Page 30 of Honor Bound

“I’m pretty sure he is next door,” Sergi conceded with a sigh.

The woman turned to glare at him. “You do know that the man she wants us to help is General Roan Landais, who is a general of the Legion. There are only two other men I know of who are feared as much as he is – and they are both related to him,” she argued.

“She made a promise,dusha moya.How can I tell her no?” Sergi asked, looking at her with a mixture of pleading and teasing.

“Argh! I hate it when you look at me like that! If he so much as twitches wrong, I’ll put a disintegration disk on him,” the woman hotly vowed.

“And I’ll press the button,” Sergi added with a grin.

The woman didn’t return Sergi’s smile. Instead, she lifted the laser rifle in her hand and shot Coleridge in the chest for good measure. Julia reminded herself never to piss the woman off as she watched Coleridge, who had slid his hand to a laser pistol under his jacket, from its hidden spot and was about to fire on them, slump back to the floor.

She reached down and pulled the pistol from his limp fingers before straightening as the door hissed open. Sergi and the woman released a curse and swung around—ready. Instead of opening fire, Sergi stepped forward and wrapped his arm around Roan when Roan swayed precariously in the doorway.

Julia’s breath caught. The sight of him… it was worse than she had imagined. His face was swollen, one eye dark with bruising, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, nose, and cheek. His posture was rigid, a man barely holding himself upright through sheer force of will. The crimson stain spreading across his shirt told a story of violence she hadn’t witnessed but could feel down to her bones.

A sharp, unfamiliar ache surged through her chest—rage, horror, and something else she couldn’t name. She wanted to do more than just kick Coleridge; she wanted to tear him apart piece by piece for what he had done. The woman’s shot to his chest had been far too merciful.

Julia rushed to Roan’s side, her hands trembling slightly as she reached to support him. The overwhelming need to get him to safety surged through her, to assess his injuries, to do something… anything to ease his pain. But she knew she couldn’t. Not now. The frustration of her helplessness made her jaw tighten, feeding her determination. They had to escape. Not just for her sake, but for Roan’s.

Roan looked down at his father’s crumpled form. “What happened to him?”

“I kicked him, Sergi knocked him out, and—” She lifted an eyebrow at the woman.

“La’Rue, I’m with Sergi,” La’Rue answered.

“La’Rue shot him,” Julia continued matter-of-factly, wrapping her arm around Roan’s waist to steady him.

Roan grunted. “We need to get off this ship.”

“Suggestions?” Sergi asked.

Roan gave a grim smile. “Yeah. Just need someone to hack the mainframe.”

“I know the perfect robot,” La’Rue answered, pulling a commlink from her pocket. “H, we need your help, little guy.”

* * *

The pain was a dull roar beneath Roan’s ribs, burning with every breath. He clenched his jaw as Sergi and Julia guided him to the cot, lowering him onto the thin mattress. His limbs felt heavy, sluggish, a sharp contrast to the urgency buzzing in the room.

His father was dead. There was no triumph in that. Only the weight of what came next.

They had to move—soon.

Coleridge’s absence wouldn’t go unnoticed for long. Roan had prepared for the possibility of capture before leaving Jeslean, but planning for it wasn’t the same as living it. The bruises along his ribs were proof enough of that.

Breathe. Focus.

His mind pushed past the haze of pain, running through contingencies. The master key hidden in his sleeve had been the first. A safeguard.

The second was riskier—a modified version of the software the Ancient, Josh, had used to disable his warship. Roan had spent weeks adapting it, embedding his own authorizations. His father’s arrogance had left him vulnerable, assuming Roan would always be under his control.

That arrogance had cost Coleridge his life. Unfortunately, it didn’t mean they were safe.

Roan’s gaze shifted. His attention, though, was on Julia. She was kneeling beside him, hands steady, but he could see it—the tension in her jaw, the flicker of something raw beneath her calm exterior. Horror flashed across her face when she saw the extent of his injuries, quickly buried beneath a tightly controlled fury.

Not at me.

At Coleridge.

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