I inhaled deeply and felt my chest rise, then fall. The air flooded my lungs, so sweet. Such an easy small movement. I would never again take it for granted. I sent my magic out. It whispered through the rooms, testing the connection, and Gertrude Hunt sighed in relief.

I was still alive.

The thought made me smile. I stretched a little and wiggled my toes. Someone had taken off my shoes. I turned my head slightly. The room was empty except for Turan Adin. He sat in a chair, his head inclined, his face hidden behind the empty blackness. Beast lay on his lap, her eyes closed.

The smile vanished from my lips. In all the time I owned Gertrude Hunt, there was only one person besides me who could hold Beast on his lap.

I slipped off the couch. Turan Adin raised his head but didn’t move. I walked over to him, my bare feet making almost no sound on the floorboards, reached out, and touched his hood. It retracted, folding as it slid to settle over his back. For a moment I saw a lupine head armed with monstrous jaws, and then it melted in a blink. Sean Evans looked at me with his amber eyes. His hair was shaved down to stubble. A ragged scar cut across his forehead, slanting to the left, interrupting his eyebrow and chewing up his cheek. Another scar snaked its way up his neck on the right, breaking into a tangle of smaller scars near his ear. What kind of injuries could they have been that the Merchants’ medical equipment couldn’t knit him back together?

His face was hard, so much harder than I remembered, as if any hint of softness had been bled out of him. His eyes were haunted. He looked at me and through me at the same time, as if he were expecting a distant threat to appear on some far horizon behind me. The cocky funny guy was gone. I was staring war in the face and it was looking back at me.

Oh no.

I reached out and touched the ragged scar on his cheek with my trembling fingertips. He leaned into my hand, like a stray dog who’s been on the run for too long, desperate for any crumb of affection. Painful heat burned my eyes and fell on my cheeks. Beast whimpered on his lap.

“Why?” I whispered.

“I owed a favor to Wilmos,” he said, his voice quiet. “I said I wanted a challenge. Turan Adins don’t last. The Merchants just keep recruiting more when the latest one bites the dust. As long as you match the height, the armor takes care of everything else. I signed up for six Nexus months and got there two days after the last Turan Adin died.”

“Sean…”

“The Army wasn’t hard for me. Everything I had done on this planet was easy. What my parents went through was beyond anything I ever tried. It was a test. I wanted to know if I could do it. If I was good enough to survive. If I was someone they could look on with pride. I wanted the training wheels off.  I had to know if I could.”

Six Nexus months, that was barely two months our time. “Why didn’t you leave? Your contract ended.”

“There are civilians in the spaceport and the colony.” His voice was ragged and low. “Children. Our resources are stretched too thin. They would be overrun. They need me.”

He was trapped. Sean’s parents were alpha strain werewolves, designed and genetically engineered to protect the escape gates against overwhelming force as the rest of population evacuated their dying planet. Sean was born with the drive to protect, the kind of drive that overrode everything else. Repelling the siege of the spaceport must’ve felt right to him, so right, and once he started, he couldn’t stop. His very nature trapped him there in the never ending hell.

That’s why he’d fled from the pond. He knew that he would go back to Nexus. He would never see the pond in summer. He would never see me again. He never cook another barbeque in my back yard and sneak bones to Beast. I would never hear him crack another joke. He…

Nuan Cee had said something, just before I passed out. He said, “Do I have your word?”

Ice shot through me. “What did you promise Nuan Cee to save me?”

Sean smiled. “Nothing I regret. You’re alive. It makes me happy.”

“Sean?”

He didn’t say anything.

I spun around and dashed up the stairs to the Merchant quarters.

I found Nuan Cee sitting alone in the front room. The huge screen on the wall was glowing. A recording of some Merchant festival played, its sound muted to mere murmur, as foxes in bright garments twirled long ribbons while dancing through the streets.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said quietly.

“What did he promise you?”

“Lifetime of service,” Nuan Cee said, his voice mournful. “A life for a life. A fair trade.”

No. No, I don’t think so. Sean Evans wouldn’t die for me. I had to save him now. I came over and sat on the couch.

I looked at the screen. The festival recording melted, obeying my push, and a different image took over the screen. Massive tree trunks twisted between the spires of grey and white stone, each branch as wide as a highway, bearing clouds of blue and turquoise leaves. Pink flowers bloomed on long indigo vines. Golden moss sheathed the trunks, catching the rays of bright sun. A massive feline predator, its fur splattered with rosettes of black and cream, made it way down one of the branches, keeping to the shadows, its massive black claws scratching the moss lightly.

“I once asked my father how the lees became the dominant species on their planet,” I said.

Nuan Cee winced. Few knew the true name of the Merchants’ species and outsiders weren’t supposed to say it out loud, but I was past the point of caring.