Alien Sentinel’s Mate by Mina Carter

4

Her lips parted softly at his growled announcement, her eyes so wide and dark it was all he could do not to back her up against the wall and plunder them again. About to do just that, he paused when she shook her head, an odd expression passing through her eyes.

“Take?”she hissed, shoving at his chest. He didn’t move, her strength no match for his. Instead, he just curled his free arm around her, holding her close until she worked her temper out. “Does that line work often, you asshole?”

Okay. She was annoyed with him. He’d expected that for his lie of omission. Since meeting her, he’d quickly worked out Gracie liked to know all the details. About everything. Even things that weren’t relevant to the situation. It was distracting and wasted time. He didn’t understand it. But then, he didn’t understand a lot about human females.

Rather than answer, he growled and gripped her hair tighter. For all her struggles and spitting like a deearin kitten, no fear entered her scent. That pleased him. He was Vorr, so most beings were scared of him.

But no fear shone in the backs of Gracie’s eyes and her hand was still gentle on his shoulder and neck rather than clawing to get away. The brush of her soft fingers against his skin distracted him beyond measure. All he could think about was her lips and tasting them again.

“Don’t even think about it,” she snarled as his gaze dropped to her mouth. Then she bared her little teeth at him, snapping them together in threat.

He fought back the smile. So tiny and delicate compared to him, he doubted she could even break the skin. He bared his own teeth, revealing the sharper fangs of his Vorr heritage. Usually he kept them hidden, like so much about his bloodline.

The Vorr were not well-liked. They were too much a reminder of the Lathar’s wilder past, and now there were only a handful of them with true blood. If she knew everything about him, about the Vorr, she’d never accept him as a mate. No, far better she think him imperial and never find out the truth.

He gentled his hold to slide his hand through the glorious fall of her hair. The color of fire and burnished copper, he’d never seen anything so beautiful.

“Oh? Are you sure about that, kelarris?” he murmured, dropping his voice to a soft rumble. He’d noticed her reaction to his voice before and now shamelessly used that knowledge to his advantage. Lathar he might be, but he was also Vorr, and could be as ruthless as any of his blood when it suited him. And she liked his kisses. He had felt her reaction, that flare of heat and passion before she’d remembered to be mad at him.

For saying that humanity were supposed to be descended from the Lathar, they seemed to have taken a sharp left turn somewhere—particularly the females. They were nothing like the stories his father had told of mild-mannered and graceful females who calmed and soothed their males. But...

He didn’t want that. He didn’t want a calm and soothing female who never argued back and had no personality of her own. He wanted a female with fire and passion.

He wanted Gracie. The flame-haired, argumentative human was everything he’d ever dreamed of and more. But he wanted her to want him for him, not because of his genetics. Not because of his name. For him.

A wash of uncertainty hit hard and fast. Shame filled him from the bone marrow through, even down to the ends of his metal fingers. He claimed to be a Vorr but he hadn’t been able to protect her. The S’Vaan had taken her, but another warrior, the paladin, had rescued her. He hadn’t been able to do even that, nor take his vengeance.

His display against the B’Kaar earlier had been pointless—an ego-fueled sham. No female would accept a mate who had already proven he couldn’t protect her.

“Warrior K’Vass,” a deep voice broke over the base comms, the speaker somewhere above their head crackling into life. He froze, recognizing the growled tones of the emperor’s champion, General Xaandril M’rln, de-facto commander of all the Latharian forces aboard the base. “Attend me. Immediately. Bring your female.”

Gracie gasped, her ire directed at the absent champion. “I am not your female. Why does everyone keep thinking that?” she hissed, shoving at his chest again.

He held on to her for a moment longer, just to prove he could. “Because of this,” he murmured, leaning down to run his lips against the side of her neck. She murmured, a gasp of denial in the back of her throat, but her body softened as she relaxed enough to lean into him.

He closed his eyes, savoring the feeling, and then straightened up as he let her go. “Come on, female. The general awaits.”

* * *

Seren had kissed her.

Gracie’s lips still tingled as the alien warrior tugged her along behind him while they made their way through the base to the general’s office, his hand clamped around her wrist like a manacle.

“No, kelarris. I won’t be long here,” a deep, male voice said as they approached the open door of the general’s office, the intimate tone of his voice making them both slow down. The door shouldn’t be open. A maintenance team further down the corridor were working on the control point for all the doors along here. The sound of a deep voice emanating from within made it clear the general was talking to his mate. “Just long enough for the reinforcements to arrive and then I can come home to you. Okay, my love. I will see you soon…”

Gracie kicked her heels, looking up at Seren as they tried not to listen in on the big, gruff champion’s sweet nothings to his mate, still back on the Keran’vuis. Seren studied the corridor behind them. His gaze narrowed on the B’Kaar as they worked.

“You don’t trust them. Do you?” she asked in a low voice, moving closer so their voices couldn’t be picked up by the internal sensors and, hence, every B’Kaar jacked into the system. Which meant… all of them.

Seren slid an arm around her waist, shaking his head.

“Why?”

She leaned into him, aware that any of the B’Kaar looking at them, either with their natural eyes or through the sensors, would see the intimate movement and assume they were a couple. Even though a part of her railed against being called Seren’s female without him having actually asked her, she had to admit, it was a decent ruse. Even better, it had a proven track record. If the B’Kaar thought a female had already been claimed, they left her alone.

She looked up at Seren, squashing the temptation to run her fingers against his lightly stubbled jaw as she took the opportunity to study him. And it was a situation of better the devil, or in this case, Lathar, you knew. Tall, dark and handsome, his dark hair, somewhere between black and the blue of a raven’s wing, fell loosely around his shoulders, the entire left side braided close to his scalp so the plaits fell down his back. Her fingers itched to touch, to see if his hair was soft or as strong as the light blue strands that matched the cerulean chaos of his eyes woven through it like steel fibers.

He had a feral edge she’d never been able to put her finger on until he’d bared his teeth in the corridor where he’d kissed her. None of the other Lathar had them and she wanted to ask, but his forbidding expression warned her off.

“How much do you know about the Lathar? About our history, I mean?”

He looked down at her, and she sucked a hard breath in. He’d gone from charming and polite to dangerous in a heartbeat. Her heart pounded in her chest as his hand, the flesh and blood one, spread out over the small of her back. Somehow it found the gap between her top and her combat pants to brush against her skin. One of the B’Kaar clumped past, his suit loaded with what looked like a welding rig across the arm and shoulder, so she pressed closer to Seren.

“Not much,” she admitted, her hand spreading out over the front of his leather jacket. “Just that you’re a warrior race and have been for millennia.”

He gave her a tight smile. “We are and we have. But, there’s a lot more to it than that. Like the empire, each clan within it has its own history and politics.”

She nodded. She’d figured that out for herself.

“Most families and sometimes even clans have specialties,” he explained, his voice low and considered. She got the feeling he chose his words with care.

“Like the B’Kaar?” she asked, indicating the team of cyber-warriors down the corridor.

“Indeed,” he inclined his head. “It’s rare but sometimes an entire clan specializes. The B’Kaar have, or even further back, the Navarr. They were adapted for aquatic warfare given their system planets were all primarily ocean.”

Surprise rolled through her. “What? Like… mermaids with rayguns? Would rayguns even work underwater?”

His expression held that odd, considering look he always got when his translator was working out what her Terran words and phrases meant. “I have no idea what a raygun is. But mermaids, yes… well, mermen. Like the rest of the Lathar, they should have lost all their females.”

“Should?”

“The Navarr broke away well over a thousand years ago. No Lathar has set foot on any of their home worlds since. We have no access and no idea how their society suffered during the plague.”

“Ah…” It seemed like a lot of history was there, not all of it good. She cycled back around to her original point. “So you don’t trust the B’Kaar because they specialize in cyber-warfare and the K’Vass don’t?”

He shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable. “It’s not so much that—”

His words cut off as General Xaandril appeared in the doorway of his office, his heavily muscled form filling the frame.

“Lady Gracie, Warrior K’Vass, I apologize for keeping you waiting,” he rumbled. “We’re so far out that communications have been difficult, and my mate required an update on my daughter…”

She smiled, waving in polite dismissal. “No problem, family is always more important.”

“Thank you,” the big general inclined his head politely but then looked up to spear Seren with a look. “I’m sure you realize why you are here. Kindly explain to me why I have the B’Kaar commander screaming at me that you put one of his senior warriors out of action.”

He folded his arms over his chest, his hard gaze on Seren.

Seren didn’t back down, his expression just as stony. “He tried to claim my female. In front of me.”

Gracie gasped. “I thought we cleared this up. I’m not your female.”

“No?” Seren turned his head to look at her, his eyebrow raised. His tiny smiled revealed a hint of fang. “Your moans when I had you in my arms certainly indicated so.”

Her lips parted in surprise, no sound emerging as she looked at him. “You… asshole. You kissed me, yes, but one kiss does not a relationship make!”

A growl from the big general broke through their staring contest. “You haven’t asked her to accept your claim?”

Seren folded his arms. “She has accepted.”

“I have not!”

A low and dangerous growl filled the air. “She will.”

She glared at Seren.

Xaan sighed and shook his head.

“Okay, shut up. Both of you,” he growled, catching Seren’s mutinous look. “You’re both too stubborn for your own good. The K’Vass position here is not one of strength. Draanth, even my own command here is precarious with so few of my forces present. We are massively outnumbered by the B’Kaar. Did either of you think of that?”

Gracie went still, a flush of heat washing up her cheeks. In her pique at Seren for not talking, she hadn’t considered the situation or just how dangerous it could be—a fact that the general didn’t hesitate to drive home.

“Should the B’Kaar commander decide to go on the offensive, every non-B’Kaar male on this base could be slaughtered and vented to space. An accident, explosive decompression and part of the base is lost. They can spin it in any way they like. All over a female.”

“Draanth,” Seren breathed.

“They wouldn’t, surely?” Gracie held her breath as she looked between one and the other. At Seren’s little nod she felt sick. The idea of her friends dead, of Nyek, Jay and Seren dead… Keris and Indra grieving. No, it was even worse. She couldn’t see either of the other women taking the deaths of their beloved mates lightly. The B’Kaar would have to kill them as well.

“Okay. How do we fix this? What if I accept his claim?”

Xaan leaned back against his desk, his massive arms crossed over an equally massive chest, and shook his head. “That might have worked before, but not now. No, we need more. There’s nothing for it. He’ll have to take you back to Quveth. Not even the B’Kaar would dare an all-out offensive on a Vorr stronghold.”

“Back to where for what?” she asked, looking to Seren for clarification. The fact that she’d put her friends in danger horrified her. She… they… needed to do something.

“Quveth, my home world.” He glared at Xaan. “Is my draanthing bloodline common knowledge now?”

“It is if you keep flashing those fangs about,” Xaan snarled, pushing off from his desk as Seren squared up to him. The tension in the room ratcheted up from laid-back allies having a chat to blood about to be spilled levels of violence. “Are you refusing my orders, warrior? Perhaps you consider yourself the new Kayan?”

“Hey!” she yelped, getting in between them to slam a hand into the center of Seren’s chest. He snarled, his eyes gone fully dark like a shark as he glared at Xaan.

“No, he’s not refusing your orders, sir. Not at all.” She shoved at Seren but he didn’t budge. It was like trying to shove a mountain out of the way. “Are you, Seren? Seren, look at me!”

Her hissed demand made him look down, and she shivered at the blackness of his eyes. Not in a good way, either. Right now, she was looking at the Vorr warrior, even though she had no idea exactly what that meant. She just knew she was looking at it.

“Seren?”

He blinked and then shuddered before nodding. “I’ll take her to Quveth.”

Xaan nodded.

“Then I suggest you leave immediately. Just in case there are any… objections to you removing a viable female.”