Read Online Temporal Shift (Entangled Select Otherworld) by Nina Croft - Free Book Online

the ship? Is she ready to go?”
    “She’s perfect. I’ve even fixed the dodgy drives,” he replied.
    Saffira could hear the pride in his voice. He loved this ship. How could he love a machine? And how could she be jealous of a hunk of metal?
    Tannis turned to Rico. “And can you get us back through the hole?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
    “And he is the best pilot in the whole goddamn universe,” Skylar murmured. “Both universes.”
    “So that’s it. We head home.”
    Saffira opened her mouth to speak, but Thorne stopped her with a hand on her arm.
    “Wait,” he whispered.
    …
    She closed her mouth and gave a slight nod. What had the winged guy said to her? Devlin experienced a flicker of sympathy for the other man. He reckoned protecting Saffira was probably a full-time job. She was obviously impetuous, leaping headfirst into trouble without thinking things through. Like telling an obviously frustrated guy that he was fated to get into her pants. Trouble.
    Shit but she’d been sweet. It had felt so good to give in. He was sure that just five minutes more and he could have been buried deep inside her. Instead, his balls still ached.
    “What about the Trakis One ?” Callum asked. “Shouldn’t we at least go check it out? See if they’re alive? There’s a small chance the cryo system will still be functioning on the emergency power supply.”
    Devlin dragged his mind back to the problems at hand. The Trakis One was one of the twenty-four ships that had left a doomed Earth a thousand years ago, taking the Chosen Ones and thus ensuring the survival of humanity. After five hundred years, they’d finally arrived at a system capable of sustaining life. They named it the Trakis system and the individual planets after the ships which colonized them. Life was looking up for mankind. Well, except for the ones on board the Trakis One , the ship carrying the last president of the Federation of Nations, which was promptly sucked into the black hole that guarded the first planet and was never seen again.
    “And if they are alive—what then?” Tannis said. “There are ten thousand people on the Trakis One . The Blood Hunter is big, but we can’t take them all. So what do we do, wake them up and tell them we’re leaving them on a broken down spaceship?”
    “We could go check out the ship,” Skylar said. “Maybe Devlin can get her going again.”
    Devlin snorted. “And maybe Devlin has better things to do—like getting back and killing Temperance Hatcher.”
    Everyone ignored his comment.
    “And if he can’t?” Tannis asked.
    “We don’t wake them,” Rico said, “and we sort something out on the other side. Some sort of salvage job.”
    “Pull them out?” Devlin considered the idea. He could set up a tow system. They could come back once Hatcher was dead. “Might be a bit dodgy through a black hole, though.”
    Rico shrugged. “Ferry them out, maybe.”
    “Let me ask you something,” Tannis said to Rico. “You brought us through that black hole—how much was skill and how much was luck?”
    Rico grinned. “Hey, I’m a lucky guy.” He shrugged again. “I reckon about fifty-fifty.”
    “And you’d be willing to take that risk how many times?”
    “I never said I’d ferry them out. But there’s a lot of valuable stuff on that ship—someone might be tempted.”
    “Not forgetting the last president of the Federation of Nations,” Skylar said.
    “And his daughter,” Rico added, sending Callum an amused glance. “Ex-fiancée of our esteemed leader.”
    “Piss off,” Callum muttered.
    Devlin relaxed back, stretched his legs out, and watched Rico wind up someone else for a change. It had been a revelation to see the crew of the Blood Hunter work together. A group of total misfits, they shared a bond that he’d never had with the men and women under his command.
    He realized with a start of shock that he had started to feel part of that.
    Shit. He was going soft. Time to