He deposited her in a chair. A thick arm planted on either side of her and he leaned down, his nose a hair’s breadth away from hers. “Let us understand each other perfectly clear. You are my wife. You may not care for me but I do care for your safety and wellbeing. I will do everything in my power to protect you, even if that makes me your enemy and you say hurtful things. I do not care one iota about your duties or where you think you have to go. When you blunder into a corridor full of Suhlik, I will do anything to protect my mate. Is that clear?”
Daisy fought the urge to lower her eyes in submission. He wanted her to look away. He wanted her to give in. Well, screw that garbage. She held his gaze, battling for dominance.
She opened her mouth to say her peace. An alarm beeped, tearing his attention away.
Mylomon
Could one more thing go wrong? The clan did not meet their objectives on the planet surface. Not only was the Suhlik research facility empty of anyone they could interrogate for access to the second location, they discovered a foundling. A Terran foundling. A female child, no more than a handful of years, shrank back from the warriors. Every question met with a shrill scream.
Mylomon could not begin to fathom what it meant that the Suhlik were taking Terran children, female children, and conducting vile experiments on them. More worrisome was that Suhlik had abandoned the child.
The Suhlik abandoned nothing. It was a trap. The entire thing was a set up: tracing the traitor’s signal, the research facility in the valley, and even the surprisingly weak firefight to gain access to the research facility was a trap. And now the alarm confirmed that he failed to protect his mate.
Upset with him, she blundered her way into danger. If he was not so furious he would laugh at the misfortune. Nothing in his life was easy. He had to fight for every scrap and now he had to fight for their lives.
“What’s going on?” Daisy asked, following him to the cockpit.
Mylomon sat in the pilot’s seat, flipping toggles and reading the report. “A corrosive gas is flooding the canyon. We leave now.”
Now was too late but he didn’t want to tell his mate that. The engines needed time to engage. Ship systems came to life too slowly for his taste. If the corrosive gas surrounded the ship, the engines would flood and they would never leave the ground.
Daisy strapped herself into the co-pilot seat, face serious and determined. “I’m not sorry I came,” she said.
Mylomon could help it, he smiled. What a female. She had fire in her blood. His cock strained against his armor. “Now is not the time to argue,” he muttered. The corrosive gas surrounded the shuttle in a dense, green fog. Escape was now or never.
The shuttle lifted off the ground. It hovered several feet in the air. As he applied the thrusters to lift the shuttle above the gas cloud, the loud whine and screeching of metal filled the cabin.
“That’s so not good,” Daisy whispered, hands clutching the chair armrests.
Not good. Not the worst thing, either.
A more skilled pilot might have been able to break free of the miasma filling the canyon. Mylomon’s skills laid elsewhere. Too bad the gas didn’t need to be assassinated. The engine shuttered to a stop and gave up the fight to maintain elevation. The ship landed on the ground with a heavy thunk, the entire structure shaking and rattling the bones of its occupants.
His fingers moved above the control panel. “I have alerted the warlord about our situation.”
“My sister?”
He read the reply. “It appears they were able to leave safely.” The medic and his mate probably did not lose precious seconds needed to escape being distracted by an argument and they had a skilled pilot.
“What now?” his mate asked.
Mylomon gave her helmet-free head a reassuring stroke. “We wait. The shuttle is able to filter the air.”
“If it can’t take off in this crude, how can it filter the air?”
He shrugged. “I’m not an engineer.” He never really wondered how the mechanics worked. They just did.
“I guess we have time to argue,” she said.
“I guess we do.”
Daisy
The Suhlik used gas attacks during the invasion. Daisy remembered the frantic scrambling as her father strapped on the masks over her and Meridan before securing his own. To poison the very air was so… She couldn’t find the right word. Petty? Vindictive? Final.
Final was good. The Suhlik weren’t interested in negotiations. They were conquerors. They stripped Earth of its resources, slaughtered and enslaved the people and took the very air out of their lungs.
Daisy wasn’t doing herself any favors lingering on the past. Her family survived. Mostly. Her mother died protecting Meridan from a Suhlik scout who spotted the pair while gathering water.
Focus, she scolded herself. Stay in the present.
Monitors displayed various angles around the shuttle. Each screen was filled with a dense green fog. “How long will this last?” she asked.
“Depends on atmospheric conditions. If there is a layer of warm air above the canyon, we will be here for some time.”
“That’s a cold air inversion, right?”
Mylomon nodded, eyebrows raised.
“I paid attention in science class,” she said.
He said nothing but the gleam in his eye said he didn’t believe her.
Gah. Big purple jerk. Like she couldn’t be good at science. She was a nurse, for crying out loud. She had to be good at biology. That was a science. Or maybe he just didn’t believe she was good at anything. Talking to Mylomon was so frustrating and it didn’t have to be that way.
He was unbelievable with his little speech about protecting her for her own good, even if that made her hate him.
She didn’t hate him. The opposite, really.
“Explain,” she said. “What did you mean by a corridor full of Suhlik? What are you telling me?”
He turned his back to her, inspecting the door and the seals.
She stalked over to him. “Don’t you dare ignore me again. That’s what got us into this mess.”
He turned to her, eyes blazing. “Do you think I could ever ignore you? When you are everything I have ever desired? What I do not deserve? How could I ignore such perfection when my touch would taint it?”
She swallowed. Perfection? Sweet but misguided. “You talked about protecting your mate from a corridor of Suhlik. Did you know?” They had only just met in the service tunnels minutes before.
His gaze held hers but he said nothing. Daisy’s tongue ran across her lower lip. “Did you know,” she prompted.
He nodded and looked away. “I… scented you at the ball. I was unsure how to approach so I elected to wait.”
“But then the attack.”
“Yes. The attack. I followed you, strictly to ensure your safety.”
“And you didn’t say anything all those hours we were locked in that cold room?” Quite frankly, if a hot, buff warrior told her that she was his mate and he would personally guard her while the base was attacked… Well, it put a different spin on how they met.
“I feared saying the wrong thing, of making you hate me.” His eyes roved the shuttle’s interior, looking anywhere but at her.
Was he shy? Her big, scary assassin was shy?
“Mylo,” she said, stepping closer to him. Her hand rested on his chest. She wished there was not a layer of armor between them. She wanted to touch his skin, to feel the warmth of him.
Another alarm sounded.
Mylomon pulled away and turned his attention to the control panel. “I was wrong. Apparently the shuttle is unable to filter the air. We must flee.”
He barked out orders. She was to restore her helmet and use the suit’s air filtration. He grabbed a knapsack of supplies, stuffing one bag inside a slightly larger bag. She grabbed the medical field kit and added it to the pack.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes.” Daisy mentally prepared herself to
run when the ramp opened. Run where, she couldn’t say.
As if reading her mind, Mylomon said, “There is a cave system not far from here. I could not locate the entrance but I located where the wall is thinnest. It should be above the gas layer. Hold on to me. Do not let go. Not for a second. Do you understand?”
His words made no sense. The thinnest part of a wall? Did he plan to knock through stone?
“Do you understand?” he repeated.
She nodded. “Sure. Don’t let go.”
He slung the pack over one shoulder and wrapped an arm around her waist. Then he shimmered out of focus. A warm, fuzzy sensation spread over her and she realized the entire world went out of focus.
Then Mylomon walked through the shuttle wall.
Chapter Eleven
Mylomon
Nothing had ever been so important as that moment and nothing was as precious as his trusting mate in his arms.
“Holy shit,” his mate said in that endearingly vulgar way of hers. “What the hell was that!”
“Shh,” he murmured, stroking her back. He needed to concentrate. Teleporting himself was trivial. He’d done it sleeping, once. Teleporting two was tricky, especially when he carried his most treasured possession in his arms. “Questions later.”
“Right, right.”
Outside the shuttle, Mylomon surveyed the valley. The green gas created a thick fog he could not see out of. He hated to move blind but there was no choice. Exposed, the suits’ environmental supports would not last long. He needed to move. Now.
Through was easy. Moving side to side even easier. To move down, all he had to do was concentrate on being less solid. Up was a challenge. Up was limited in range and drained him.
Running on memory and the map projected on the inside of his helmet, Mylo reached up.
He landed solidly on top of boulder. Daisy whimpered but did not complain. She held on tightly. The next move as lateral. He moved from point to point, landing on ledges with the barest of toeholds. He pulled himself up and when he couldn’t climb, he teleported. Slowly he worked his way up and over until he reached the last obstacle: a sheer vertical cliff. His destination was ten feet directly overhead.
He was more skilled at teleporting through barriers, past guards and sentries and flickered just past the edge of a knife. He was not built for teleporting long distances or carrying a passenger.
There was no option. His mate needed him. He would not fail.
Drawing on his reserves, Mylomon gathered his focus and reach up. His being vibrated and stretched, carrying Daisy along for the journey. He couldn’t make it in one leap. Halfway up, he quickly refocused, slipping back a bit, and leapt again.
Mid-leap, he changed direction and went sideways, through the stone cliff face.
Chest heaving, he set his mate’s feet on the solid ground. His arms were slow to release her and she was just as slow to step away. Her grip remained firm.
“We have arrived, female,” he said, leaning down to nuzzle the top of her head and wishing the helmets were not in the way.
“What the hell was that!”
Daisy
The interior of the cave was completely dark. The embedded lights in her helmet adjusted to provide illumination.
She leaned a hand against the stone wall, unbelievably finding it solid. Or herself solid. Whatever. Her knees wanted to buckle and the rest of her wanted desperately to collapse to the floor. She moved to lift the visor on the helmet.
“Wait. Testing the air quality,” Mylomon said. He held up a hand and then motioned that it was safe.
Daisy gulped the stale, cold air of the cavern. Wherever they were, it was closed off from the outside. Or above the canyon. The sour smell of sulphur clung to her armor. The gas transformed into a sticky film upon contact.
Mylomon pulled her in for a crushing embrace. The flex-armor absorbed much but she could still feel the intensity as he poured in what he could not say with words. “I do not care what horrible words you say to me. I do not care if you hate me. You are mine and I will not lose you.”
She returned the embrace, wishing the armor wasn’t between them. “I don’t hate you.”
He pulled back and examined a seam at her shoulder. “I have to get you out of this armor.”
She couldn’t fight the smile spreading on her face. “I know it was a dramatic rescue and all, which is pretty hot, but maybe buy me dinner first, hero.”
“The seal is compromised. You cannot let the residue touch your skin.”
Ah. Not sexy but necessary. A gas that could ground a shuttle and ruin life support was no joke. She moved to undo the clasps holding the armor together.
“Let me,” Mylomon said. “I will start at the top and work my way down. Gloves and boots will be last. Do not touch anything.”
“What about your armor? Shouldn’t you get out of it, too?”
“Mine is more durable than yours. The seals are not compromised.” He removed her helmet and placed it gently on the ground. Next came off the shoulder and chest plate. A smile played on his lips. “I am not so easy to get undressed. I required dinner.”
“Was that a joke?”
His typical serious expression replaced the playful smile. “If you cannot tell, then no.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. Her big, scary warrior was sensitive. He didn’t like to be teased, which made her want to tease him all the more. Instead, Daisy made the choice to be an adult and said, “It smells awful.”
“We will not be able to salvage your amour. We will leave it here.”
“And yours? It’s coated in that stuff. What if I bump into you in the dark?”
He looked down at the growing pile of discarded armor. “If you were Mahdfel I would tell you to watch where you are going, but I know humans have poor night vision. I will remove my armor as well.”
“How kind of you,” she said sarcastically. He raised an eyebrow at her tone. “Oh, come on, like you didn’t know I was going to make you leave that stinky armor behind. You reek. I reek. Everything stinks.”
Mylomon slipped off her gloves and, finally, the boots. She was left wearing a long sleeve black top, tight fitting black leggings and a slipper sock designed for exercise with a durable lining on the sole. The slippers were a shade better than being barefoot. Barely. They could protect her feet from scrapes and uneven terrain but they weren’t quite up to the challenge of hiking into the unknown.
Daisy shivered, rubbing her hands along her arms.
“Are you cold?”
“A little. I’ll warm up once we get moving.”
Mylomon divested himself of his armor. Daisy tried not to stare. He was built, after all. And he was her husband. She was allowed to appreciate his physical form. He probably ogled her, too. Not that she ever caught him at it. If she did, she’d probably snap at him for checking her out. So Daisy was a big ol’ hypocrite.
Mylomon frown as he removed the satchel of supplies from the outer bag. “You are displeased.”
“Do you ever check out my ass?” The blush that overcame her burned fiercely. Thank the stars the cave was dark.
“Every opportunity.”
Her chuckle was free and easy. Mylo delivered the line with such convincing seriousness but she knew, just knew, that he teased her.
She liked this side of him. Too bad they had to get stranded on a dead planet to find that out.
Chapter Twelve
Mylomon
He led his mate through the dark caverns. Fresh, gas free air meant the caves had an exit above the canyon. He could smell water in the distance. He had a vague idea of which direction was up. Other than that, he let his heightened senses guide them through the dark.
If this worried his mate, she said nothing. She used a flashlight in one hand to illuminate the floor and held his hand with the other, allowing him to lead her. He enjoyed it. Not because she needed him, but because they worked together. Even if she did fill the time with meaningless prattle about Terran films a
nd questions about his clan. She had not yet asked about his teleporting, the ability that saved them from the corrosive gas. He knew though, that she was circling the topic from above like a bird of prey. She was waiting for her moment, the perfect moment when he would be most amiable to discussing it honestly, and she would strike.
She had the mind of a tactician. He admired it.
He admired several things about her. She caught him by surprise when she asked if he ever observed her posterior. He had. It was pleasingly round and the way it swayed when she walked was fascinating. He would not lie about that. There were several physical attributes about her that he admired, like how her golden hair caught the light. Or the perfect curve of her hips. And the way she planted her hand on one hip when she was upset. Or her smile and the way it pierced the darkness in his heart.
Daisy smiled frequently. She did not hide her joy but too often her smiles were for others, not for him. He wanted those smiles. He did not want to share. So many things in this universe had never been for him.
But Daisy was for him. Against all odds, against all probability, she was for him.
And he did not want to share.
Of all her admirable qualities, she was patient. She did not hate him when she had every reason to. He had been a neglectful mate.
His mind kept returning to the way she handled herself as the shuttle crashed. She strapped herself in and calmly followed his instructions. She did not panic. She did not wail and blubber. As he brought them above the fog, she gasped once in surprise. No questioning. No demands for explanations that would slow down their escape. Even now, her chattering was a way to maintain her calm. She was tougher than he expected.
Perhaps this was what she had been trying to tell him for the last month but he was too stubborn to listen.
Mylomon: Warlord Brides (Warriors of Sangrin Book 3) Page 9