by E. M Reders
Sleeping draft in hand, he crouched down to her level. He could sense her panic, her fear, but under all that he scented her arousal. It seemed his mate, while terrified of him, still found him attractive. Was it wrong of him that he was happy about that?
With her womanly scent in the air, he couldn't stop himself from leaning forward and inhaling deeply. She was truly mouth-watering.
"You are mine," he whispered against her ear as he placed the vial against her neck and administered the draft to make her sleep. Instantly she slumped back against her wall, the fear leaving her eyes and she fell into a dreamless state.
"Hey! What did you do to her?" one of the females demanded, rushing forward.
"I gave her a sleeping draft to make the journey more comfortable for her."
"Journey? What journey?" another asked, stepping around the male’s bleeding out body, a look of disgust on her face.
Yes, what journey? His plan was to leave his mate alone, but then why announce that the female would be joining them on their travels?
Because he knew the rules.
The human females had seen too much. There were only two options left for them. They could join him and his brothers and leave Earth far behind… or they could die.
The thought of anything happening to his mate sent a blast of rage and horror through him.
No, he could not allow that to happen.
"And you can answer a few more questions that I have too... like what and who the fuck are you?"
"I am Torq," he answered simply before he used his com-link to order his tribe outside. He had a feeling these human females would not be so easily handled.
Within moments, half of his tribe – those not busy finishing up with the human volunteers inside – exited the building.
“Torq?” Recto said looking quizzically over his shoulder at the human females that were now huddled together whispering among themselves, though, Torq could still hear every word. Chaetdorians had fantastic hearing as it was, but Slayers tended to be the best.
“What are your orders?” Recto asked. “Do we dispose of them?”
Gazing over at the women, his eyes instantly drew back to his young, fragile mate. One look at her and his decision was made.
“No. But we will take the unconscious one with us.”
“But…”
“No buts. She comes with us,” he snapped. Teks wouldn’t be happy. In fact, he’d be majorly pissed. But right at that moment, Torq didn’t care. He had made his decision and was sticking to it. “We’ll take her back to the ship and house her in the holding bay until further notice. They won’t let her go easily, though.”
Through his entire conversation with his tribe, the humans had been getting more and more wound up. Now one of them had decided that she was going to approach. Torq could literally smell the anger on her, but there was fear there also.
“If you think for one moment you are going to be taking me and my friends anywhere, you have another thing coming,” she all but growled.
This one had fire, but she was not for him. Ignoring the small female, he returned to his now sleeping mate, gathering her in his arms.
"Where are you taking her?” one of her friends asked, rushing forward as if to stop him as he passed Recto and the others. “You can’t just take our friend. Give her to us. We'll take care of her.”
“Like you did before?” From what he had witnessed before his descent from the roof, they hadn’t been doing a very good job of protecting her.
No, if he wanted to keep her safe, then he needed to do the job himself… just from a distance.
Throwing her shoulders back, the female glared up at him, her friends coming up beside her in what he was sure they thought was a show of strength. “We will not allow you to take our friend away from us.”
Nodding, a smile pulled at his lips as he turned his back on them and walked away. Fine, he would not take their friend away from them. If they wished not to be separated from her, then there was only one thing to do. “They have seen too much, they are to come with us.”
When Torq returned inside the building, leaving the screaming and shouting of the humans outside as his males took care of them, he found the rest of his tribe had completed the pickup and were ready to go… almost.
“Fourteen of the humans are accounted for and ready to depart,” Xandr said as he approached. Seeing the woman in his arms and hearing the shouts out back, his brow rose. “Something happen back there?”
“Nothing of importance,” he lied. If anything, the most important moment of his long life had just occurred. He’d found his mate. “You said only fourteen of the humans were here, where is the last?” When Torq had vacated the building there had been fifteen humans.
“I have no clue. The twins are searching the building now to find her.”
“Her?” Torq suddenly had a very good idea who the missing female was.
“Yes, Mandy’s the one that has gone walkabout.”
He shouldn’t be surprised. Torq liked the young adult human, but there was one problem he found with her… she was crap at taking orders.
Mandy was a human that had stumbled upon their base as a child. Torq and his tribe may be born and trained killers, but they did not harm innocent children, no matter the species. She had promised to keep their secret, knowing that if she told her foster parents about finding aliens in the mountain she would be seen as insane and sent to an institute. Once she was fully grown, she had begun working for the Chaetdorians, dealing with things that they could not during the daylight hours – one of the major problems they had with this planet was that their bodies could not tolerate the Earth’s sun. Now, with them set to blast off this planet shortly, she’d decided to join them.
“Find her,” he growled.
Leaving Xandr to deal with the problem, Torq carried his mate to the shuttle, setting her down as gently as he could. Using his com-link, he ordered another shuttle to the warehouse and informed his males outside of the plan. He would take her and her friends back to the ship in this shuttle and the replacement would carry the others back. Hopefully, by the time it arrived, Mandy would have been found.
When all the human females were upon the shuttle, all silently sleeping having been knocked out by the same sleeping draft as he had given his mate, he set off. He knew he was breaking the rules, that Teks was going to be majorly pissed with him, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was meant to happen. These females, not just his mate but the others too, were meant to leave this world with them.
He just knew it.
Chapter 4
“Alice? Come on, Alice, wake up. Nora’s gone.”
No, Alice didn’t want to wake up; she was having the most fantastic dream. Mr big, tattooed and handsome was doing delicious things to her body and she wanted to stay right where she was. “Alice!”
“Okay, okay. I’m up,” she moaned, pushing herself up off the hard, cold floor.
Floor? What the Hell was she doing on the floor?
“Where are we?” She tried to open her eyes to look around but it was too bright for her sensitive eyes.
“Some alien torture cell, no doubt,” Hannah said. “They’ll take us out of here one by one and dissect us. But not before they probe us.”
“Probe?” Katie laughed. “I tell you, if the probing is to be done by those hotties that kidnapped us, I have no problem volunteering to go first.”
“You wouldn’t,” Jessie replied.
Finally able to open her eyes, at least marginally, Alice understood the reference to a cell.
They were in a box. A very white, very bright box. There was no other way to describe it.
Checking her friends over, she was relieved to see that no one was injured. She remembered Eric and the knife, remembered the man from her dreams appearing, saving her and killing Eric, but nothing after those whispered words.
‘You are mine.’
Hell, those three words had had more effect on her
than any sexual act ever had.
“What happened?”
Had she fainted? She tended to do that a lot recently; probably due to her dramatic weight loss.
“That big fellow drugged you,” Jessie informed her. “Then he called his friends and the rest of us suffered the same fate.”
“And Nora?”
“I have no idea. She was one of the first to drop when those guys came at us. I vaguely remember her calling my name before I woke up, but when I did come around, she wasn’t here,” Katie explained, sitting down beside her and leaning against the wall.
This wasn’t good. Would they separate them all before the end? Alice wasn’t sure that she could hold it together if she didn’t have her friends by her side.
“What do we do?” she asked, looking at each of them for an answer.
“The only thing we can,” Jessie said with a sigh. “We wait.”
“With bags at the ready,” Katie added with a smirk, her large, no doubt heavy bag in her lap.
Those aliens were in for a surprise if she went at them with that.
Torq had been avoiding informing Teks of the extra humans now stashed in the holding bay for the past few hours. He knew his commander and friend would find out eventually, that he would be pissed, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell him.
A Slayer, afraid? Torq would never have believed it under normal circumstances.
He wasn’t afraid for himself. It was her he was afraid for, his mate. If Teks saw her and her companions as a threat, he would terminate them, no questions asked. Torq couldn’t bear for that to happen.
He didn’t want a mate, did not plan on claiming her, but he could not allow anything to happen to her. Leaving her on Earth would leave her at risk from others. She was fragile, malnourished. She needed protecting. He could do that. He could protect her from harm while protecting her from herself in the process… he hoped.
And anyway, Teks would be angry enough as it was.
Torq had spent the past few hours helping in the search for Mandy. The human child – even fully grown, Torq would always see her as a child – was still missing. No one had any idea where she was or why she had left, but she would turn up eventually… hopefully before they were scheduled to leave.
All he wanted was to cleanse his body and clear his head before he faced the reality of what he had done. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen. Just as he made to enter his private quarters, the call for aid came through the com-link on his wrist.
He made his way swiftly to the command centre, his mind racing as he wondered what had gone wrong now.
As he approached the door, Teks exited the transporter, followed by members of Torq’s own tribe, Jepa and Hecto, also known as the twins. “Any idea what’s going on?” Teks asked.
“None.”
Entering the room, it was obvious that something was drastically wrong. Corr, the Chaer of the Warriors, was stood with one of the human females in his arms – one of Torq’s mate’s companions – while Sekon paced the room mumbling to himself.
How had the female gotten out? No one but Torq and a few of his tribe knew about them. Well, it looked like he had run out of time in which to come up with some kind of plan of what to do with them.
“What’s wrong?” Jepa asked, gazing down at the female in Corr’s arms.
Instantly, Corr’s body stiffened and a growl escaped his throat.
What the Hell?
“It is Sekon that is the problem. I found him in here about to attack my…” He paused as if he was struggling for words. “My mate.”
“Your mate?” Torq gasped, stepping forward for a closer look and receiving a growl of his own. “She’s your mate? You’re sure?”
Was it possible that one of his own mate’s friends could be destined for one of his own kind? No Chaetdorian had found a mate among the humans, now suddenly with their departure planned, they found two?
“I’m positive.”
“Then take care of your mate, brother,” Teks said. “You have been granted a precious gift. Treasure her.” The sadness in Teks eyes showed just how much he longed to find his own mate, longed for a companion.
As Corr made to leave, Teks gripped his shoulder, stopping him. “She is not one of the volunteers,” he growled, spinning to glare at Torq.
Shit. What should he do? Lie?
No, he would not do that, not take the cowards way out. He was a Slayer. The Chaer Slayer, the leader of his tribe. He would face the consequences of his actions head on.
“A small group of human females saw us while we were out. I made the decision to bring them aboard.”
“You did what! Are you crazy? We can’t just go kidnapping a bunch of humans. All the humans I sent you after had been carefully researched and vetted beforehand to make sure they knew what to expect and that they would not be missed and searched for by others. All of them have said goodbye to their human lives and are happy with the direction they are now headed. Now you go and pull this? You know the rules. If a human was to see you, you’re to take care of it.”
Meaning that Torq had been expected to kill said human. Kill his mate. Kill Corr’s mate. That had never been an option. For once in his life, Torq would not take a life.
“You have no idea what you have done,” Teks growled, indicating for the twins to take Sekon into custody. “You are responsible for this. Any problems those human women cause will be upon your head.”
Teks was well and truly pissed, more so than Torq had ever seen him. Suddenly the thought of finally escaping this planet and being trapped upon the ship for God knows how long did not seem appealing.
Then again, Teks had said nothing about getting rid of the women, so maybe it wouldn’t be Teks’s anger that made the journey unbearable, but the closeness of his unwanted mate. Even now, the knowledge that she was so close was driving him insane. He couldn’t take his eyes off the transporter doors that would take him to her if only he dared enter them.
"What really happened?" Corr asked when the others were gone, bringing Torq’s attention back to him.
Again, he found himself spilling the truth, as much as he could. He needed to get back to his MO. Bluntness. It had always been his way. The cowardly behaviour he had shown over the past few hours needed to stop. "There was a male… He was going to hurt…” He almost said mate, but with his choice to not claim her it was best that he keep his lips sealed on that titbit. “It doesn’t matter. I couldn't go through with it, and in a moment of madness, I said to bring them with us." Gazing down at Corr’s human mate, he couldn’t help the smile that pulled at his lips. “But I am glad that I did.”
After promising to keep Corr informed of the situation with Sekon, Torq went to the medibay where Jepa and Hecto had taken the Warrior. While none of them had vocalised what they thought might be wrong with their brother, they all suspected the same thing… The Madness.
All Chaetdorains were born male. When they reached maturity, they set out to the stars to find their mates. If a male failed to find his mate, the madness would sink in, making the male hostile, a danger to all those around them, especially females. In all their years stuck on Earth there had been no report of any of them showing any signs of it, but obviously, they’d been trapped on Earth for far too long.
Sekon was a Warrior, not a Slayer, but knowing that his fellow Chaetdorian was no longer of sane mind made Torq wonder if any of his own brethren were close to following the Warrior into madness.
Would he himself if he continued on the path of not claiming his mate end up having to be put down like Sekon faced now?
He didn’t want that, but he also didn’t want to be the one that put the look of fear on his mate’s face. She deserved someone gentle, someone to love her slow and tenderly.
Yes, he would love her – he was already halfway there and he didn’t even know her name – but a Slayer was not gentle. When he took his mate, claimed her, it wouldn’t be tender. Passionate? Yes. But also brutal and roug
h. He would have her screaming his name with pleasure through the night. He was not the kind of lover a fragile soul like her deserved.
Chapter 5
Alice wasn’t sure how long they had been cooped up in this place, but she was positive that it was well over a day.
No one had come in. No one had spoken to them over the speakers Jessie insisted would be hidden somewhere in the walls – along with cameras and microphones to watch and hear their every word. There had been food, though.
Every few hours a panel would open up in the wall and food would be delivered. They’d all refused to eat it, at first, wondering if it had been poisoned or something, but when the lack of sustenance had become too much for her already malnourished body, the lot of them had decided it was worth the risk.
There was also a toilet. Thank God. When Katie had loudly protested about having a full bladder and that she would relieve herself in the corner if she had to, a panel had opened in the wall to reveal a small bathroom of sorts. So it seemed that Jessie had been right about the microphones, at least.
“Did you hear that?” Hannah whispered just as they finished another tray of barely edible food. Whatever these things ate, it sure wasn’t tasty.
“Hear what?” Katie asked.
“Footsteps. I think someone’s coming.”
Alice didn’t hear a thing. Though, to be honest, she wasn’t feeling all that great. While they had been given food, there wasn’t much of it. At first, the girls had insisted she have a larger portion than them, but she had refused. Maybe that hadn’t been such a good idea.
Silence descended over the group as they all strained their ears to hear what Hannah had.
And there is was, the soft sound of footsteps approaching. Hannah was right.
Not a moment later, a section of the wall sort of melted away, leaving a door in its wake. Another of those large men appeared, but this one had pale black tattoo-like markings and his eyes were human looking, not like the one from her dreams whose eyes were like looking into a million burning suns.