Captured and Captivated

Chapter 5

SARHEN

I moved forward with ruthless efficiency, dispatching each guard without a microsecond of hesitation.

Time was of the essence here. Thanks to that travesty of an auction I didn't have nearly the window of opportunity that we had been calculating. That whole event had been completely unplanned for and – believe me- my onboard wasn't happy with being surprised.

I should have guessed that the Kryn would do something so dirty and underhanded. The private viewing should have been a soft moment of trust building with my future mate. Instead, it had turned into an ugly three way betting match with two other aliens who had very much not been part of the original deal.

The middle one had been a Behan. I had to scoff at that. They were a cousin species to the Satu and had been suffering through the exact same biological devastation from the Orsix that my originator species were. They desperately needed females but kriff, try and be a little more subtle about it? That one had been wearing battle armor for kark's sake. The spikes and style of it signaled he was a very high ranking officer, but the visual effect had probably scared my little human half to death. Karking idiot. Way to make a first impression.

He hadn't been the real problem, though. It had been the third bidder- species unknown- that had ruined my meticulous plan. What should have been a precious strike had become little more than a glorified snatch and grab. He'd forced me into betting a price so high that there was no way my fake line of credit would hold up for more than a standard hour at the very best.

Hence, the need to haul ass. If we didn't make it out of here before my fake identity was outed then... well things were going to get interesting.

We rounded a corner and another blast had the Krynn I'd just ambushed dropping like a stone. For now I was using non-lethal rounds. The sonic compression blaster was specifically calibrated for Krynn physiology. Banedon had been instrumental into getting me onto this station and I knew he would take a poor view to me slaughtering every Krynn I saw on my path to get to her.

She needed me. My human needed was in a bad way. For the first part of the bidding she'd kept her head down. Face neutral, shoulders slumped. A pale and painfully thin reality to the fake promise being projected next to her.

Then she had looked at me. Her eyes were slightly unfocused and foggy, but I could clearly see the rage peaking through. A similar fury burned through me as I realized exactly what was wrong with the little human.

She'd been drugged. That put me in a very bad mood. Thirteen Krynn later and neither me or my on board were feeling any better.

All my other half wanted me to do was get us out of here. Okay, so the mission didn't work out, so what? Forget about the human girl, you can find another. Or, better yet, just forget about this whole idea of being mated and accept that we only had each-

No.

Categorically no. The computer in my head wasn't going to get in my way. The human was mine. I would do whatever it took to get to her, no matter how much danger I had to put myself into.

However, going out in a blaze of poorly considered romantic glory might not be the most effective or pleasurable way of achieving mission success, so I gave my onboard the majority control of our movements. I allowed the computer half of me to place each step, strike each hit, and hold us back when we really needed to. Just as long as it understood my rules: we were doing this. We had a mission, and retreat was not an option.

Ahead of me the doors to the next crossroads of me slid open. My onboard had remotely triggered them but my agitation had made us both distracted. An astonished Krynn looked up, clearly pondering the mechanism and why it had triggered without his command.