by Chloe Cox
The irony was not lost on him. “Humans First” had its own analog among the Leonids, a despicable faction called the Draconids. It had been the Draconids that instigated the civil war that killed Kragen’s parents. And though only a few Draconid sympathizers were suspected to remain within the Leonid fleet, the memory of the suffering they caused with their beliefs about Leonid superiority was still raw.
But the humans of Humans First were, unfortunately, right about one thing: the Leonids were a danger. Rune was proof.
Kragen thought back to what he had seen in the basement. He had not expected Rune to speak. He had not expected anything, except a possible attack, and he had been prepared to kill his brother if it had come to that. Instead, he did not know what he’d seen.
It had been so long since a Leonid male had been allowed to fall this far into kravok that Kragen did not know what to look for. Was Rune’s sudden ability—or willingness—to speak again a sign of improvement? Or a sign that the darkness that lived at the end of kravok had taken him whole?
Kragen snorted. One car left in the lot. He felt his own frustration growing. He was not used to failure. Kragen had planned for every possible scenario when he chose to honor his obligation to Rune over his obligation to the Leonid queen. Most of those scenarios ended with Kragen executing Rune and then surrendering to the queen, sure to be executed himself, but some of them ended in hope for the Leonid people, in the form of an improved triclosan treatment. Kragen had judged the risk to be worth the cost of his own life.
But now there was Andromeda. Now there was his mate. And all his plans lay in ruins.
Kragen looked at her as the light around him died, fading into dusk. Just looking at her, seated on the grassy ground, leaning back against a tree as she ate her dinner, her brown hair tied back so that he could see her bare neck, clouded his mind.
She was at risk now, because of the bond between them. The bond had called her, and Magnus had seen her with him. Kragen had had to injure his blood brother to give them more time, and he would have done far worse, if necessary. He would have done anything and everything for her.
She looked up at him, her eyes shining like nothing else in the godsdamn universe.
“Don’t watch me while I’m eating,” she said, wiping her mouth. “It’s weird.”
Kragen snorted. If she knew what watching her eat made him think of…
He had never felt anything like this fever. It was getting worse. Kragen was not the sort of male to pray to the old gods, because he preferred to make his own destiny. But he was not above praying for the strength to keep his most important vow. He would see this through without claiming his mate.
“It is time,” he growled. “Rise.”
He had given her an order, and she reacted as his true submissive would. Kragen watched the flush of arousal ripple through her and balled his hands into fists. She did not make this easy.
“You’re sure they won’t see us?” she asked as she joined him at the edge of the wood.
Kragen inhaled her sweet scent, and felt her nearness prickle his skin. He stared straight ahead. There was still a car in the parking lot.
“I could make them all sleep,” he said. “I could erase their memories after we have finished.”
“Please don’t do any of that,” she said.
Kragen snorted.
“They wear the insignia of Humans First,” he said. “Just like the Idiots who attacked you.”
For some reason, this made her smile. He liked to see that.
Then she shook her head. Kragen liked that even more. For some reason, every time she challenged him, he wanted her even more. Wanted to bend that warrior’s will to his own, wanted to watch her scream in pleasure as he made her his.
“These are good people, for the most part,” Andromeda said. “Or at least they’re not all bad. You can’t treat them like the enemy.”
Kragen snarled. Telling him what he could not do just made him want to put her over his knee.
Right there, in the woods. Rip off her clothing, as he had done before. On her knees, in the grass, her ass up and her head down as he held her by the neck and plunged into her wet heat…
“Kragen?”
“Yes,” he said. “Fine. As you wish. I will not attack their consciousness.”
She turned, and Kragen felt her eyes on him.
“What will you do?” she said.
Kragen had asked himself that many times. The knowledge that he did not know what to do now that he had a mate to protect—from the humans, from the Leonids, and most of all, from himself—haunted him. It gnawed at the back of his mind, like a mad, caged animal. Like the animal he would turn into without Andromeda. Like the animal Rune was becoming.
The darkness inside him, the darkness that lived inside all Leonids, wanted her. It did not care about the cost: Andromeda’s suffering, when Kragen was inevitably caught.
Kragen cared. He would not endanger her.
But he would drink of her, to protect her.
“Trust me,” he growled.
He reached out and pulled her close to him. Her scent filled the air as her warm, soft body pressed against his, and the hunger for her flared hot, deep inside him. Kragen released it in a long, low growl, but it did not help. He needed to drink.
“Do not move,” he said.
21
The whole world came to a stop as Kragen wrapped his arm around her waist and crushed her to his hard, muscled body. Every time he touched her, Andie fell out of time and space, losing track of anything and everything other than the burning-hot border where his skin touched hers.
Her breathing stopped.
Her mind went blank.
Her heart…raced.
But she recognized it this time, as it was happening. Some part of her stayed whole. Stayed Andie.
So she was able to watch as the hunger rose inside her to meet Kragen—and while he drank from her.
Kragen bent over her as he held her close, his face close to hers. Andie felt the urge to reach up and wrap her arms around his neck, conscious of it this time, and as she did it she heard him growl. Then his fangs were on her neck, gently, just holding her in place, and a wave of pleasure pealed through her, cresting and crashing into her core. The throbbing between her legs became insistent, the feeling of absence excruciating.
So this time she would be totally self-aware about losing her mind for a Leonid she couldn’t have. Awesome.
And just as Andie thought she couldn’t take it one more second, Kragen pulled away and pinned her with that molten gaze.
With a flash, Andie could see into his mind. His heart.
And she saw that even he was on the verge of losing control.
With another growl Kragen suddenly spun her around, so her back was to him, and Andie instinctively bent forward, her hands finding the rough bark of the tree she’d been leaning against. She bent her head and moaned, not giving a good goddamn anymore. She wanted him. She needed him, like she’d never needed anything in her life, and she did not care if it was like this, rutting in the woods because she was weak and would do nearly anything at this point, just fucking anything, to feel Kragen inside her.
He pushed his rough hands up under her dress, the dress she was now very aware she’d packed just because she wanted to look good for him, and she moaned again. Kragen dug his fingers into the flimsy cotton of her panties and pushed them out of the way, and Andie felt her wetness against her own skin. It was almost unbearable.
She was so close, and yet so far.
And then she felt his finger again, pushing inside her.
Andie wanted to scream in frustration. She almost turned around, yelling that she wanted him, and then his other hand come down on her neck and his finger pressed down right onto her g-spot. She groaned, and forgot entirely about everything, ever. With just a few strokes she felt her orgasm start to crest, and then his free hand wrapped around her chest, pulling her up so she stood in front of him, the chang
e in posture making him feel huge inside her. She came all over his hand as he held on to her from behind, his fangs on her neck and his hand on her breast as she felt the kuma flow between them like a raging, uncontrolled flood.
And then, with it, came the memories.
Andie saw it all so clearly. More than saw: felt, knew. As though they were her memories.
Kragen as a boy, feeling the intense relief and even fear, the first day Rune’s family took him in. They slept in two bunks, like the bunk beds brothers on Earth might have, and got in trouble staying up late that first night talking about ancient Leonid battles.
Rune as an adult, a brother in arms. Proud. Noble. Kragen’s sworn rivka.
A memory of his brothers, in battle, fighting, and something going suddenly, terribly wrong—
With a flash of white, it was ripped away.
When her vision returned, Andie was staring up at Kragen, held up by his arm, both of them breathing heavily. She’d been here before. But this time, things had changed.
This time, she knew things.
Andie knew what rivka was. She knew why Kragen kept telling her he was condemned, and she knew it was true. She knew what he had done now.
And she knew why.
Andie’s heart ached for him, and for Rune, and for herself—and she didn’t know how to say any of it.
Kragen’s growl brought her back to her own body, still shaking slightly with aftershocks. His hunger for her wasn’t gone, but he also seemed somehow stronger. His eyes were glowing silver, and when she looked into them, she saw he was back in full control.
That just made her want him more.
With a slow, deliberate movement, he raised his hand—the one that had been inside her—and licked his finger clean. Andie felt a rumble of satisfaction in his chest as he savored her, and she was weak all over again.
But Kragen wasn’t.
“Now we go,” he said.
Something had been different that time. Kragen could still taste Andromeda on his tongue, and in his mind, as he could after every time he’d fed on her kuma. It still drove him to the brink of insanity, the hunger never quite sated. But somehow this had been…more.
It did not matter. They had supplies to procure. And if Kragen stood there with her for one more moment, he was not sure he would be able to stop himself again.
Quickly, he led her across the parking lot, his kuma-charged senses in overdrive. Still three cars. Body heat from three humans inside the store.
Not even a minor challenge.
There was sign above the entrance, in chipped paint on faded wood: “POLSKY’S HARDWARE”. Kragen raised a finger, and the door below it blew open ahead of them. He felt Andromeda’s shock, but with what he would need to do to keep them undetected without, as she put it, violating the minds of these errant humans, psychically opening a door was nothing.
He entered the store, confirmed the scene, and allowed his mate to follow.
Then he watched her face.
“What did you do?” she whispered.
She was staring at the human male who stood behind the counter, his hand raised—and frozen in the air. The proprietor had been in mid-conversation with a customer, gesticulating wildly, when Kragen stopped him. The customer leaned on the counter, rapt in a pose of careful attention.
“They are…paused,” he said. “There is no human word for it. When I release them, they will go on as the did before, unharmed and unaware.”
Andromeda shook her head, and blinked.
“This was what you wanted,” he said.
“How are you doing this?” she said.
The truth was, with his mate by his side, it was not difficult. Kragen could feel each and every one of the humans, could read each and every one of their minds. Could hold their very selves in his the palm of his hand if he wanted.
That was how he knew some of them were full of hate. If Kragen wanted to, he could change that. He could end them here and now. He could drain them all of kuma, grow strong, not need to rely on Andromeda for a short time.
But without the mating bond to sustain these random humans, it would kill them.
And they would not taste like Andromeda.
Nothing in the universe tasted like Andromeda.
Growling, Kragen grabbed the list Kat had made for them, and began to stalk the aisles for the required items. If he could make a stronger version of the triclosan, they might have more time. It was not a plan, but it was better than nothing.
“We have to pay for that,” Andromeda said behind him as he started to fill a cart with rat poison, weed killer, and something called pool cleaner.
“The proprietor of this place belongs to Humans First,” Kragen said. “The same organization as the idiots who threatened you.”
“So?”
Kragen looked at her.
“Then everything he has is forfeit. He is lucky that this is all I will take.”
Kragen had not thought much about his explanation; he was simply stating a true fact. He did not expect Andromeda to react much, if at all.
Instead she grabbed his arm and stared into his eyes.
She was on the verge of tears.
“This is not a plan!” she said.
Kragen was aware of a strange feeling, one he’d only felt in battle. It was the feeling you had in your gut right before everything went wrong.
He was a warrior. He understood war, and strategy, and planning. He did not understand human females.
Even the one he would die for.
“I am aware this is not a sufficient plan,” he said. “I did not plan on finding a mate.”
That did not appear to be the right thing to say.
“What even was your plan?” Andromeda said. The anger in her voice rose, and Kragen had to concentrate to keep his hold on the human males around them.
“I hoped the triclosan would work,” he said, trying to keep calm. Trying not to think about how a Leonid should resolve conflicts with his mate. “Long enough to make advancements, or even find Rune a mate. But if it did not, I would fulfill my vow.”
“You’d kill him?” she asked.
Kragen looked at her. Had he told her that?
“Yes,” he said. “Before turning myself in to the Royal Guard, who would execute me.”
To his surprise, Andromeda pushed him.
It was not meant to hurt, or even to do much beyond get his attention. In which it succeeded. Admirably.
“That’s not a plan, you dummy!” Andromeda said. “That’s a suicide pact!”
Kragen looked down at her with something like wonder. She was a tiny human female, challenging a fully grown Leonid warrior. Not just any Leonid warrior—a commander in the Royal Guard. The physical contact between her hand and his bare chest was enough to make his cock jump, but there was something more.
Every time she challenged him—and every time she was right to do so—it made him want her more. Kragen’s lip twitched at the thought of making the female in front of him scream herself hoarse with pleasure. Of feeling her come apart around his cock.
“It may have been a bad plan,” he growled. “But it was the only plan. Rune is my brother. He was my only family. I would not let him go without a fight.”
“And now?” Andromeda demanded. He saw, through her anger, tears. Tears of sadness. Of pain. He would destroy entire armies to spare her what she was feeling right now, and yet he did not know how to stop it.
“Now he is not my only family,” he said.
Andromeda fell silent, but her eyes spoke volumes. They blinked back their tears and looked steadily ahead.
“So now what?” she said. “What do we do?”
“We will move,” he said. “We will run until—”
“You can’t run forever,” she said, shaking her head. “And neither can I.”
Kragen was losing his patience.
“You are not safe here,” he reminded her.
“And whose fault is that?” she asked.
The door behind her opened, the bell attached to it jangling loudly in the silence of the frozen hardware store. He had been distracted by his mate, and had dropped his guard. Kragen’s eyes locked on the intruder as soon as the sound broke his awareness.
It was the idiot called Trevor, open mouthed and wide eyed, raising his hand to point at Kragen.
With an involuntary snarl, Kragen reached his hand out, ready to hit Trevor with a blast of pure kuma that would destroy his body and mind. At the last second, he remembered.
Andromeda.
For some godsforsaken reason, she had empathy for the worst among these humans. She could not see what he saw in them, and yet somehow she saw more.
Kragen grunted with disgust. He waved his hand, and Trevor froze harmlessly in the doorway, where the door bumped against him with a gentle jingle.
He expected his mate to be pleased with him. But instead, when he looked at her, he could not tell what she was feeling. The bond between them was clouded and gray, matching the storm clouds that passed over her expression. He’d heard this. That the bond responded to emotions.
But they had just shared something, with another kiss, another exchange of kuma. Kragen had been on the verge of claiming her, and he’d never been more sure that they would have been happy together, if circumstances were different. He’d never felt closer to her.
And yet now she was an impenetrable mystery.
“This is my home,” Andromeda said, crossing her arms. “And I’m just your unclaimed mate, remember?”
Her words echoed in the eerie stillness of the frozen hardware store. The human males at the counter remained unmoving, but their hair moved slightly in the breeze from the doorway where a frozen Trevor now propped open the door. Kragen felt like they were stopped in time. As though this were a moment where everything could change.
He did not know what Andromeda wanted from him. But she said this was her home.
The only thing that felt like home to Kragen was her.
He looked at her, long and hard. The beautiful strength in her eyes made him proud, and the vulnerability there made him protective. He realized that where he would hide from the Alliance and his own queen for Rune, for Andromeda…