There were so many times I wanted to spank some sense into that small female, but she wasn’t mine and never would be. Thank the gods. That female was trouble. No doubt, even now, she and her unit were here somewhere, combing the ravines and flushing hidden enemies from their traps.
Even last week, she’d come across a trio of Hive and tried to kill them on her own. No support from an Atlan. What had she been thinking? She and her unit were little better than a suicide squad, and not one of the stubborn humans seemed to recognize this absolute fact. Nor care if they died. Especially Megan Simmons.
Both things that made me crazed with the need to turn her over my knee and make her see that she was going to get herself killed. Why her lack of caution pissed me off so much, I had no idea. Why I kept an eye on her more than any of the other Coalition fighters, male or female, I had no idea. Why I wanted to spank her ass for being reckless and no one else’s, I had no idea.
There was something wrong with me. My beast was making me lose my mind, especially where Megan Simmons was concerned. There were nights I would stare at my ceiling and think of her dark skin and black hair, the lush, ripe curve of her ass. She was tall, and muscled. Strong for a female.
I’d always wanted a mate who would submit to me, a female who was gentle and tender, whose touch would ease my mind and soothe my flesh.
Megan Simmons challenged anyone and everyone who crossed her path, Atlan, Prillon or human. She had a mouth that never quit and was absolutely fearless. Reckless. Wild.
And that thought made my cock hard as a rock, even as my mind rebelled at the thought. Atlan females did not fight. They did not challenge authority nor charge into battle. They lived to soothe the beasts within their mates, to keep us sane when killing or fucking were the only two desires our minds could process.
“Nyko?” Commander Wulf’s yell had me turning away from the Hive before me. I was nearly upon them, Ang a step ahead of me.
“Go!” My own deep voice rolled over the rest of the unit and Wulf smiled at me, his beast clearly hungry for more havoc and destruction as the unit left Ang and me to deal with the three Soldiers. The rest of our unit moved on, ever closer to that last transport platform. We needed to get the fuck off this planet. Now.
I turned back around just as the Hive Soldiers looked up at us, shock rounding their pale silver eyes as Ang grabbed the first one around the neck and lifted him from the ground with one hand. Ang’s second hand found the base of the Hive’s spine and I knew it was a matter of seconds before the Hive’s head would no longer be connected to his body. Ang specialized in tearing their bodies to pieces. He’d lost his youngest brother to the Hive last year, and his hatred added fuel to his beast’s rage, a rage already extremely difficult to control.
My target drew his weapon as I approached and fired at point-blank range. The blast seared my chest through my armor, the heat staggering as I reached him.
I did not have time for Ang’s games as the third Soldier raised his weapon and fired on me again from directly behind the first.
Pain ripped through my left shoulder and I knew I would need use of the ReGen wand in my combat pack before I would be back to full capacity. But my wounds could wait. I’d had worse. Much, much worse.
Grabbing the closer Hive’s head, I smashed it against the boulder behind him, satisfied with the crunch of collapsing bone as I dropped the limp body and raced to the third Soldier.
Fucking Hive. They always traveled in threes. Three Scouts. Three Soldiers. Three. Three. Three.
They couldn’t operate on their own. They didn’t even speak like real people. Everything they said started with the word “We”.
Reaching the third Soldier, I lifted this one from his feet and swung his body until his back was parallel to the ground. He scrambled for purchase, trying to grab me, force me to release him. Every single Hive underestimated the Atlan beast. Perhaps news didn’t return of our strength and power because every one we encountered was eliminated. This one seemed to think the same, that he was stronger than me.
Right.
Instead, I rammed his back down on the rocks before twisting his head hard enough to feel the crack-crack-crack of bone as his spine and metallic implants shattered and his body twitched and twisted in death throes.
I looked up from where I knelt on the ground to find Ang already running to catch up with our unit on the way to the transport platform.
Leaping to my feet, I tensed and shifted to follow when a scream reached me.
Human. I knew that sound. Someone was in trouble.
The noise came from a narrow ravine behind the boulder, from the same direction the now dead Hive Soldiers must have come from before falling into our hands.
A quick glance at my unit showed them well ahead of me. Commander Wulf stood atop the hill now, the transport platform behind him, throwing Hive Scouts and Soldiers over his head like a battering ram hitting a wall of children’s dolls. Bodies flew before him, and the rest of the Warlords, almost all in Beast form, were nearly to the transport platform. Warriors fell into line behind them, Prillon and human, warriors from Trion and every other race and species in the Fleet as the Atlans cleared the path so all could transport back aboard the ship.
“Hurry.” I spoke to no one, but my beast was agitated. We watched hundreds of Hive flooding the narrow gaps not more than a mile from the transport platform. If they reached it before our soldiers got off world, anyone still on the ground would be lost.
We were losing this battle, the Hive swarming in numbers far greater than anticipated. Commander Karter wasn’t a stupid man. He would pull his warriors, regroup, and strike again in a few days.
I could either join my unit and transport off this blood-soaked rock, or I could go try to help the human in the ravine and lay low until tomorrow. The designated extraction point wasn’t far. I could hide through the night and signal for transport tomorrow, frightened little human soldier in tow. The Hive didn’t have sensors capable of penetrating the metallic rock barriers any more than we did. With the rocks and ravines to hide in, they would have no way to find us, to root us out and kill us. They would only attack if they saw us. If we weren’t in their path, we would be safe enough.
Another scream from the ravine, this one of rage, and I made my decision. Or rather, the beast made it for me and I wasn’t in the mood to argue. I couldn’t. I was too far gone.
Racing around the boulder, I dashed into the ravine, dark gray and black rock formations made a long, narrow corridor that looked to be about a mile in length. I could see the opening on the other end, as if the ground had decided to split open, just a bit, and only here.
Behind me, and everywhere else I’d been on this gods’ forsaken planet, the rocks were red or brown, a sea of monochromatic color as far as I could see in any direction, a desert of stone.
Here, the rocks were black, gray and silver, the planet’s inner depths exposed like muscle beneath skin in a deep cut. As if the planet had cleaved open and the insides burst forth.
Ahead of me, three Hive stood. They had someone trapped halfway up the side of the ravine. I recognized the smaller body and armor of a human climbing the rock face to get away from them, the uniform from one of the human ReCon Units. Scattered along the ground were the dead bodies of at least a dozen Hive Soldiers and four other humans.
None moved.
The human scrambled up the side of the rock cliffs, clinging like an insect to the uneven walls. The opening of a cave stood out on the side of that cliff, the entrance sparkling like a diamond necklace around a woman’s throat when the light from the planet’s star shined down upon it. The human was clearly heading for that cave. A smart tactic as it offered safety, at least temporarily. High ground. Perhaps the human planned to make a last stand there.
But why weren’t the Hive shooting the human off the cliff wall? Why were they climbing? Why not…
I squinted, the growl of my beast a low rumble in my chest. What was going on here? I sta
lked closer, not charging this time. Even my beast was cautious. I’d never seen anything like these Hive before, and I’d been fighting for nearly a decade. They weren’t Hive Scouts or Hive Soldiers. They were something else altogether.
Not only were they strange, but they weren’t firing on the human, they were…stalking—
“Come on!” The human yelled down, taunting them, the challenge issued by a woman’s voice. My beast stilled within me as the voice went through my body and straight to my cock.
Mine!
The beast didn’t bellow, but whispered the word, rolling it around on my tongue like we were sampling a fine Atlan wine. He wasn’t asking me, nor requesting permission or approval. He was simply informing me of the facts.
I ignored him, for now. For years I’d dreamed of finding a soft, willing female to claim. Clearly the Fever was clouding my judgment, but now was not the time to argue with my beast.
I was too far away to recognize her voice. I had no idea who she was, but my beast apparently did. He wanted her, the Mating Fever boiling through me with renewed vigor as my cock grew hard and uncomfortable beneath my armor.
And she was taunting them, drawing one of them up to her. Why? Had she hit her head? Was she delusional? Hallucinating? Just plain insane?
These strange Hive moved closer to the base of the rock wall—of course—and the beast followed silently, stalking the nearest of the three like a true predator. I forced my mind to think, to work past the protective instinct raging in my beast’s form. I’d never dealt with this kind of lust or protective instinct in battle before. Yes, I wanted to keep my unit, and those we’d been sent in to protect, safe, but this was different. A rage so hot it moved through me like slow boiling tar. This was my beast staking a claim, eliminating any threat to his mate.
She was mine.
Something darker, deeper, and much stronger than I’d ever known settled around me like a blanket of solid ice. Rage and bluster were mindless emotions. This need to kill the Hive before me was not mindless, it was cold, calculating and very deliberate. They had to die. They wanted her and I would not let them touch her. She was mine. Covered head to toe in full body armor, clinging like an insect to the side of the cliffs. Strong. Brave. Aggressive. Mine. Still mine.
Above me, the human had nearly reached the cave entrance, and safety from the Hive weapons. Although, they simply stood staring up at her as if she were a curiosity. They weren’t firing, and I had no explanation as to why they would spare this human. Why they would not fire and force their enemy to fall? They could heal and regenerate almost any wound from their captives. No doubt they could heal injuries from a fall, even from such a height to hard rock. They’d simply transport her to a ReGen Pod and heal her fragile human body before integration would begin. So, why allow this human to run? Why stalk her and hunt her as if they wanted her alive and well?
The Hive only ever cared about alive.
I studied the Hive as I drew nearer, my curiosity growing with each silent step. There were three, as always, but I’d never seen three such as these.
The leader stood in the center, nearly two feet taller than his companions, nearly as large as me. All three were covered completely in a strange silver-and-graphite armor unlike anything I’d ever seen before. The trio faced away from me, so I could not see if their eyes were silver, but their skin was smooth as still water and a deep, dark blue. On all three of their heads were strange helmets, the geometry and design like I’d never seen before. But the oddest of all, the devices had a peculiar extension protruding from the back, near the base of their skulls, a curved device that looked like—no.
That wasn’t possible.
The leader leapt, his body covering half the distance to the cave with one jump as his hands and feet found purchase in the side of the rocks. He began to climb.
The woman disappeared inside the cave and the Hive leader scrambled toward her with renewed vigor, as if afraid she might get away.
When the second blue-skinned Hive leapt as well, I could not afford to wait.
Rushing forward, my beast roared as I ripped the head from the shoulders of the Hive still standing on the ground. His blood coated my hands, a thick, sticky, black sludge I’d never encountered before.
The Hive were, for the most part, integrated biological units from the known worlds. Prillon Prime. Everis. Trion and hundreds of other worlds.
None bled black.
When the first Hive slumped to the ground, the second, alerted by some odd connection between them, stopped his climb to look down at me.
The leader halted as well and they looked at one another before the leader nodded his head, as if giving a command—or permission—and the closer Hive jumped to the ground to confront me.
Another oddity. The Hive did not follow orders in such a manner and none of them were ever in command. Their orders came from their centralized intelligence and decision-making centers, and those were never risked on the battlefield.
He landed before me, light on his feet, and stood. “Leave us, Warlord.”
What the fuck was going on here? The Hive’s voice sounded…normal. Like any other man’s I knew. No stilted language. No odd cadence nor computerized monotone. He sounded…unique. Individual.
And that was not Hive.
My beast didn’t give a fuck what this blue man in his silver armor was or was not as the leader moved once more, drawing nearer and nearer to the cave’s entrance, and the female he’d decided was his. The beast wanted to rip this man to shreds and get on with it.
But the man within me was still in charge, barely, and I recognized that this was something extremely rare, and strange. Commander Karter would need to know what was happening here, what these things were.
“What are you?” My beast’s voice was barely more than a growl, but the Hive understood.
“We are Nexus 9.”
What the fuck was a Nexus? And why had he answered? My question had been rhetorical because they had no need to respond. They expected domination and then integration. Or, he replied because he didn’t expect me to survive long enough to do something with the answer.
An ion blast sounded from above, from inside the cave, and the beast’s patience snapped.
I moved in a blur, grabbing the strange Hive and twisting his neck until he went limp in my grasp, but not before his weapon fired. I dropped the dead weight to the rocks, already forgotten. The blast of his ionic weapon must have hit my armor. Heat from the shot burned my body once more, from my hip this time, but the pain was nothing more than a small sting.
Rarely did I use my beast’s full strength, but as I crouched low for my leap, power flowed through me, the power of the beast unleashed, and for once I was glad for it. We leapt to the mouth of the cave in one mighty thrust off the ground ready to defend her.
Chapter Four
Megan
The Nexus Unit leader took three steps into the cave before he realized his mistake.
I stood near the entrance, hidden from view by an outcropping of magnetite that blocked the Hive’s sensors, and all of his communication with the outside world—or, in his case—the universe. His home world. The Hive central mind.
The entire cave was lined with magnetically charged metals, this canyon an extreme anomaly that our unit had been assigned to use to lure this bastard right to us.
Now all I had to do was kill him, and steal the technology that linked his spinal cord to the helmet, and the helmet to Hive command on their home world.
This blue-skinned bastard was rare, his existence nothing more than a rumor among the intelligence gathering units of the Coalition Fleet…until now.
Outside, I heard an Atlan Beast, who had obviously followed me, roar. Seconds later, the Hive Nexus before me twitched and lost his footing as if racked by the pain of having a limb torn from his body—or another mind.
His two friends must be close enough to still be connected to him.
These fuckers were all connect
ed to each other. We—those of us in the Core intelligence program—knew that already, what we didn’t understand was how. Not that it would matter for long. I had no doubt that soon the beast outside would take care of this Nexus leader’s two friends. The Atlans weren’t the most civilized of fighters, but neither were the Hive. Especially this one coming after me. This trio.
The Atlan beast would easily behead the two that remained below. I had no doubt of that. And then it would just be the blue bastard inside this cave…and me.
This creature was the key to solving the puzzle of the Hive central mind, to figuring out how to break their mental hold on their Scouts and Soldiers, and eliminating the threat to the veterans who still carried their technology in their bodies. These soldiers lived out their lives on the Colony for fear of being a danger to their home worlds should they dare return.
The Nexus stumbled forward, deeper into the cave and I knew I would have mere seconds before that great, hulking beast would show up and ruin everything.
I fired the neural disruptor weapon that Doctor Helion, the leader of the Core intelligence program, had given me and sighed with relief when the huge Nexus creature dropped to his knees. He raised his hands to his head instinctively out of something like pain—whatever it was these things felt—as I stepped out from my hiding place and approached, keeping the weapon aimed and my finger on the trigger.
He—no it—took off its helmet and turned its head toward me, despite the fact that I was sure I’d made no sound.
“Who are you?” His voice was calm, not a hint of nervous bravado or fear, as if we were two friends having lunch at the park. And the voice was his. I’d heard other Hive speak, their voices stilted and strange, referring to themselves as “we” instead of I. “Tell me your name. You are not one of us, yet I can sense you. I feel your softness inside my mind.”
Mating Fever (Interstellar Brides Book 10) Page 3