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with me, Se.”
    She gave him an innocent look, one that had always spelled trouble.
    “I’m not the one starting anything. Maybe you should check the coms before you start going all hot and heavy.”
    The burn on his face could only be caused by a blush, but he never blushed anymore. Yet here he was, like a schoolgirl being teased about her first crush.
    “Damn it. You listened in on us?”
    “No.” She laughed. “But your face gave you away.”
    “This isn’t any of your business.”
    “No, it isn’t. But I will say that I’m happy for you. He’d just better not fuck up this time.”
    Rave gave a sharp nod and turned towards the docking bay so he could leave the ship. There would be time enough to think about Kain later. Right now, he had a sister to save.

Chapter Six
     
     
     
    After Rave left, Kain leapt up to get ready for the day. Se still wanted to talk to him, and he preferred to get it over with before Rave and Mel arrived back on the ship. Things were turning in his favour, and he didn’t want to strain the new start with tension between him and Se.
    He walked onto the ship’s deck and watched Se work. He’d missed her, too. They’d grown up together, and he thought of her as a sister. The one thing Kain could be grateful for was Se. She’d been there for Rave when he couldn’t be.
    “You just going to stand there looking pretty, or are you coming in?”
    He shook his head and entered the room. “How do you do that?”
    “Do what?”
    “Know when someone is behind you?”
    She laughed. “Magic.”
    Kain grinned. “I am here on your orders.”
    “You’re a little early.”
    “I thought now would be a good time to talk.”
    “You aren’t talking. You’re going to sit there and listen to me.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” He tried to keep it light because he was afraid of what she’d say.
    She turned and raised her eyebrow at him then went back to the monitors she worked on.
    “I’m glad you and Rave are ‘talking’, but you have to take it slow. Rushing in now is a bad idea. I don’t think you really understand what he went through on that planet. When I picked him up, he was a shell of his former self. It took months for him to sleep through the night without screaming. He wouldn’t talk about what happened unless he was drunk, and that first year, he drank a lot. The alcohol didn’t always stop the dreams. Once, he finally gave up on you, things got a little better, but he still wasn’t the Rave I knew and loved. He did stop drinking, but he wasn’t happy.”
    “Fuck, Se, you think I’m happy about all of this? If I could have switched places with him, I would have. I didn’t want—”
    “I’m not finished.”
    She finally turned away from the machines to look at him. The pain in her eyes stopped him from saying anything else. Did he really want to hear what she had to say? He feared what her next words would be, but if Rave could physically go through hell, he would at least have the balls to listen. He settled into one of the seats, his heart in his throat.
    “On a particularly bad night, he’d downed a bottle of whisky, and he told what happened when he first landed on the planet. The ship dropped them off and left them to check in. The guards processed them then the prisoners were on their own. I want to stress that part—that he was on his own. The whole transport ship knew he was military. The fucking guards announced it. Word spread fast. The thing they don’t tell the general public is the inmates on the planet ‘initiate’ the new drop offs. A group of thugs waited for the guards to leave and turned on the new guys. Rave tried to run, but it was a lost cause against a group of angry, hungry guys.
    “They caught him, beat him and raped him. That was the first few minutes. It took the medical crew two days to find him. He told me the only thing that kept him sane was knowing you were out there somewhere. He kept thinking you had to be okay, that you would save