by Elsa Jade
She glanced at the bed where Mach lay with his body sprawled in all directions, the soft sounds of his breathing as calming as a white noise machine. Who walked around with a pocket full of loose diamonds?
The kind of man whose bathroom had a…
She frowned as the throbbing at her temples that she’d thought she’d kicked returned with a vengeance. The kind of man who had a golden bathroom. He had pure gold in his bathroom. And he’d given her a chunk of it.
She looked down at the diamonds in her hand. A rancher with gold and diamonds that he didn’t even bother hiding.
If he didn’t consider such treasure important, what was he hiding instead?
There was an explanation, she knew. After all, he’d been coming out of the jewelry store in town, and although he hadn’t answered her teasing about why he needed jewelry, neither had he seemed particularly furtive. As he would’ve been if he had a wife or another lover somewhere else. No, she was sure he would never lie about that. While he might not be as innocent as he looked in the abandon of sleep, he wasn’t a liar.
Probably it was the diamonds that were lying; no way did Mach buy this many real diamonds on a whim.
Wait, her sister had told her once… Carefully, she puffed a lungful of air across the stones. Oh man, the fog of her breath only lasted a moment. Cubic zirconia would’ve held it longer. But these had to be lab-grown synthetic diamonds. Shoot, there were probably only a handful of popping-the-question moments in this town every year and Mach had just bought out the store.
Still, she needed to know that he had some sort of explanation, so she tucked the diamonds into the pocket of her jeans. She’d give them back to him when he woke up, and he could give her some answers in return.
Why she thought she had the right to ask him anything, she wasn’t sure. One puppy, one drink, and one night of passion didn’t grant her any special rights to his secrets.
Restless and not sure whether she was more annoyed with him or herself, she yanked on her underwear and jeans. The slippery caress of her silk camisole reminded her of his tongue, which just made her more restless, but the imperceptible poke of the shiny rocks in her pocket sort of took the shine off her desire to let him poke his dick in her, not until she knew he wasn’t a smuggler or married or some other sort of creep. She huffed out a short breath of impatience. Would it be too rude to shake him awake? Maybe a cup of coffee would mellow her out—
A bright beam of light strafed across the walls, the growl of an engine catching her attention a moment later. Gravel crunched.
Frowning, she went to the window. Her landlords in the main house always parked in front, but maybe they needed her extra space.
Mach’s truck was idling behind hers, empty.
A sharp rap on her door brought her whirling around. She hadn’t even heard anyone on the stairs.
Mach was already opening it. “What’s wrong?”
She blinked hard at him. She hadn’t heard him get up. He’d been dead to the world, basically. Now he was at her door, naked, opening it…
The man on the other side had to be one of the other Halley brothers. With the exception of being clothed, he looked almost identical. He had nearly the same height as Mach, though he wasn’t as phenomenally bulky.
He had the same silvery scars.
What had happened to them?
As the October night air rushed in, she wrapped her arms around herself. “Mach?”
Casting one long look at her, the other Halley strode in. “The yurk is gone.”
Chapter 11
Mach spun around to grab his jeans, shoving his feet into his boots with each leg donned. “How long?”
“Not sure,” Delta said. “She’d busted through the wall at some point before I got back from running hay out to the herd.”
“Why didn’t—?” Mach bit off the rest of the words. It was his own fault. He’d left Delta alone and gone into town where he’d stayed too long. He’d actually fallen asleep, leaving his brother to track him down like a lost dog… He glanced at Lun-mei. “I have to go.”
She stood with her head bowed, her fingertips pressed to her temples. “The yurk.”
Her tone wasn’t a question. She didn’t stammer in confusion. When she raised her face to him, he saw the returning memories coalesce in her wide eyes.
“You’re an alien,” she blurted. “And you let your alien dragon escape!”
Delta gawked at him. “You told her?”
“You just told her the yurk is gone,” Mach said with pointless asperity as he buttoned his jeans and yanked on his shirt. “And obviously the compounds of the memory wipe have exceeded their expiration date.”
“Well, they are a couple hundred years old,” Lun-mei snapped. “Like you.”
Delta narrowed his eyes. “I didn’t tell her that.”
Mach growled under his breath as he strode toward his brother. “Let’s go.”
Delta balked in the doorway. “You can’t leave her here,” he protested, just as Lun-mei said, “You aren’t leaving me here.”
Scowling at both of them, Mach grabbed his hat. “We have to find the yurk.”
“And you need me to do that.” Lun-mei was quickly pulling on a shirt over her skimpy, silky tank top before she reached for her boots. She’d already been half-dressed, he realized. Why hadn’t she come back to bed?
He shook off the petulant whine in his head. He had bigger problems. Literally bigger. “You fed the yurk?” he asked Delta.
Who nodded. “Ate the entire sack of seed and went right back to sleep. I don’t think she meant to break out. I think she grew out.”
Lun-mei blanched. “If anyone sees her…”
“Any Earther besides you, you mean?” Delta eyed her.
She didn’t respond. “We’ll swing by the clinic and I can get the heavy-duty tranquilizers.”
“You’re not going,” Mach said through gritted teeth. “She’s dangerous.”
“She’s my patient.” Lun-mei jammed a cap on her head, feeding her black hair through the strap on the back. “And obviously your drugs aren’t any good.”
Snatching her keys from the table-side door, she strode forward and Delta backed out of her way. When Mach scowled at him, he gave a wry shrug.
Hissing under his breath, Mach lunged for Lun-mei. “You can’t—”
“I’m going with you,” she snapped back. “Don’t try to stop me.”
And his fingers curled away before he could touch her.
He stared down at his suddenly powerless hand. His nanites hummed in ready mode, waiting for him to do her bidding.
He’d imprinted.
On a clueless Earther.
Reeling from the calamity, he could only follow her out to her truck.
“I’ll drive,” she told him. Over the hood, she said to Delta, “You head back to the ranch, see if you can find any sign of her. You must know the wants and needs of her species. Where would she go and why? Figure it out.” When Delta nodded, she continued, “Mach and I will be right behind you.”
Delta sidelonged a glance at him. “Uh. Maybe Mach should go with me.”
“I have to yell at him.”
“Okay.” Delta hopped into the ranch truck and wheeled it away without looking back.
Some genetically and cybernetically enhanced lethal shroud he was.
Mach swiveled to face Lun-mei.
“Get in,” she said.
He gritted his teeth as the compulsion to obey her raked through him. But she wasn’t wrong. As they sped through the quiet town, she was silent.
He angled in his seat to face her. “What happened to yelling at me?”
“I am. In my head. But all the words sound crazy.”
For some reason, her grumbling reassured him. “It’s a lot to believe. Crash-landing spaceships. Aliens. Dragons. “
“You know what’s the worst part?” Her hands tightened on the wheel. “Where you drugged me, lied to me, and fucked me.”
Th
ose words weren’t crazy. They hit him with the punch of bullets. “I did what I thought I had to do to protect my matrix.”
“Fucking me?”
Swallowing hard, he tasted her in the back of his throat. Impossible. His nanites absorbed and converted anything he ate. She should be just energy to him by now.
But she was more.
She was his keyholder. Except she didn’t have his key, just everything else.
“No,” he murmured. “That I did for myself. And I’d give up everything to do it again.”
She refused to look at him, as if the empty street demanded more of her attention. “I remember what you told me. About crashing. About hiding.” She let out a short breath. “About being a slave and wanting to save the yurk.”
He kept his gaze on her, willing her to hear his honesty. “Being with you tonight was the first, best choice I ever made for myself alone.”
This time, she did glance at him, just for a second. “But it wasn’t you alone. I was there too.”
And what could he say to that?
At the dark door of her clinic, she told him to stay—and since he couldn’t disobey her, he did—while she retrieved extra supplies. She was back quickly, a rifle case under her arm. He’d been created and trained to kill; he’d come to full consciousness in the Wild West; he lived with guns. Seeing her as a hunter made him hate himself. He’d dragged her into this because he’d failed as a leader, and now he was failing her promise to the creature in her care.
“If there’s a kill shot, I’ll take it,” he said. “That’s not your duty, but I can’t let the yurk be seen by other Earthers.”
She glared at him, maybe because he called her an Earther, maybe because he was telling her about her job, but most likely because he was now sitting in the drivers seat. She’d ordered him to stay and he couldn’t disobey a direct command, but the “here” in “stay here” had a lot of space for interpretation.
She tightened her seat belt—sized to his chest—with angry yanks. “Killing isn’t our only option,” she snapped. “We have luring, tracking, and tranqing—”
“The yurk is a superbly designed killing machine.” He sped smoothly out of the parking lot into the night. “She won’t be lured—”
“Turn left.”
Unable to deny her, his muscles yanked the wheel over toward the glare of a neon sign. The truck tires squealed.
So did Lun-mei. “What the hell?”
He gritted his teeth. He still hadn’t told her she controlled him. Would she hate him for lying again? Or fear him? “You said turn.”
She glared at him. “We need donuts.”
He stared back. “Really?”
“You mentioned that the yurk would imprint on you. Many species have strong homing instincts. And her first meal—other than biting you—was donuts. We might be able to lure her home with that smell.”
At this time of the night, the 24-hour shop was actually in lively baking mode. The rich aroma of yeast rolled through the cab when he pulled up to the order window. The girl in the hairnet —one of the Madison siblings—barely glanced up from her phone while she filled his order for a dozen, although she nodded when Lun-mei leaned across his lap and said, “Large coffee too, please.”
“Make that two,” he said.
On the open road to the ranch, he pushed the truck faster. Lun-mei didn’t object as she tore apart a glazed donut and chewed angrily like she was imagining it was him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For lying to you and then trying to erase your memory of when I wasn’t lying to you.”
She was silent as the night rushed by. Finally, she said, “I don’t like it, but I understand. People ask where I’m from, and when I say California, they say, ‘yeah, but where are you from?’ And when I say San Francisco, they say ‘but where are you from-from?’ And then they get mad when I tell them the neighborhood.” She shook her head. “If I had to add my planet and galaxy too, that question would get pretty annoying.” When he didn’t reply, content to let her muse, she sighed. “You’re an alien.”
Yeah, that didn’t need an answer either.
The cold and dark and isolation had a menace he’d never appreciated when he got out of the truck with Lun-mei at his side, knowing a brilliant predator lurked out there somewhere.
“I’ll hold onto the donuts,” he said.
“Bed hog and donut hog,” she muttered to herself, striding past him to claim the rifle from the back of the truck.
All the yard lights were blazing, which only highlighted the bloodless tension on Delta’s face when he ran out of the barn toward them. Mach met him halfway, Lun-mei just a few steps behind and only because of her shorter legs. Admiration and fear churned in him like an uneasy mix of fresh donuts and day-old coffee.
“Things just got worse,” Delta informed him grimly. “When I got back, I found Cross’s truck at the gate.”
Mach straightened, rage wiping out every other feeling. “Where is he?”
Delta clenched his fists. “I don’t know. The yurk is missing. Cross is somewhere—”
Lun-mei spoke over him. “Where are the dogs?”
Mach looked at her then at Delta. “Have you seen them?”
His gaze shuttling between them, as if he wasn’t sure who he was answering, Delta nodded. “They’re in your office. I just saw them when I was…” He straightened. “Ah, they’re hiding. Even though there are donuts.”
Mach nodded. “Means the yurk is somewhere nearby.”
“Maybe she’ll eat Cross,” Delta said darkly.
“Or Cross is hunting her.” When they both wheeled to face her, Lun-mei had her rifle out. “He was pretty pissed after seeing you at the brewery,” she told Mach. “Wouldn’t surprise me if he drank some more and came storming out here to have words with you. Or worse. If his fancy truck is still here, that means he is too. And if he saw the yurk—”
The cardboard box crumpled under his grip. Somewhere on his ranch, the hatchling and the hateful Earther were causing trouble. And all he had to stop it was some frosted fried dough and an unwitting keyholder who didn’t trust him.
He pointed at Delta. “Run the tractor out to the end of the road. If Cross managed to call any of his people, I don’t want them getting in. Then make sure the maintenance shed is locked down tight.”
His brother nodded. “What about you?”
Mach glanced at Lun-mei. “We’ll find the yurk.”
With the rifle held across her body, she didn’t meet his gaze. And he wondered if he was about to lose everything else.
Chapter 12
Find the yurk.
Lun-mei grumbled to herself. He made it sound so nonchalant. Sure, just hunt down an alien dragon and maybe a trophy-obsessed, entitled asshole, real estate developer—she wasn’t sure which one was more dangerous—and oh by the way, here, have a donut.
Admittedly, the donuts had been her idea. In ranking all her great ideas, the donuts had definitely moved up into second place after going to vet school but before sleeping with Mach.
Sleeping with Mach should’ve been way down the list. Because as furious and shocked as she was about alien dragons attacking, loving alien dick was even more infuriating and shocking. But somehow, fury and shock couldn’t entirely replace her fascination with him.
He was a killer alien but she’d never been with someone so kindhearted and humane. He was strong but gentle, huge but precise, full of secrets but yearning to reach out. How could she stay mad at him?
On the other hand, how could she stay with him at all, knowing what he was and what he’d done?
She pushed away the swampy fears that would only get in her way as they hunted the yurk. While the other Halley brother went off on his tasks—she’d been under the impression there were more than two Halleys, but Mach didn’t seem to be planning on anyone else coming to help them—they turned off all but one of the yard lights and opened the box of donuts on the half-frozen ground.
“This wo
uldn’t work if she was a few days older,” he murmured. “She’d be too clever to fall for this trap. And too big.”
“It’s only because she’s a baby with her nanotechnology immune system still immature that we have any hope of my tranqs working,” she agreed. When Mach had gone through the house and outbuildings to look for Cross, she’d checked the developer’s truck. The oversized, extended cab, chrome-rimmed behemoth had a gun rack ostentatiously mounted in view—and it was empty.
Whether Cross meant to threaten or sabotage or worse, he’d stumbled onto a world-changing secret, just as she had. She didn’t have any sympathy for him, but she’d shoot him with the pepper spray in her pocket, not the tranqs if she had the choice.
Now huddling with Mach, out of sight in the barn, she shivered a little.
Of course he took off his coat and draped it over her.
“I’m not actually cold,” she said, only lying a little. Fair enough, since he’d lied to her bigger.
“I don’t actually need it,” he countered. “It’s part of my Earther disguise. I don’t feel anything.”
She arched one eyebrow. “Don’t feel anything? So when I sucked you—”
He choked on a breath. “You can’t bring that up now.”
“I brought it up then.”
The sound he made this time was pretty clearly a growl. “Lun-mei—”
“Shhh. Did you hear that?”
“I heard ridiculousness.”
“Besides that.” She crouched low to peer toward the bait. But the mostly dark yard seemed empty. Her stomach cramped, not with hunger, but nerves. Her aquarium rotation had been the closest to truly wild animals she’d ever been. Most of her patients had collars and ID chips and… “Does the yurk have a tracking chip in her? You must have one for your brother to find you at my place.”
He shook his head. “Delta and I were fully kitted, except for our final activation. The yurk still has work to be done. And with the loss of the ship, I won’t be able to finish everything.”
“We can probably rig up a tracker from our GPS tech,” she mused. “You’d just have to make it compatible with your systems. Although I’m not sure what you’d put in the pet reunification info box. ‘Killer alien dragon. Contact sexy aliens if found. Answers to the name of—’ Wait, does she have a name yet?”