Space Ends: The Complete Series by Odette C. Bell

Author:Odette C. Bell [Bell, Odette C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Odette C. Bell
Published: 2023-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

Naomi

It was over.

I was back, not that I’d ever fallen into Ruben’s hands before. But my mother had told me exactly what her excruciating experience had involved. Every training session, every single brutal lesson.

All of them played in my head in this cacophony of screams.

It was over. And yet it hadn’t even begun yet.

Just when I thought that the untrustworthy pirate, Jerr’n, would turn from me for good, he turned toward me and settled a hand on my shoulder. That seemed to be his go-to move as the captain of the Unicorn.

Previously, he’d kept holding himself back from touching my shoulder, considering I wasn’t a loyal member of his crew. But now that didn’t matter, and the second he settled his hand down on my shoulder was the second everything sharpened.

It was as if someone grabbed hold of my gaze, erased all the junk, and allowed me to focus only on the thing that mattered.

Ruben was on the other side of that shield. I was still here. He hadn’t technically seen me yet because I was still phase cloaked, and by the sounds of it, he didn’t know that Jerr’n was with me.

Jerr’n still had that cube.

I don’t know how the station hadn’t detected that he was the one who’d picked it up, but for all I knew, the scanners weren’t working properly.

They still couldn’t detect me fully, either. And as Ruben smiled and pressed himself closer to the shield, he didn’t make direct eye contact with me. Because he didn’t know exactly where I was.

That didn’t stop him from hissing a new promise. “I will make you better than your mother. I understood where I went wrong with her. You will be new. You will be different. You will be the one I’m waiting for.”

“There’s no chance I’m going to let you do anything with me, Ruben,” I said in a voice that started off as fragile but soon rose with real power.

Power is a strange thing. When you think you have it, when you start to realize it will always be there, it disappears.

If you look too hard at it, it disappears. If you analyze why you have it and someone else doesn’t, it disappears. And when you need it, when you need it just like I needed it now, it always extinguishes itself.

But I wasn’t alone.

Jerr’n seemed to have the same idea I had.

He lifted the cube in his hand. It was still under my phase cloak. I was most certain that Ruben couldn’t see it. His gaze didn’t dart toward it. It still fixed in my general direction as he opened his mouth and hissed wildly. “Do you know how much of a disappointment your mother was to me?”

“You have no right to be disappointed in my mother. You’re a monster, Ruben. The Coalition should never have made a deal with you.”

“The Coalition must make deals with anyone who can save it. The Coalition has protected you ever since you were a child.”

“I protected me,” I hissed, that being a particular pain point.

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