Page 15 of Guardian's Destiny

"Use me?"

"Well, you weren't exactly rescued," Hannah admitted. "We're in the middle of something."

Oh, that. "Yeah, Vraax said as much."

"I'm sorry we can't take you to Astrionis," Zoe apologized.

I tried to keep my anger back, but I must have lost some of my edge by the way Hannah looked at me. I deepened my smile, trying to win her back over. "That's alright. Astrionis was just a place I thought I could find safety."

"Well, we're safe," Luph assured me with such a sweet smile that I forgot her… let's put it politely, strangeness.

"Yeah, for now," Nova harrumphed.

"Killjoy," Zoe chided.

I liked their easy exchange and banter. Hannah seemed to feel a bit out, too, and when our eyes met in commiseration, shesmiled at me. The urge to want to be part of this group held a strange lure, and I admitted, "I should have known. Danger is literally my middle name, and I seem to attract it wherever I can."

"Your middle name?" Zoe asked.

"My full name is Sloane Pericolosa Storm," I filled them in. "A soldier whose last name was Pericolosa, which literally means danger in Italian, saved my Dad's life, so he decided it would be a good middle name for me."

Thinking of good old Dad almost warmed my heart since I had chosen to remember only the good times with him. Once I had been able to let go of ever gaining his approval, it had almost been liberating.

All four women stared at me incredulously. I had forgotten that normal people didn't usually have daddy issues. A fact I had been able to keep from all the psychiatrists I was forced to see as a necessity for my security clearance over the years. I didn't need to talk to a shrink to know that I haddaddy issues. I knew. I had loved the old bastard. Otherwise, his praise would have never been so important to me. Well, that was water under the bridge. I put on my most winning smile. "It's true."

"Wow, I feel kind of small now, having been named after a supernova," Nova laughed.

"Hannah isn't exactly colorful either," Hannah added.

"Or Zoe," Zoe laughed, "but Princess Luphelia might offer some competition."

"Princess?" I arched an eyebrow.

That opened the floodgates, and the four of them filled me in on all the deep, dark secrets they had unearthed about the Ohrurs and the Space Guardians and how they came together as a group. It was quite an impressive story, and I won't lie, it was intriguing as hell—just the kind of mission I would normally give my left arm for to be part of. In short, the Ohrurs had decimatedan entire planet, Darlam. They killed the entire population to get their hands on what they called an Archegene, which came a little bit too close to my mission and was something I needed to mull over when I had a second to myself.

The Ohrurs lost fifty percent of their population during a civil war that followed or caused the Darlam extinction; the women weren't sure about the sequence yet. They took the Archegene and cooked up a new species, the Space Guardians, whom they had been using ever since as their little private army for hire. Killing any of them who started asking questions, which, from what I heard, happened somewhere between twenty to thirty years of service for the Ohrurs.

Not only that, the Ohrurs had also killed any Space Guardian and their fated mate if they discovered their Soulweb Glyphs.

"Doesn't sound like people you want to fuck with," I agreed when they finished.

"The worst. We're trying to get to Darlam to find more answers, but the Ohrurs put a forcefield up around the planet, and it's impenetrable." Zoe explained.

"And that's what they're interrogating the Ohrur about now?" I perked up.

They nodded in unison.

"You think he'll talk?" I asked curiously.

To my utter surprise, Hannah said, "The Ohrurs have a high pain tolerance, so we've tried sleep deprivation and waterboarding."

Again, I would have expected that from Nova, not Hannah. She impressed me. "Nice," an idea occurred to me. It seemed like I was in this whether or not I liked it. The faster these people finished their mission, the faster I could get in contact with the Pandraxians and warn Zapharos. I might even find a way to use one of their comms, as long as we weren't out of range. I turnedto Luph. "That sleeping stuff you gave me yesterday, are you some kind of healer?"

"We don't really need healers anymore. We have healing wands." Luph explained. "But to answer your question, I do know how to make certain remedies."

"Do you have one," I asked as an idea solidified in my mind. Luph retrieved one and held it out to me. "Perfect, let me borrow that. Also, do you have a potion that will make someone violently sick, like throwing up?"

Luph looked startled. "I can make something, but why would you?—"

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