Was he really planning to hurt, or worse kill, this injured man once he had the information he needed?
“Styx.” I said his name, but either he was ignoring me or didn’t care about my concerns. I spun on my heel, put my hand on Blade’s chest. “What’s going to happen?” I asked him.
Blade lifted a hand to stroke over my hair, but when he saw the blood—this man’s blood—he dropped it. “He would have killed you or taken you with your MedRec team from the Latiri battlefield. And now he’s tossed an ion cannon at you, at us. We must know the reason why.”
“Even if it kills him?” I asked.
Blade nodded. “His life was over the moment he tried to hurt you.”
I turned to Styx, prepared to argue, but the unforgiving slant of his jaw was chilling, and I knew there would be no debate, no mercy for the man I’d just tried so hard to save.
I walked to Styx and stood in front of him, blocking his way as the doctor and one of the others lifted the man into a ReGen Pod and removed the tourniquet from his leg. Styx stiffened, but I pressed my forehead to his chest and wrapped my arms around him. “He’s not going to give you answers if he’s dead.”
I felt more than saw Styx nod at the doctor to allow him to start the healing cycle in the pod. Perhaps I’d done the man an injustice, perhaps it would have been better to let him die. I could only imagine what Styx would do to him. He was so possessive of me, just as p
rotective as Blade, but he also had to see justice done. As leader, he couldn’t let one of his own down.
Even as I thought it, my mind rebelled. We needed answers. We had one of the attackers in our grasp, someone who would know where my team had been taken. Someone who knew the identity of the traitor on Zenith. Someone who could tell us everything.
Even if Blade and Styx had to torture him, beat him, ravage him for the information?
I thought of my team, of the dead on the battlefield, of the brave Atlan, Warlord Wulf, who’d nearly bled to death to save me, and my anger grew until I could live with the choice being made. It made me sick, but I couldn’t see any other solution.
Condemning that man to death, knowing what would happen once he woke, broke something inside me, something I’d never thought could be broken, but I knew Styx was right.
We needed him alive. We needed him to talk.
And after?
I wouldn’t think about after.
Maybe I was an animal after all.
Chapter Eleven
Styx
My enforcers circled the room like hungry raptors waiting for the communication link to be established. The Kronos soldier had been taken from the ReGen Pod, taken one look at my face, and begged for a quick end. He should.
My soft-hearted mate argued to spare his life, tried to convince me he deserved to live. But he’d killed countless members of her team on Latiri, taken more hostage, and tried to kill the one person in the galaxy whose life I placed above all others.
Hers.
Harper may have wanted me to spare him, but the Kronos was a dead man, and he knew it.
He’d told us everything, and, as promised, I’d allowed Cormac to take him away and end things quickly. Painlessly.
The bastard didn’t deserve such mercy, but it would make my mate happy, so I contented myself with knowing he was dead, that we had some answers.
Silver and Blade stood together, talking quietly where they leaned against the wall. The siblings were close, their connection apparent since the moment of their birth. They’d come into the world together, fought together. Perhaps one day they would die together. Twins were rare among our kind, and these two were a bit of a legend.
Khon twirled his dagger on the table, the rhythmic noise unnerving. But I ignored the impulse to snarl at him to stop. When Cormac walked in, Blade, Harper and I all looked up at once. He looked only at me, the slight nod of his head all the confirmation I needed that the traitor was dead.
Harper bit her lip and blinked, hard, but she didn’t protest. Not again. She’d fought hard for him, saving his life, until I reminded her that he’d been responsible for the deaths of countless members of her MedRec team, and probably many more. Even in the Coalition there were rules about traitors, about the guilty. What we did with him was nothing new for her. While she had a healing spirit and it went against her nature, she had to know—better than others—that he was guilty and faced the consequences of his callous actions.
She still didn’t like it, but she rose from her seat and crossed the room. To me. For comfort. Solace.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her close, inhaled her scent into my lungs. Now that the traitor was dead and I knew who was behind the recent string of attacks on the Coalition, something loosened in my chest. Not only for Harper, but for the entire population of Rogue 5.