Enemies of Fate

Choosing Sides

Book Two

Chapter 1

Standing in Anarchy’s drive room, Derek takes in the quiet of his ship. After checking his refitted biosuit for the third time in two hours he sets it aside. It was ready – maybe more so than he was. The suit modifications he had made for carrying out quick repairs to Anarchy’s outer hull had been a start. But what he had in mind today had required slightly more.

Stripping the suit to its essentials and sealing the connection for the breather had been Derek’s first task. It took away the extra bulk and weight, and left him with protection both from extreme temperatures, and the wider range of motion he would need. The last thing to go had been the suits forward impulse system, but he counted it as a small price to pay to ensure that his presence went undetected.

Pushing off from Anarchy’s solid mass, toward the maintenance hatch of Cage’s vessel would be easy enough for him to do. Even without the aid of outside propulsion, he was more than confident in his ability to control his trajectory for such a short time. Passing his bone blade over the sharpening strop several times before sliding it into its sheath, Derek turns for navigation command to check in with Zerrin and the rest of the crew.

Cage’s security had tracked them for six hours before he was satisfied that they were out of range. Making the return trip without discovery required Anarchy to suspend operation of anything deemed as non-essential. Anarchy was providing them the minimum light and heat necessary to ensure that their return went unnoticed but not much else.

Using the old earth stop light system of green, yellow, and red, the ship tracked their movements, monitoring their individual noise levels along the glass paneling for them to see. While Derek, Zerrin, and Jax found it easy to keep below the flashing yellow warning lights, Kales’ edginess had led to clumsy fingers. After his second red light infraction, Zerrin had been able to convince Kale to try and get some rest.

Jax had taken to his bunk to pass the time catching up on his reading and Zee had spent the last few hours in command. Sliding into the pilot’s seat, Derek took in the sound of her even breathing and noticed the slight shiver that ran through her, despite the thick blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Although the drop in the ships climate had no effect on him, Zerrin didn’t have the luxury of an elevated body temperature and Derek’s wolf growls low, chiding him for not considering their mate beforehand.

Carefully settling her onto his lap, he holds her close, letting his heat seep into her chilled skin, and smiles, satisfied at her easy acceptance of his offered warmth. Prepping the skiff for deployment and retrieval earlier in the day gives him two hours before he’ll need to suit up. With nothing left to do now but wait, Derek relaxes back into his seat.

As he lets himself bask in their connection, he sighs contentedly. He immerses himself in the sound of her breathing and the tempo of her heartbeat, before turning his focus in another direction. Drifting through the scent of the lilac wash in her hair, the fragrance of her that lies beneath the superficial, and the anxious contentment that seems to radiate from within her so thickly he can almost taste its sweetness, Derek lets his eyes drift shut.

The contrast between the anger and hatred Zerrin had felt for Cage, and the happiness she had felt the instance Derek had confirmed his intent to get Nathandra back, had been sweeping. Plan B was now their ultimate goal, and anxiety, contentment, and determination to succeed; seemed to be the mood of the entire crew. If he were honest with himself, Derek would have to say he felt the same.

Not even the knowledge that their next move might change more than he could foresee, could erase the image of Nathandra’s haunted eyes as she’d taken, what she’d thought, was her last look at he and Zerrin. Cage had lied about the life span of the Tellers. But the fact that he had been nothing but honest with Derek about his views of the Tellers as a people and Nathandra as a child, had been key in Derek’s final decision.

Someone had described him that way once: as a thing, a tool to be used, as; nothing more than a means to an end, and someone had helped him change that fate. For so long, he’d thought that Donna had chosen to help him, had chosen to free him. However, when he put himself in her shoes, Derek could see it all so clearly. Someone who could not help herself needed him. He could see now that for people like himself and his crew, for people like Donna, there was never really a choice to make. There were only actions to take. Extending his hearing further, Derek sought out his crew. Kale had finally managed to calm himself enough to fall asleep after pacing his quarters for what felt like hours. The gentle snores that Derek could make out told him that he was resting peacefully.

Smiling to himself, he turns his auditory search to Jackson and finds him in his bunk. His heartrate is steady but not the rhythm of a man sleeping. By the almost inaudible tapping he hears, Derek guesses that Jackson’s attention is on his datapad, and he smiles fondly down at Zerrin. She and Jax ware alike in their love for their personal devices, and Derek had heard that soft tapping in the quiet of his ship, enough times to recognize it when he heard it.

Moving his search on to the rest of the living quarters, he pauses. Derek knows that he shouldn’t allow himself, but he can’t stop his senses from reaching for her. The quarters she had occupied were empty, completely quiet, and he pushes down his wolf’s urge to whine and howl for the child. Though it had been under twelve hours since they had left Nathandra with Cage, the distance between his wolf and the pup it had accepted as its own had been enough to drive him to distraction.

Cycles ago, had someone told Derek that he would miss the soft smell of ginger that seemed to cling to the child, the sound of her voice that calmed his inner animals just as Zerrin’s did, or that her heartbeat, once foreign to him, would make a place for itself inside his chest, he would have laughed in their faces. However, that was cycles ago. Try as he might, Derek had never been able to connect with most people. Sensing right away that their words were often times lies meant to hide darker motives, he’d become accustomed to keeping his distance whenever possible.

He had expected to be able to do the same with Nathandra but had quickly discovered that the child was so fundamentally contradictory of everything he had come to expect, it was hard not to let her in. Instead of the cold, untrusting suspicion that most people regarded him with, Nathandra had seen him with only trust and wonder. Instead of viewing him as someone evil, to be fled from, she’d seen him as safety when she was uncertain or afraid, had named him the dragon that protected the kingdom in the story she’d written. Derek thinks back on the unified feeling of pride that had swept through his entire being, of both man and animal feeling accepted and worthwhile to someone for the right reasons; and quietly huffs to himself, shaking his head.

As Nathandra’s story unfolded, Zerrin and Jax had smiled conspiratorially at the way Derek’s chest seemed to broaden and his head tilted a little higher each time the dragon had made an appearance. Brushing their watchful gazes off with a shrug, he’d looked back at the two of them and cocked an eyebrow.

“What?” he’d asked them with a daring edge to his voice. “Dragons are cool,” he’d said with a slight upturn of his lips.

Over the cycles, a lot of people had wanted to control Derek, to use him as anything from leader to lover and everything in between and he’d resisted every time. He found it a bit surprising that being seen as the dragon in a child’s story: brave and honorable; fearless and just, was the only thing that felt right to him.

So lost in thought that he had missed the change in Zerrin’s heartbeat and breathing as she’d transitioned from sleep to wakefulness, Derek looks down and takes in the soft smile on her lips and the sparkle in her eyes.

“Hey,” she says quietly, pursing her lips when he grunts his response at her. “Where were you? Just now?”

“I was here,” he replies feigning ignorance of the question he knows her to be asking.

“No, you weren’t. You were lost…up there,” she tells him motioning to his head. Accepting that he won’t be getting out of this without an answer to her question, he tips his head back against his headrest and looks out at the stars.

“I should never have let her go.”

“Derek, we had to. There was no other option, remember?” she asks sitting up to look into his eyes. “We ran through every scenario, tried to come up with any other ideas, but there was no way for us to take her and make it.”

“I should have-”

“What?” she asks. “Tell me what you should have done that would have ended well for any of us?” She cups his cheek and turns his face carefully back to meet her soft, expectant gaze.

He could tell her that he should have fought. That he should have tried to run or killed Cage then and there, but none of those would be the truth. The fact of the matter is that he ‘could’ have fought. They ‘could’ have run, he ‘could’ have killed Cage and all his men, but the question she’d asked had been what he ‘should’ have done differently that would have ended well for them, and no matter how much he dislikes it, the answer is simple. It’s cut and dry and consists of only one word, and he hates that word, but his hate for it doesn’t make it any less true, so he answers.

“Nothing.”

“Exactly, Derek. There was nothing else you should have done. You did what you had to do. For me, for Jax and Kale, for Nat and even for Glitch. What you’re doing now is what counts,” she tells him, leaning in to place a chaste kiss at the corner of his mouth.

Resting her head against his shoulder once again, Zerrin looks over to the timer and closes her eyes, letting silence wash over them for the moment. Fighting with his desire to ask a question that seems so unlike him, so unsure, he flexes his jaw muscle and exhales sharply through his nose. Feeling the muscle tense and relax against her forehead, Zerrin smiles and lets her fingertips ghost from the hinge of his jaw to the tip of his chin; until he begins to calm under her touch.

“When I get there, I’m going to give her the choice. Do you think she’ll be happy to see…that she’ll want to come with us?” he asks and Zerrin can hear the unspoken ‘me’ that he’d stumbled over as clearly as if he’d voiced it.

“Yes. I think she’ll be very happy to see you and I know she’ll want to come with us,” she reassures him quietly and nestles into him as he eases into comfort.

When the hour has passed, Derek notices Jackson beginning to stir in his quarters. In the almost complete silence of the ship, it would be harder for Derek not to notice the man’s apparent restlessness, than to simply allow his hearing to rest on it. When the continuously looping pattern of sit, groan, stand, and pace becomes too much for Derek, he takes pity on the obviously bored ex-beta soldier and has Anarchy request that he join them in nav. command. Making his way through the ship, mindful to keep within the green for Anarchy’s noise monitors Jax stops at nav. commands entrance and leans against the frame, craning his neck to look in on them.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Why don’t you have a seat, Jax,” he says tipping his head toward the co-pilots seat in mild amusement. “You seem anxious.”

“What do you…you could tell from this far away?” he asks getting comfortable in the seat.

“Ship’s never been this quiet. I usually need to focus through the noises Anarchy’s systems make, but with everything either suspended or at a minimum…” he trails off with a shrug.

“You have no buffer,” Jax finishes for him and Derek nods.

“It’s like being in complete darkness and trying not to focus on the only sliver of light,” he explains and Jackson snorts and shakes his head.

“I was reading but I guess the libraries updates are suspended?”

“Can’t risk the signal broadcasting.”

“Right. She asleep?” he asks motioning to Zerrin.

“Nope. Just using Der here as my personal heater.”

“Now that you mention it, the rest of us are either hunkered down or in extra layers plus a blanket while you’re in a muscle shirt. How does that work exactly? Do you not feel the cold?” he asks and Derek chuckles.

“I feel it. It just doesn’t feel the same to me.”

“Meaning?”

“Derek’s blood runs hotter than ours,” Zerrin provides. When Jax tilts his head in confusion Derek continues.

“The normal human runs an average temperature of 98.6. I run about 102 but I can control it. If I turn my focus inward, I can increase or decrease my body’s temperature by a matter of degrees.”

Jackson turns to the main viewer for a beat but nods his head and turns back to them with a smirk.

“And that’s not even the strangest thing you’ve said to me this week,” Jackson deadpans and Zerrin laughs into Derek’s neck. “As comfortable as she looks, I’d guess you’re running a little hotter than 102 right now,” he asks and Derek shrugs. “The big bad wolf, reduced to a heating blanket?” Jax jokes and Derek growls at him in mock warning.

Swinging her legs in front of her, Zerrin kisses Derek and stands.

“I’m going to the galley, come and get me before it’s time? I’ll help you suit up.”

Derek nods as she wraps her blanket tighter around her shoulders and leaves them. Offering Jackson a small smile before turning back to the main viewer, he lets a moment pass before he speaks.

“You’re taking all of this very well, everything I’ve told you. You’re handling it better than I’d imagined.”

“What, you mean the fact that my new boss was genetically engineered and designed to be the ultimate bad ass? Complete with advanced and enhanced…everything?” Jackson quips and Derek laughs out loud before he can stop himself, causing Anarchy to flash a yellow light in warning. “Don’t get me wrong, messed with my head a little.”

“It’s a lot to take in.”

End of excerpt. Check back for more exclusive content and look for Choosing Sides: Enemies of Fate on Amazon this 4th of July!