Syrin's Mate

by Michele Mills

  Sara had no idea how all of this was going to work out. How could they be mates when they were in prison?

  She really needed to get them out of there. She’d already figured out the prison’s weak spots. When Syrin was ready to leave, she was ready, too.

  Her brow furrowed. Mates meant breeding. She couldn’t get pregnant while in prison. No wonder Syrin had held back last night. Her husband was a smart man, not letting the rush of hormones take over his decision making.

  Husband.

  Was he really her husband? Was he happy that this had happened? He’d seemed happy, or was he more resigned?

  Syrin snorted in his sleep and shifted, his hand moving possessively over her breast. She bit her lip, suppressing the moan that wanted to escape at his touch. Her core was already wet.

  While growing up on New Earth there’d never been much opportunity to date. She’d been too young and no men besides her cousins had ever hit on her or asked her out.

  Then, soon after she blossomed into her curvy, womanly figure, she’d had to contend with unwanted advances, all of which she’d scorned, equating it with creepy men and their predatory instincts.

  When she was with her crew, she’d had opportunity, but again, no one had sparked her interest. She’d been so consumed with learning and making a name for herself, she hadn’t thought too much beyond that.

  But the moment she’d seen Syrin in his orange prison jumpsuit on that transport ship, it was like a switch had been flipped. He was hot. To her, he was easily the most handsome male she’d ever seen in real life. She literally could not believe she was lucky enough to be lying in his arms right now. She wanted to touch and explore his naked skin. Run her fingers through his glorious hair. Put her hands around his cock. Put his hard shaft in her mouth and swallow his seed.

  And she really did want to stay with him forever and have babies with this amazing male. Berserkers didn’t happen in every generation, they were rare. He was being too hard on himself and the Xylans were being hard on him, denying him the ability to breed. They’d been worried about him being out of control, dangerous even to his own line. But she knew he’d never hurt her, or their offspring.

  She sighed.

  She wanted it all.

  He shifted again. Sara glanced up and watched his eyes blink open. Hazel eyes locking with hers. He stiffened for a moment, confusion on his face. Then she could tell he remembered.

  “My Be’Ih,” he rumbled. A claw reached out and cupped her cheek. His features filled with tenderness.

  “Maybe this is why when we first met you said yes to my crazy scheme,” she told him. “Your friends didn’t want you to protect me, but you did.”

  He grunted. “I am a warrior of honor.”

  She smiled. “That, too.”

  He tilted his ridged forehead against her smooth one. “And this is why you so easily accepted a berserker’s protection,” he whispered. “Because you sensed, too, that I was your mate.”

  She held on to his biceps and thought about that for a second. “You’re right. I’ve never been scared of you. Why is that? Because in reality you’re scary as hell. Everyone in this damn prison is terrified of you, even the guards. But not me.”

  He took a deep breath, his chest expanding. His eyes ran up and down her naked body. “You are so beautiful in the light. I have to taste you again.”

  Tears pricked at her eyes at his sweet words.

  His rough hands…claws, smoothed over her skin. Along her neck, over her shoulder. And then his claws went to her breasts. “So soft,” he muttered.

  She loved his giant claws against her sensitive skin. He bent down and his lips, his fangs, surrounded her nipple, tugging, sucking… She gasped as a bolt of static hit her right between the legs. Her thighs shifted, restless.

  “Syrin,” she whimpered. He continued to suck one nipple while his other claw scraped lightly against her other nipple. She cupped the back of his head, pulling him close. It was beautiful, watching him suck on her breasts. He switched, continuing on and on, ministering to her for so long she began to mutter nonsense words. Okay, maybe not complete nonsense, but close.

  Finally, he let a nipple pop out of his mouth, and his eyes went to her pussy and he smiled, “The hair between your legs is as colorless as the hair on your head.” He reached out and brushed it possessively with the tips of his claws.

  She opened her legs for him and her breath caught as he finally, finally brushed a claw between her slick folds. He swiped at the embarrassing amount of wetness between her thighs and swept the tip of his curved finger, which was surprisingly soft, over the top of her entrance and pulled out. She watched with eyes wide as he brought his claw up to his lips and licked her cream from his finger.

  His eyes closed in ecstasy. “You taste like rare abission oil.”

  She grinned, supposing that was a good thing. Then he reached back down again and her thighs spread for him automatically. His claw gently brushed over the sweep of her hip and her thighs, before delving past her glistening blonde hair, returning to her core. She exhaled when he found her clit again and started rubbing in that perfect spot again, that button to instant orgasm he’d found last night. This time he rubbed her and scratched against her nipple with a claw and covered her mouth with his giving her the deepest, best kiss. His tongue fucked her mouth, mimicking what she was sure he wished his shaft was doing.

  Her head spun with all the sensations that swept over her at once. She whined and whimpered against his mouth. He held her and rubbed faster… and then it hit her, leaving her screaming quietly against his mouth as wave after wave of pleasure roved across her body, clenching her thighs and racing across her stomach.

  She pulled back from his lips, gasping for air, a puddle of goop in his arms.

  “Syrin,” she eventually whispered, thinking of his cock that was left constantly unattended. She started to reach for his shaft, which was tenting his jumpsuit. He grabbed her wrist in a firm grip, a pained look crossing his features. “Don’t,” he hissed. “I cannot control myself if you touch me.”

  “It’s not fair that you’re taking care of me and you have to endure…this.”

  Suddenly they heard a noise, a cackle, from the hallway. Sara turned her head to see the faces of two eager inmates crowded against the window, watching them.

  Great. How long had they been there?

  Syrin roared. They squealed and ran away.

  Two diurnal cycles later, Syrin could smell his Bride nearing the start of her breeding cycle. Yesterday, he began to smell the change. A sweet, seductive scent that caused his blood to boil and the edges of his sanity to fray. An invisible blade stabbing at his nerves, his muscles and his mind.

  This was not good. It changed everything. At first, he thought he could continue to work in the prison, searching for his target, keeping his Bride satisfied until the time for extraction.

  But Syrin’s shaft was now perennially hard, tenting the front of his orange jumpsuit, wetness beading at the tip. And it was driving him mad. His need for his female had reached epic proportions, bordering on the hysteria he experienced as a berserker. This was exactly why mated couples in their breeding cycle, who’d recently established mating compatibility, were normally allowed to immediately mate. The need to breed was overwhelming, maddening. Denial was painful for the male as well as the female.

  This morning her smell was overwhelming, hitting him like a beheading ax. He’d already fingered her sweet, sweet cunt in their bunk, bringing her relief twice and she still seemed unsatisfied.

  “Your breeding cycle is approaching,” Syrin informed her through gritted teeth.

  “Oh, no. Wait, how do you know that?”

  “I can smell your hormones. Your scent is changing. And also, I feel a loss of control.”

  “Oh, hell,” Trax said through the wall. “We need to get the two of you out of here right now.”

  “Agreed,” Rengeli responded from their cell next door. “We have to abort
this mission. We need to up the time frame for our extraction immediately.”

  “Oh gods, I’m literally dying from embarrassment,” his Bride said, her cheeks flooding with color.

  Twelve

  Half a turn later Syrin had Sara of One cleaned and fed and by his side for an informal Guild meeting in Trax and Rengeli’s cell. The space was crowded, so Syrin sat on the lower bunk and pulled his Bride down next to him. He had to smell and touch her. Constantly. It was the only way to keep his mind clear.

  “A berserker in the throes of mating lust? I didn’t sign up for that,” Trax growled, his eyes swirling with darkened hues. The scales on his back spiked. “That’s just asking to get killed.”

  “How are we going to get out of here early?” Rengeli asked. “That’s not part of the plan.”

  “And we haven’t found our target yet,” Trax remarked, stating the obvious. “But, like I said, I’d rather leave Kroga behind than chance Syrin losing his mind the closer he gets to breeding… or whatever Xylan do.”

  “I agree,” Syrin responded. What the other Hunters said was true. This mission was over. “We must leave and regroup later to find a new way to apprehend Kroga of Seventy-Five.”

  His Bride shook her head. “Okay, we’re in a bind here. There’s a lot going on. Enough of this crap where you males talk around me. So you’re all…what? Of course I’ve known since, like, day one that you’re not actual inmates. You’ve had some super-seekret mission this whole time. You’ve been trying to find a being who I just found out is named Kroga of Seventy-Five, you’ve looked everywhere and you can’t find him, you were even about to start checking among the prison staff and guards. But now you have to leave. Why did three of you come? Did it really take three of you?”

  “Yes, we needed a team of three because I’m a berserker,” Syrin answered. “I don’t work alone. I work with Trax and Rengeli because it would take the two of them to take me down in the event that I flew into a destructive rage. They’ve seen me transform into the berserker on countless occasions. There have been many times when they needed to tranq me because I’d finished attacking our enemies but then turned on them, unable to distinguish between friend and foe. So, you see, I’m good to have around in a fight, but the downside is that I am untamed, unstable and can kill my friends as easily as my enemies.”

  “What if you kill her while we try to escape?” Rengeli asked.

  “That won’t happen. Don’t forget, when I held my Bride’s hand, my berserker faded. I didn’t need to sleep it off.” Syrin put his claw on his Bride’s thigh and squeezed her lush body. “She tames my berserker.”

  “Well, that makes her worth her weight in precious metals,” Trax exclaimed.

  “Tell me what’s happening,” Sara demanded, cutting them off.

  They stared at her for long moments. Syrin wasn’t sure what to say and apparently the others weren’t either. He wanted to tell her everything, but bringing her in meant more risk for his Bride. He’d been putting this moment off, continuing his role as protector, wanting to keep his beloved Bride safe.

  “This is ridiculous, you said if I was Syrin’s Bride I’d automatically be vetted and you’d trust me. Well, that happened and the three of you still haven’t told me anything. Let me help you!”

  Syrin exhaled. Dammit. “We’re Bounty Hunters,” he admitted.

  “Bounty Hunters?” his Bride choked.

  “You see why we had to keep our identities private. One half of the inmates here were extradited by Bounty Hunters,” Trax said.

  She blew out a breath. “They’d hate you almost more than they hate me.” He covered her soft hand with his claw and rubbed a circle at the point on her wrist where her precious blood flowed blue under her colorless skin. “Okay, now who is your target?” she asked.

  “Kroga of Seventy-Five,” Rengeli answered. “is a Xylan who is the most wanted being in the four sectors. The resources of the entire Guild are directed at extradition of this criminal. He is hiding somewhere on this facility.”

  “And you’re here undercover to retrieve him?”

  “Exactly.”

  His Bride blew out another breath. “Now, I admit I know nothing about your target,” she said. “I can’t help in acquiring him, but I certainly can help us get out of this place. This prison has an ancient security system. I’m sure it was top of the line when the place was built, but they haven’t upgraded a damn thing since then. This facility doesn’t even have AI, which is ridiculous. It’s free system, run by a main computer that needs to be monitored and hand scaled by a system’s analyst.”

  “Yes, we know this,” Syrin agreed uncomfortably—because they knew that information only after studying schematics and consulting outside experts and using the entire knowledge of the Hunter Guild coming together in meeting after meeting. Yes, they knew what his Bride had discovered—from a simple walk around.

  “Well, this is good news for us. If this place had the latest in AI I’d be sweating right now, or even old AI would be problematic and I’d be trying to figure how to get us out of here because those damn AI systems can see everything…but since it’s free system…”—she grinned—“that means it has blind spots, weaknesses, and I can access the computer and take it over from basically anywhere.”

  “How can you do that?” Rengeli asked.

  “Well, I’ve studied every being in the four sectors who is an architect of security systems. They’re basically my heroes. I know everything about them and their system styling. And I know this system was designed by Rola D’ner.”

  “How do you know it was designed by that particular being?”

  His Bride shrugged. “Her signature is on the system. All architects sign their systems. They have specific logos they design and stamp their work with.”

  “I haven’t seen a logo,” Trax hissed.

  “That’s because you’re a civilian. I’ve seen them everywhere. They’re on the hand scanners for the doors, on the drones, on the bots…I saw them in the med unit. She even has a really cool design built into the blue energy webbing that covers the cell doors.”

  “You’ve been watching this all along?”

  “Yeah, since the moment we arrived. I had to, because I’m sure as hell getting out of this place. I can’t stay here, the other inmates will kill me. Plus, like I’ve been saying since day one, I didn’t kill Cylo Rin. It’s bullshit that I’m even here.”

  Syrin’s lips curved. He loved her spark of life. Her determination. “Well, you were a thief.”

  “The type of work I did would land me at one of those Detention Centers where they put the prisoners in their own rooms and it’s more like you’re on vacation than in an actual prison. Also, I know I would’ve never gotten more than three planetary rotations, not a life sentence. It’s still bullshit that I’m here. I’m not a killer and the work I did was mainly me figuring out puzzles and working with a team to reunite people with their lost artifacts. That’s it.”

  “Maybe when we’re on the outside you should think about becoming a Bounty Hunter and joining our group.”

  Trax made a choking sound.

  Sara’s eyes grew big. “What?”

  “Well, you’re my Bride now. On the outside you can’t thieve anymore. You’re mine. And I’m a Bounty Hunter. Join us. It’s simple.”

  He looked over at Rengeli and Trax to see their doubting faces. “We could use a systems expert within, not as an outside expert we hire freelance.”

  Trax gave her a hard stare. “How can you use what you know to affect this facility?”

  “It’s how I got away from the gang of inmates who’d lured me out of the cell with that recording of Syrin’s voice. They had me pinned down in the cleansing station. First, I gave a verbal command to the computer. It’s a back-door function that only works for sixty seconds. But I was able to use it to turn on the sprinklers, turn the lights off and start the siren in the showers. It caused them to let me loose long enough for me to run out of there a
nd shut and lock the doors behind me.”

  “Fuck,” Trax breathed.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here, then,” Rengeli said. “I’m not sleeping on that damn bunk or eating that disgusting crap in the mess hall even one more cycle. What do you suggest we do to get out of here, right now?” He directed his question at Sara of One, which made pride glow in Syrin’s chest.

  “First, what was your original plan, if things had gone in the timeline you’d created?”

  “Our ship is cloaked in slip drive and hidden behind a nearby moon. Two other Bounty Hunters, Joyzal and Jacole, are waiting there for the extraction date and time. We cannot communicate with them from this prison in order to change the plan.”

  “And what about the detonators they planted in our brain?”

  “We don’t know what the hell to do about those,” Trax admitted.

  “Well, I do have a plan,” his Bride admitted. “Do you want to hear it?”

  Syrin grinned. The fact that his Bride had already formulated a prison break escape plan caused his cock to twitch within his suit.

  She was spectacular.

  “Tell us,” Rengeli said.

  “First, I need to know how to get to the system analyst’s station. Second, I need a Guard’s com unit. And, third, I need a blanket.”

  “A blanket?” Trax smirked. “I can get you a blanket. That’s easy,” he said. And then he slipped out of the cell and was gone.

  “And I can tell you where the system analyst’s station is,” Syrin said.

  His Bride turned. Gleaming, colorless locks shifted over her shoulders. She leaned in and pressed her luscious lips against his, swiping her tongue along the seam of his mouth. Then she pulled back and regarded him with sultry eyes. “Really? You know where it is?”

  “Yes.” He took a deep, calming breath and stared into her heavy-lidded blue gaze, a peculiar color no one on Chronos possessed, but a color he was certain he could stare at for the rest of his life. He was determined to keep his claws to himself. He could wait to consummate this mating. It would be the greatest challenge of his life considering he was walking around with a permanently hard, ready-to-breed shaft, a cock that was literally throbbing within his suit. He deserved a medal of honor for his extreme physical denial. “Before we committed our crime, we studied the schematics of this facility so that when we arrived we would understand it’s workings to give us an advantage and also to preplan our escape. I know the location of the system analyst’s station.”