Alien Sentinel’s Mate by Mina Carter
5
“We will go.” Seren nodded sharply at the general’s order.
Sending the B’Kaar warrior from the training hall on a medical stretcher wouldn’t win him any friends in that camp, nor would his claim on Gracie. With so few females available, every warrior alive would do whatever he needed for the chance to claim one, which was why the humans’ agreement to the new mate matching program was so important. It would, with the Terran government’s permission, bring much-needed females to every part of the empire. But that was months in the future. Gracie was here and in danger right now.
“Good. One of my fighters is ready to depart in the lower bay,” Xaan caught his arm as they turned. “Gracie, would you give us a moment please?”
“Of course.” She nodded, for once without argument, and headed for the door.
He couldn’t help himself. Mesmerized, he watched the sway of her hips as she walked out of the room. He didn’t look away until she stopped, still visible through the windows. His shoulders eased a little with relief that he could keep an eye on her… and make sure none of the B’Kaar got any ideas where she was concerned. Any more ideas anyway.
“To steal a human phrase… you’ve got it bad,” Xaandril said in a low voice. “But you need to watch your back,”
Seren curled his lip back from his teeth. “I can handle a few B’Kaar.”
“I didn’t mean them.” The big general shook his head, his gaze on Gracie through the window. Even though the human female was out of the room, he lowered his voice. “I managed to get the report on your female from the B’Kaar.”
“Oh?”
Now Seren was interested, focusing all his attention on the heavily muscled warrior. He didn’t know much about Gracie, other than his reactions to her were off the charts.
From the moment he’d met her, she’d fascinated him and soothed the darker elements of his nature. Around her he wanted to be a better male than he was, all for her.
The general nodded, his expression tight. “When Kenna and I met her, she was undercover for some human organization. She and her team were investigating colony scavengers, draanthic who preyed on far-flung and isolated settlements, killing the colonists and stealing equipment and in some cases, personnel.”
A dangerous growl rattled in the back of Seren’s throat. “They sound like the lowest of the low. Goddess help them if they ever tried to hit any of our colonies.”
He wasn’t a nav-con specialist by any stretch of the imagination, but he knew a few colonies that were almost in distance of the barren area of space they’d discovered the Terrans. It had been thought to be uninhabited, an area of space so devoid of resources and so desolate no one wanted to cross it, much less put down roots there. As such, none of their survey vessels had ever thought to look there.
Xaandril’s sudden smile was wolfish. “I hope they do. It would serve the draanthic right.”
“Indeed.” Seren inclined his head but didn’t take his attention off the general.
“So Gracie worked to uncover these groups?” he asked, not sure where Xaandril was going with this. “That was in the report?”
“Yes and no.” Xaandril sighed, running a hand through his close-cropped hair. As a general, he’d long ago been shorn of his honor braids, his victories honoring the emperor instead. “It’s buried deep down in the human’s databases, but there is mention… it seems that Gracie may not be who she says she is.”
“What?” He froze. “What do you mean? She was undercover. Not even humans are stupid enough to use their real names for that.”
“That’s just the point,” the general admitted. “Her cover identity was Clarissa something… the name she’s given us now, Gracie Shardlow? No one of that name existed before ten years ago.”
Seren blinked, assimilating that information as the console on Xaandril’s desk chirped. The idea that Gracie was lying to him, even about something as minor as her name, hit him like a punch in the gut. Why would she lie?
Xaan leaned around and looked at the console before his expression tightened. “The B’Kaar have noticed the fighter’s engines going live,” he said, looking up. “They’re mobilizing. You need to go, now. I’ll give you as much cover as I can.”
There were no more questions. The two warriors ran for the door, Seren a fraction of a second ahead of the big general as he slid through, grabbing Gracie’s arm to race up the corridor. General Xaandril stayed behind, weapons in hand as he faced down the two B’Kaar already clumping up the corridor.
“General M’rln, the commander wishes to know why one of your craft is engines hot and ready to leave?” one of them announced. “We have received no notification of any departures.”
“Since when do I, the emperor’s champion, require the permission of a mere war commander?” Xaandril spat, anger in his voice as Seren and Gracie walked away. “Kindly remind your commander he waits on my pleasure, not the other way around. If he wants to ask me a question, he can do so himself. In person.”
“What’s going on?” Gracie asked, wide-eyed as she tried to twist and look over his shoulder.
He had her by the upper arm, using his bigger body to herd her along in the direction he wanted her to go, in this case, down the corridor and around the corner. As far away from the prying eyes of the B’Kaar Xaandril had blocked as possible.
“Problems,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “The B’Kaar know what we’re doing. They’re going to try and stop us. We might need to fight free.”
He’d expected… hells, he didn’t know what he’d expected. Driven by stories and scattered memories from his childhood of elegant and graceful Latharian females, soft and gentle in their manner and appearance, he’d expected her tough composure to crack and for her to cling to him. Or maybe at the very least to see fear rather than determination in her eyes. Would it have been too much to ask for her lip to tremble so he could swoop in and rescue the damsel in distress? Be the conqueror his Vorr side demanded he be?
Instead, she hissed in irritation. “For fuck’s sake, you guys just do not take no for an answer. Do you? Okay then, handsome, I’m gonna need a gun.”
His jaw tightened, his lips compressing into a thin line as he led her down a side corridor. Like any sensible warrior, he’d already worked out several escape routes through the maze of passages and levels that made up the abandoned Cabal base, including some through sections that weren’t yet fully operational. Those he would only use if they absolutely had to. Had he been on his own he would have risked it, but—his gaze washed over the delicate female at his side—Gracie’s safety was paramount.
“It’s not—”
She stepped in front of him, her fingers over his lips. “If the next words out of your mouth are going to be ‘it’s not safe’ or ‘females do not need to fight,’ you need to think again. I’ve heard about Latharian females. I am not one of them.”
Automatically his hands had come to rest on her waist, drawing her closer to the bigger bulk of his body. She nestled against his chest, so tiny and delicate against him even if she didn’t know it. He’d noticed that with human females, the smaller they were physically, the more competitive they seemed to be—perhaps to make up for their lack of stature. Despite himself, a small smile curved his lips and he nipped lightly at her fingertips.
“No, you definitely are not,” he agreed, his voice rougher and deeper than he’d meant it to be. “Okay, you can have a gun.”
Her smile was bright, a flash of something in the backs of her eyes he couldn’t read as she reached up on her tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his lips. Heat flared through him, his hands tightening automatically, but almost as soon as he’d registered the pressure of her lips on his, she stepped away.
“Uh-uh,” she wagged her finger at him as, automatically, he made to follow her. “No more until we’re safely away from here. Wouldn’t want you distracted. Now would we?”
She couldn’t have ensured a distraction more if she’d planned it. He growled again, the sound low and dangerous in the darkness of the corridor, but she just shot him an amused look and indicated he should precede her.
“I will never understand human females,” he hissed and stalked ahead of her.
“Haven’t you heard? Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.”
The soft sound of her laughter filled the smaller maintenance corridor as she followed him.
He shook his head as they came up on the turn and he reached into an old storage locker. On his recon through the base after the B’Kaar had arrived, he’d planted several caches of weaponry and supplies in case they needed to leave in a hurry. Drawn from the base’s inventory as they’d catalogued, he’d made sure the figures didn’t reflect that some were missing.
“I don’t like this,”Seren grumbled as he rooted in a bag he’d pulled from a disused storage locker in an equally disused-looking corridor before handing her what looked like a small assault rifle.
“You don’t have to. You just need to deal with it long enough for us to get out of here.”
She was lying of course. Now she had hold of one of these things, she wasn’t letting go. With quick and efficient movements, she turned the alien weapon over in her hands, quickly figuring out the similarities and differences to the weaponry she’d handled over the years. Her unit, so far down the rabbit hole in black ops that they might as well be black cats in coal cellars, were trained for everything up to galactic apocalypse and alien invasion. Which was why she hadn’t argued or demanded to be returned to a Terran world or facility when the Lathar had arrived on Hextas-Four. She’d just adapted her mission parameters to intelligence gathering.
“Okay, handsome. Wanna lead the way?” she asked once she’d checked over how the gun worked. It would be embarrassing to have demanded a raygun from him and then have to ask how to use it in the middle of a fire fight. Looking up, she found him watching her, a dark, dangerous heat in the backs of his eyes that caused a thrill down her spine.
He nodded, turning with a low grunt to stalk off down the corridor into blackness. Hands loosely on the gun, she followed, watching her step in case any of any loose floor panels. Falling on her ass would be marginally less embarrassing than having to ask how the gun worked.
She kept her eyes peeled as they walked. This section of the base seemed even more abandoned than the rest. Half the lights were out, and she hadn’t missed the unmistakable bulk of two alien enviro suits in the pack Seren had slung over his shoulder. If he’d packed them, the structural integrity of this section was in doubt. A shiver of a different kind stole down her spine and she hurried to catch up, keeping close to the tall, alien warrior. If this area decompressed, they wouldn’t have much time to get into those suits. Every second would count.
As if he read her mind, he grunted. “Stay close.”
He moved easily, an assault weapon in his hands and his attention split between the route ahead and looking up to check for active internal sensors. She didn’t bother. For one, his night vision was far better than hers, and for another, she needed to cover their rear. She’d seen how fast the B’Kaar were. One could round the corner they’d just turned and be on them in the blink of an eye, so she had to keep her wits about her.
Even so, she couldn’t help casting glances at Seren’s broad, leather-clad shoulders. Things had changed between them since the kiss. She wasn’t entirely sure she was happy about it. Not because of the kiss. That had been as hot as Hades and, had he been human… someone she’d met on assignment or even in a bar during leave, she’d have dragged him back to her quarters and climbed him like a tree.
But… he wasn’t human. He was Lathar, an alien she was spying on in the hope of getting actionable intelligence for her superiors, even if they had no idea where she was or what she was doing. Nomads worked that way. Her original mission had been to root out the leaders of an organized gang of scavengers. She’d been working her way up that tree when the Lathar had gotten involved, so she’d been forced to adapt.
She tightened her grip on her weapon as she walked behind Seren, keeping her footfalls light and turning periodically to cover the rear. Just being near him gave her a sense of safety she didn’t like. Mostly because it was nice. Seductive.
She didn’t need a man to survive, never had… so that little waver toward him all the time, that little traitorous instinct to trust him and look to him for comfort and support, scared her way more than the scary-ass armored assholes pursuing them.
She pressed her lips together in irritation with herself. Up until now she’d had all those impulses under control. The epitome of tall, dark and handsome, Seren had an irresistible, cheeky edge at times, but he’d also been safe. The boy next door kind of safe she could mentally box up and understand.
Then he’d busted out the attitude and the fangs.
And now she was fucked.
Seren paused abruptly ahead of her, lifting his head, and for a bizarre moment it looked like he was sniffing the air. A sound behind them brought her head around at the same time Seren grabbed her arm and shoved her ahead of him.
“Run!” he roared as the corridor around them filled with laser blasts.
