Page 8 of Salvaged By the Alien Pirate

“Still not your mate.”

I scan the narrow corridors with enhanced vision, mapping every vent and access panel. Standard Brotherhood layout—escape pod two decks down. Thirty seconds at a terminal is all I need to crack their security. Simple. Clean. Except...

My neural upgrades stutter like cheap code. The tactical overlay freezes, fragments, rebuilds itself wrong. I force a diagnostic, but it comes back clean—which is impossible given how my systems are fritzing out. This is cutting-edge tech, even if I stole it from a military black site. It shouldn’t be failing.

His hand shifts against my spine, and my escape calculations shatter completely. Brilliant. I’m trying to plot coordinates for the nearest safe harbor, and my supposedly elite implants are obsessing over the heat of his touch and the way his wings catch the light like living shadow.

Amateur mistake, letting your guard down. Here I am, attempting a tactical retreat, and my enhanced senses are mapping his pheromone signature instead of scanning for weapons. Maybe spacing myself isn’t such a bad option. Has to be better than this maddening awareness of him, this war between logic and whatever primal instinct keeps shorting out my common sense.

Focus. Survival first. Delete everything else—especially how his presence sets off alerts I can’t silence. I’ve spent years coding walls around my heart, perfecting emotional firewalls. I won’t let some alien’s mate-bond override my core programming, no matter what my glitching implants suggest.

I’ve survived this long by trusting data, not instincts. The facts are simple: relationships are system vulnerabilities, fated matesare corrupted code, and attraction is just biology hacking reason. Now if only my tech would stop cataloging every detail about him and return to plotting my escape.

I’m screwed. Not because of any mystical bond, but because for the first time since my upgrades, technology isn’t giving me the distance I need. And that’s more dangerous than any pirate captain could ever be.

Chapter 4

Cirdox

ThebridgeoftheVoid Reaver thrums with tension as thick as stellar plasma. My crew works their stations with practiced efficiency, but I catch their sideways glances, their unspoken questions. Years of military discipline keep my posture rigid, my wings perfectly still despite the strange heat coursing through my veins. I observe as she takes in her surroundings, those enhanced eyes of hers cataloging every detail with a precision that matches my own. Something about her presence sets my blood on fire, triggers instincts I’ve never felt before. The sensation is foreign, unsettling—like my body is trying to tell me something my mind can’t yet comprehend.

My training tells me to focus on the tactical situation, to push aside these unexpected physical reactions. But for the first time in centuries, discipline alone might not be enough. There’s something about this human that calls to me on a level I don’t understand, awakening responses I’ve never experienced. The heat in my blood, the way my wings itch to shelter her—none ofit makes sense. And that loss of control is more dangerous than any pursuing ships.

“Three Planetary Police cruisers on our tail,” Grig announces from the helm, his pale blue fingers dancing across the controls. “They’re charging weapons.”

“Evasive maneuvers,” I order, forcing my attention to the tactical situation despite how Neon’s presence pulls at my senses. She’s positioned herself by the display with textbook defensive positioning—my military training catalogs the details automatically. Weight distributed for rapid response, clear sightlines to all exits, back protected. The electric blue in her hair catches the emergency lights, making her too visible, too exposed. My fangs ache with the need to defend, to shield her with my wings, but I crush the instinct. Focus. “Options?”

“The Cassian Nebula,” Zara suggests, her russet fur bristling as she pulls up the nav charts. “The ionic interference might—”

My mate works the console with a fluidity that’s almost hypnotic, her fingers moving over the controls like she’s playing a symphony only she can hear. Every movement is precise and deliberate, no wasted energy—like a soldier executing a battlefield maneuver. The residual charge from the argument moments ago still lingers in the air, thick as ionized plasma. Zara’s tail had lashed with frustration, her distrust written in the rigid set of her shoulders. Grig had been more measured, but the tension in his voice was unmistakable—“We don’t know what she’s capable of.”

They weren’t wrong to be wary. But they didn’t understand what I did: she’s our best chance.

I shut down the debate with a single command.“She works, or we die.”There wasn’t time for anything else.

Resentment still simmers at the edges of the bridge, but Neon ignores it, her focus locked on the ship’s systems with the kind of intensity I’ve only ever seen in seasoned tacticians. Shemoves through my tech like she’s lived inside code her entire life, and maybe she has. The cold glow of her neural implants casts shifting shadows across her face, making her look like something out of a hacker’s fever dream—dangerous, brilliant, untouchable.

My instincts pull in two directions at once—one screaming to keep my distance, the other demanding I get closer, to anchor her before she slips away like stardust through my fingers. I silence the second impulse with sheer force of will. Now isn’t the time.

“Their tracking signatures,” she murmurs, tapping out a rapid sequence on the display. “They’ve adapted to ionic camouflage.” She zooms in, highlighting a subtle fluctuation in the data—one my own tactical training had missed. “Try hiding in that nebula, and we’ll light up their sensors like a supernova.”

Damn. That’s impressive.

I step closer, watching as she peels away layers of encrypted signals like she’s skimming through an old data journal. “They’re running Mark VII systems now,” she continues, her voice clipped and efficient. “Quantum-locked. Triple-redundant. The old tricks won’t work.” She leans closer to the interface, her enhanced eyes narrowing as she tracks the patterns.

A slow smile curves her lips.

“But there might be another way. Something they haven’t seen before.”

I don’t miss the flicker of satisfaction in her expression—the thrill of solving an impossible puzzle. And stars help me, I think I might be getting addicted to watching her work. I arch an eyebrow, watching as she approaches the main console with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing. “And I suppose you have a suggestion?”

Her fingers hover over the interface, neural implants pulsing an eerie blue beneath her skin as she accesses the ship’s systems.“I can get us clear—for a price. Drop me at Driftspire Station and we both walk away from this mess.”

The clinical precision in her voice sets my teeth on edge. She’s treating this like just another transaction, like we’re haggling over stolen credits instead of standing on the edge of survival. My wings flex, a barely restrained urge to shield, to claim. She doesn’t understand—this isn’t about control. It’s about existence. If she walks away, she takes my sanity with her. My breath comes rougher than I’d like, heat pulsing in my blood, the mate-bond clawing through every restraint I’ve ever built.

Thex’s face flashes in my mind, his once-powerful wings reduced to brittle husks, his body devoured by the sickness long before the flames took him. I can still hear his voice, ragged and broken:“The pain isn’t in dying, cousin. It’s in knowing she’s out there and will never be yours.”

The memory clenches around my ribs like a vice. I won’t end up like him. Ican’t. I have a crew to lead, a ship to protect, enemies circling like scavengers. If I fall, the Black Eclipse won’t just take over my territory—they’ll burn everything I’ve built to ash.

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