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“And Sazahk?” Serihk paused beside Sazahk as he swept toward the exit. “You may not believe me, but I really am glad you didn’t die out there.”
The exhaustion prevented the bitterness on Sazahk’s tongue from forming into words and he didn’t reply as Serihk left him alone in his lab. Of course his brother was glad he wasn’t dead. He hadn’t redeemed himself yet, nor gotten Serihk the leverage he needed in his negotiations. The family couldn’t have Sazahk dying while he remained a stain on their record. He needed that pardon first.
Garin wouldn’t think so.
Sazahk left the blood-analysis machine to its work and trudged out into the hall. Garin thought Sazahk already improved the galaxy. He was already glad Sazahk had been born. At least, that’s what he’d said.
Sazahk dragged himself and his pack to his quarters. He shouldn’t think about what Garin had said before he’d walked off without a second look back. It hurt and Sazahk’s chest already ached. His whole body ached.
He made it to his room without running into any of his squad mates and shut the door behind himself. His room was exactly as he’d left it, strewn about with clothes and tools and tablets and papers.
He sat on his bed and dropped his pack between his feet.
Staring down into it, his sore heart throbbed. His pack wasn’t how he’d left it. It was exquisitely organized. Every tool and item had a place that made sense, every microscope was lovingly tucked away into a soft piece of clothing to protect it.
His throat burning, Sazahk overturned his pack and dumped its contents onto the floor.
“Dominic Turner, I am boarding your ship and when I do, you’d better have a damn good reason for sitting here outside your stepfather’s security perimeter.”
But Garin was livid no matter what the reason.
“Garin?” Dom’s voice, shocked and heart-tugging-ly hopeful, crackled through the speakers on the ship’s control panel as Garin maneuvered around an asteroid. “How did you find me?”
Garin breathed out a silent sigh of relief at the unharmed sound of Dom’s voice. When he’d seen the young man’s signal pinging from beside a known Wate Group space station, his heart had frozen in his chest. He’d have bet every one of his Turner Corporation stock options that Dom had been kidnapped by their archrival. That Dom’s mother had left their family to marry Andrew Wate, the Wate Group’s founder, hadn’t made Garin feel any better.
But Dom sounded just fucking fine, which begged the question of what the hell he thought he was doing!
“Dominic Turner, I have so many trackers on you I could find you in the Andromeda galaxy.” Garin circled around to the dark side of the space rock and spied the ship he’d been hunting hidden in a shadow.
“You shouldn’t have come.” Dom’s voice hardened into prideful petulance. But as Garin approached, the boarding clamps extended to meet him, ready to connect Garin’s borrowed Klah’Eel ship to Dom’s.
“Can it with that shit, Dom.” Garin let the autopilot dock and unstrapped himself from his seat. He pulled his sidearm as he strode to the airlock. Despite Dom’s tone, Garin wasn’t completely convinced his charge wasn’t under duress. Both ships were small vessels designed for crews of two max, so by the time he approached the airlock doors, they hissed open.
On the other side stood Dom, his arms crossed, and his feet planted. “I’m serious, Garin. There are reasons I don’t want you here.”
“Yeah? And what are those?” Garin’s gaze swept the ship’s interior as he boarded it, but it looked empty other than Dom. So, he holstered his weapon again and turned his attention to Dom himself, circling around him and sweeping his eyes up and down the young man. He wasn’t injured, and he didn’t look sick, but he had bags under his icy blue eyes, and he kept rubbing the fabric of his sleeve between his right thumb and forefinger. He was stressed. Anxious, even more than he usually was, and probably out of sorts from all the chemicals he’d been injecting himself with to survive his mad dashes around the sector.
“I can’t let you stop me, and I don’t have time to fight you.” Dom swiveled around to face Garin as Garin circled him, his hands tightening over his biceps.
“Stop you from doing what exactly?” Garin turned away from Dom to walk the perimeter of the small ship, checking for anything out of place that might explain Dom’s cagey behavior. The younger man had been quite the busy bee the last few days, flitting between the Turner estate and home ships, then various Turner labs, before ending here, lurking behind an asteroid beside an insignificant Wate Group relay server station. “What have you been up to?”
Dom didn’t reply, and when Garin stopped his surveying to study him, he was twisting up the fabric of his sleeves in his nervous hands.
“Dominic.” Garin lowered his voice into the tone he used with the twins when they gave him the same guilty look. He crossed his arms in a sterner mirror of Dom’s posture. “What have you been up to?”
Dominic shifted away from Garin with a wariness Garin didn’t like. “You’re contractually obligated to safeguard my physical person, right? Not Turner Corporation business interests?”
Not for the first time, Garin wanted to punch Alistair Turner in the mouth for raising sons that couldn’t comprehend being cared for. “I’m not even contractually obligated to protect you right now. Technically, I’m assigned to Sazahk until further notice. But more importantly, Dominic, I would never put Turner business interests ahead of your safety, or hell, even your well-being or happiness.”
Dom’s arms loosened across his chest.
At the sight of his drooping stance, Garin released the tension in his own arms. Oliver wouldn’t have believed him, but Dom did. Or he wanted to believe him so much it had the same effect.
“What did you do, Dom?”
“I…” Dom dropped his hands to his sides and rubbed his palms against the fabric of his pants. “I deleted all of my research.”
That…hadn’t been the answer Garin expected. He wasn’t even sure what that meant. “Your research on what?”
