Born of Ice

They laughed.

Alix lifted her chin in pride. “No idea. We just added spices until it didn’t suck anymore.”

Her laughter was infectious and before he even realized what he was doing, he dipped his head down to capture her lips.

Alix’s head spun at the unexpected taste of Devyn as she brought her hand up to cup his face while his tongue danced with hers. Never in her life had she thought to feel like this. To feel safe on a ship with a crew who could make her laugh and have fun—even while her life was threatened . . . while everything fell apart . . .

This isn’t happening.

It’s a dream.

“Um, should I leave you two alone?”

Devyn pulled back as Omari’s voice broke through his lust. “Sorry, Slim.”

“Don’t apologize to me. So long as you don’t try to kiss me like that, it’s all good.”

Devyn pulled him into a headlock. “You’re such a smartass.”

Omari laughed as he spun out of the hold. “I learned it from the best.”

Alix stood back as Nero and Sway joined them and they all sat down to eat. While they chatted and joked, a strange feeling came over her. Like a dream fog. This peaceful moment was so surreal and hard to accept.

Her entire life had been a study in insults and degradation. Yet with Devyn and his “family” . . . she had found a place she wanted to belong to.

And all too soon the moment was over, and Vik notified them that they were coming into Charisis.

She met Devyn’s stare and her heart slid into her stomach. A feeling of bad foreboding hit her hard. “I’ll get everything cleaned up while you land us.”

“I’ll help you, Alix,” Omari offered. “Only fair since I started the mess.”

Devyn inclined his head to them before he and the others went to the bridge.

True to his word, Omari helped her clean the table. “Don’t be so sad, Alix. It’ll be all right.”

She paused as she picked up Devyn’s plate. “You said that you kept waiting for your dad to leave you when you were younger. How long did it take before you lost that feeling?”

Omari’s face was haunted. “I lost it the night Clotilde almost killed him.”

What a weird thing to say. How could something like that take away his fear? If anything, she would think it would worsen it. “I don’t understand.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “I was with my grandfather that night. We’d gone to a game together to give Dad time alone with Clo. When Dad called, I saw the look on my grandfather’s face and I knew it was bad. I can’t even describe it. It was like staring into the face of hell. One second we were driving normal through traffic and in the next, I saw a side of my grandfather that I hope I never see again. He got me home so fast, I still think we broke some kind of land-speed record.”

Omari fell silent as that night replayed through his mind. His grandfather was still in prime shape, and while he knew the man was a lot older, he definitely didn’t look it. Syn was in better shape than most men half his age.

“I was told to stay outside, but I didn’t listen.” He’d followed his grandfather up to find Clotilde lying dead in the foyer.

Terrified and sick, he’d stared at her open eyes, transfixed by the horror of her death. Blood had been splattered all over the white walls and across the marble-topped table, showing him exactly how brutal their fight had been. Pictures and paintings had been knocked from the walls and shattered. There were burn marks from blaster shots through furniture, on the walls, floor and ceiling.

The large arrangement of flowers that had always stood in the center of the foyer table had been knocked to the floor where the vase had broken, and the flowers lay floating in her blood.

“Stay with me, Devyn. Goddammit, boy, don’t you dare die on me! You hear me? Stay with me!”

Those words had pulled him away from her gruesome death pose and toward the living room, where his grandfather was kneeling beside his father, trying to staunch the flow of blood that poured out of his chest. He could see the trail marked by the blood his father had left as he crawled from the foyer to the coffee table to get his link so that he could call them.

And in that one instant, he’d been taken back to the day his family had been slaughtered by The League. And he’d heard his own mother telling him to survive no matter what.

“Devyn! Look at me!”