Page 13 of Her Lawless Prince

“Well?” Nyle insisted.

“You’re going to repair the cyborg,” the man stated. He retracted the injector without coming after her with it.

Nyle tried to move in front of her. “Why would I do that?”

Payton again stepped in the opposite direction to watch their captor.

“I assume you want to eat sometime soon,” the mercenary stated.

“Nah, I’ve been looking for an excuse to diet,” Payton quipped. If she had gone days without food, that would explain the pain in her head.

The man glanced over her as if she were nothing and then said to Nyle, “Do it or we launch your woman into the black, after we have a bit of fun with her first.”

“Touch me, and you will have the full force of the Qurilixen army on your ass,” Payton warned.

“Right,” the man drawled sarcastically. “Because I’m worried about a bunch of kittens attacking in deep space. No one knows where you are. Help is not coming.”

Anger won.

Payton let claws sprout from her hand, and she started toward him. “You should—”

The man lifted his hand. The shirt around her chest tightened, cutting off her words. He pointed a device at her.

“Stop!” Nyle ordered.

“Blast…you…to…” Payton gasped. She fell to her knees and clawed at her chest, fighting for each tiny breath.

“Release her.” Nyle charged the man and swung. He landed a blow across the mercenary’s cheek. The compression garment’s control fell to the floor as the mercenary shoved Nyle across the room. Nyle pushed off the wall and went right back into the fray.

Payton crawled for the remote and slapped her hand desperately against it. The garment tightened. She heard the men fighting. She hit it again.

Suddenly, the nanotech released, showering down around her in tiny pieces like sand.

Kitten this, slargnot!

Payton inhaled deeply. Her body instantly shifted into full cat form, and she pounced. Her shoulder nudged Nyle aside as she landed on their captor’s chest. The momentum slid them out of the holding cell into the corridor. She roared as she pressed her claws to his neck.

A blaster shot past her head.

“Back off,” a woman yelled. She was the same one who’d ordered all three of them to be taken prisoner from Yevgen’s home. Slicked, short black hair gave her angular face a severe expression, made more so by the piercing glare of her green eyes. A smudge of black had been smeared beneath her right eye.

Payton roared. The woman kept one pistol aimed at Payton and pulled another from the holster at her waist to point at their holding cell.

“I said back off,” the woman warned. “Or I’ll shoot both of you and find someone else to repair the cyborg.”

Payton felt her claw snag flesh. One slash and the mercenary wouldn’t be rejoining his crew.

The woman fired. Nyle grunted in pain.

Payton lifted her paw. The mercenary shoved at her chest. She let him push her aside but kept her movements slow so that he knew it was her choice to let him live.

“Fuse, get your ass off that floor,” the woman ordered. “I told you not to play with the prisoners. If you’re so bored, go fetch them something from the food simulator before I let her eat your worthless hide.”

The large mercenary obeyed, grumbling, “Yes, Captain Rita.”

The woman didn’t have Fuse’s respect, but she clearly inspired his fear. Fuse marched down the corridor almost like a pouting child simmering with rage.

Payton growled low in the back of her throat.

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