm of his hand, the holographic display hovering in the air between them and quickly mapping out the area around them.

  “Trackers aren’t picking up any activity,” Dryce whispered as the holo display rotated around the camp, showing them different angles of the building in front of them. “Generator looks to be on standby.”

  From sound alone, Peyton could agree on that point. “They shut off automatically after twenty-four hours in standby mode,” she said. “So that probably means someone was here recently.”

  “Or they turned them on remotely and they’re coming back,” he suggested.

  Peyton shivered; she didn’t want unexpected company. “Can your tracker get a look inside the building?”

  Dryce shook his head, expression intense. “Only a basic reading, no images. If we want to see inside, we need to do it ourselves.”

  Wonderful. “What about surveillance?”

  At that Dryce gave her his signature grin and Peyton was no less susceptible to it as the first time she’d seen it. “The trackers have two functions. Once I send the command they send out a short wave pulse. It will scramble all surveillance for about an hour and should appear to anyone watching to come from natural interference.”

  Depending on what the building looked like inside, they could need much more than an hour to explore, but they’d take what they could get. Dryce led the way after pressing a command on the tablet. The holo display disappeared as the function of the trackers switched over from observation to obfuscation. Breaking cover of the trees was the most nerve wracking experience that Peyton could remember. She expected a shot to come at them at any second, but it became clearer and clearer that she and Dryce were the only two people there.