by Mina Carter
He had a feral edge she’d never been able to put her finger on until he’d bared his teeth in the corridor where he’d kissed her. None of the other Lathar had them and she wanted to ask, but his forbidding expression warned her off.
“How much do you know about the Lathar? About our history, I mean?”
He looked down at her, and she sucked a hard breath in. He’d gone from charming and polite to dangerous in a heartbeat. Her heart pounded in her chest as his hand, the flesh and blood one, spread out over the small of her back. Somehow it found the gap between her top and her combat pants to brush against her skin. One of the B’Kaar clumped past, his suit loaded with what looked like a welding rig across the arm and shoulder, so she pressed closer to Seren.
“Not much,” she admitted, her hand spreading out over the front of his leather jacket. “Just that you’re a warrior race and have been for millennia.”
He gave her a tight smile. “We are and we have. But, there’s a lot more to it than that. Like the empire, each clan within it has its own history and politics.”
She nodded. She’d figured that out for herself.
“Most families and sometimes even clans have specialties,” he explained, his voice low and considered. She got the feeling he chose his words with care.
“Like the B’Kaar?” she asked, indicating the team of cyber-warriors down the corridor.
“Indeed,” he inclined his head. “It’s rare but sometimes an entire clan specializes. The B’Kaar have, or even further back, the Navarr. They were adapted for aquatic warfare given their system planets were all primarily ocean.”
Surprise rolled through her. “What? Like… mermaids with rayguns? Would rayguns even work underwater?”
His expression held that odd, considering look he always got when his translator was working out what her Terran words and phrases meant. “I have no idea what a raygun is. But mermaids, yes… well, mermen. Like the rest of the Lathar, they should have lost all their females.”
“Should?”
“The Navarr broke away well over a thousand years ago. No Lathar has set foot on any of their home worlds since. We have no access and no idea how their society suffered during the plague.”
“Ah…” It seemed like a lot of history was there, not all of it good. She cycled back around to her original point. “So you don’t trust the B’Kaar because they specialize in cyber-warfare and the K’Vass don’t?”
He shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable. “It’s not so much that—”
His words cut off as General Xaandril appeared in the doorway of his office, his heavily muscled form filling the frame.
“Lady Gracie, Warrior K’Vass, I apologize for keeping you waiting,” he rumbled. “We’re so far out that communications have been difficult, and my mate required an update on my daughter…”
She smiled, waving in polite dismissal. “No problem, family is always more important.”
“Thank you,” the big general inclined his head politely but then looked up to spear Seren with a look. “I’m sure you realize why you are here. Kindly explain to me why I have the B’Kaar commander screaming at me that you put one of his senior warriors out of action.”
He folded his arms over his chest, his hard gaze on Seren.
Seren didn’t back down, his expression just as stony. “He tried to claim my female. In front of me.”
Gracie gasped. “I thought we cleared this up. I’m not your female.”
“No?” Seren turned his head to look at her, his eyebrow raised. His tiny smiled revealed a hint of fang. “Your moans when I had you in my arms certainly indicated so.”
Her lips parted in surprise, no sound emerging as she looked at him. “You… asshole. You kissed me, yes, but one kiss does not a relationship make!”
A growl from the big general broke through their staring contest. “You haven’t asked her to accept your claim?”
Seren folded his arms. “She has accepted.”
“I have not!”
A low and dangerous growl filled the air. “She will.”
She glared at Seren.
Xaan sighed and shook his head.
“Okay, shut up. Both of you,” he growled, catching Seren’s mutinous look. “You’re both too stubborn for your own good. The K’Vass position here is not one of strength. Draanth, even my own command here is precarious with so few of my forces present. We are massively outnumbered by the B’Kaar. Did either of you think of that?”
Gracie went still, a flush of heat washing up her cheeks. In her pique at Seren for not talking, she hadn’t considered the situation or just how dangerous it could be—a fact that the general didn’t hesitate to drive home.
“Should the B’Kaar commander decide to go on the offensive, every non-B’Kaar male on this base could be slaughtered and vented to space. An accident, explosive decompression and part of the base is lost. They can spin it in any way they like. All over a female.”
“Draanth,” Seren breathed.
“They wouldn’t, surely?” Gracie held her breath as she looked between one and the other. At Seren’s little nod she felt sick. The idea of her friends dead, of Nyek, Jay and Seren dead… Keris and Indra grieving. No, it was even worse. She couldn’t see either of the other women taking the deaths of their beloved mates lightly. The B’Kaar would have to kill them as well.
“Okay. How do we fix this? What if I accept his claim?”
Xaan leaned back against his desk, his massive arms crossed over an equally massive chest, and shook his head. “That might have worked before, but not now. No, we need more. There’s nothing for it. He’ll have to take you back to Quveth. Not even the B’Kaar would dare an all-out offensive on a Vorr stronghold.”
“Back to where for what?” she asked, looking to Seren for clarification. The fact that she’d put her friends in danger horrified her. She… they… needed to do something.
“Quveth, my home world.” He glared at Xaan. “Is my draanthing bloodline common knowledge now?”
“It is if you keep flashing those fangs about,” Xaan snarled, pushing off from his desk as Seren squared up to him. The tension in the room ratcheted up from laid-back allies having a chat to blood about to be spilled levels of violence. “Are you refusing my orders, warrior? Perhaps you consider yourself the new Kayan?”
“Hey!” she yelped, getting in between them to slam a hand into the center of Seren’s chest. He snarled, his eyes gone fully dark like a shark as he glared at Xaan.
“No, he’s not refusing your orders, sir. Not at all.” She shoved at Seren but he didn’t budge. It was like trying to shove a mountain out of the way. “Are you, Seren? Seren, look at me!”
Her hissed demand made him look down, and she shivered at the blackness of his eyes. Not in a good way, either. Right now, she was looking at the Vorr warrior, even though she had no idea exactly what that meant. She just knew she was looking at it.
“Seren?”
He blinked and then shuddered before nodding. “I’ll take her to Quveth.”
Xaan nodded.
“Then I suggest you leave immediately. Just in case there are any… objections to you removing a viable female.”
5
“We will go.” Seren nodded sharply at the general’s order.
Sending the B’Kaar warrior from the training hall on a medical stretcher wouldn’t win him any friends in that camp, nor would his claim on Gracie. With so few females available, every warrior alive would do whatever he needed for the chance to claim one, which was why the humans’ agreement to the new mate matching program was so important. It would, with the Terran government’s permission, bring much-needed females to every part of the empire. But that was months in the future. Gracie was here and in danger right now.
“Good. One of my fighters is ready to depart in the lower bay,” Xaan caught his arm as they turned. “Gracie, would you give us a moment please?”
“Of course.” She nodded, for once without argument, and
headed for the door.
He couldn’t help himself. Mesmerized, he watched the sway of her hips as she walked out of the room. He didn’t look away until she stopped, still visible through the windows. His shoulders eased a little with relief that he could keep an eye on her… and make sure none of the B’Kaar got any ideas where she was concerned. Any more ideas anyway.
“To steal a human phrase… you’ve got it bad,” Xaandril said in a low voice. “But you need to watch your back,”
Seren curled his lip back from his teeth. “I can handle a few B’Kaar.”
“I didn’t mean them.” The big general shook his head, his gaze on Gracie through the window. Even though the human female was out of the room, he lowered his voice. “I managed to get the report on your female from the B’Kaar.”
“Oh?”
Now Seren was interested, focusing all his attention on the heavily muscled warrior. He didn’t know much about Gracie, other than his reactions to her were off the charts.
From the moment he’d met her, she’d fascinated him and soothed the darker elements of his nature. Around her he wanted to be a better male than he was, all for her.
The general nodded, his expression tight. “When Kenna and I met her, she was undercover for some human organization. She and her team were investigating colony scavengers, draanthic who preyed on far-flung and isolated settlements, killing the colonists and stealing equipment and in some cases, personnel.”
A dangerous growl rattled in the back of Seren’s throat. “They sound like the lowest of the low. Goddess help them if they ever tried to hit any of our colonies.”
He wasn’t a nav-con specialist by any stretch of the imagination, but he knew a few colonies that were almost in distance of the barren area of space they’d discovered the Terrans. It had been thought to be uninhabited, an area of space so devoid of resources and so desolate no one wanted to cross it, much less put down roots there. As such, none of their survey vessels had ever thought to look there.
Xaandril’s sudden smile was wolfish. “I hope they do. It would serve the draanthic right.”
“Indeed.” Seren inclined his head but didn’t take his attention off the general.
“So Gracie worked to uncover these groups?” he asked, not sure where Xaandril was going with this. “That was in the report?”
“Yes and no.” Xaandril sighed, running a hand through his close-cropped hair. As a general, he’d long ago been shorn of his honor braids, his victories honoring the emperor instead. “It’s buried deep down in the human’s databases, but there is mention… it seems that Gracie may not be who she says she is.”
“What?” He froze. “What do you mean? She was undercover. Not even humans are stupid enough to use their real names for that.”
“That’s just the point,” the general admitted. “Her cover identity was Clarissa something… the name she’s given us now, Gracie Shardlow? No one of that name existed before ten years ago.”
Seren blinked, assimilating that information as the console on Xaandril’s desk chirped. The idea that Gracie was lying to him, even about something as minor as her name, hit him like a punch in the gut. Why would she lie?
Xaan leaned around and looked at the console before his expression tightened. “The B’Kaar have noticed the fighter’s engines going live,” he said, looking up. “They’re mobilizing. You need to go, now. I’ll give you as much cover as I can.”
There were no more questions. The two warriors ran for the door, Seren a fraction of a second ahead of the big general as he slid through, grabbing Gracie’s arm to race up the corridor. General Xaandril stayed behind, weapons in hand as he faced down the two B’Kaar already clumping up the corridor.
“General M’rln, the commander wishes to know why one of your craft is engines hot and ready to leave?” one of them announced. “We have received no notification of any departures.”
“Since when do I, the emperor’s champion, require the permission of a mere war commander?” Xaandril spat, anger in his voice as Seren and Gracie walked away. “Kindly remind your commander he waits on my pleasure, not the other way around. If he wants to ask me a question, he can do so himself. In person.”
“What’s going on?” Gracie asked, wide-eyed as she tried to twist and look over his shoulder.
He had her by the upper arm, using his bigger body to herd her along in the direction he wanted her to go, in this case, down the corridor and around the corner. As far away from the prying eyes of the B’Kaar Xaandril had blocked as possible.
“Problems,” he said in a low, urgent voice. “The B’Kaar know what we’re doing. They’re going to try and stop us. We might need to fight free.”
He’d expected… hells, he didn’t know what he’d expected. Driven by stories and scattered memories from his childhood of elegant and graceful Latharian females, soft and gentle in their manner and appearance, he’d expected her tough composure to crack and for her to cling to him. Or maybe at the very least to see fear rather than determination in her eyes. Would it have been too much to ask for her lip to tremble so he could swoop in and rescue the damsel in distress? Be the conqueror his Vorr side demanded he be?
Instead, she hissed in irritation. “For fuck’s sake, you guys just do not take no for an answer. Do you? Okay then, handsome, I’m gonna need a gun.”
His jaw tightened, his lips compressing into a thin line as he led her down a side corridor. Like any sensible warrior, he’d already worked out several escape routes through the maze of passages and levels that made up the abandoned Cabal base, including some through sections that weren’t yet fully operational. Those he would only use if they absolutely had to. Had he been on his own he would have risked it, but—his gaze washed over the delicate female at his side—Gracie’s safety was paramount.
“It’s not—”
She stepped in front of him, her fingers over his lips. “If the next words out of your mouth are going to be ‘it’s not safe’ or ‘females do not need to fight,’ you need to think again. I’ve heard about Latharian females. I am not one of them.”
Automatically his hands had come to rest on her waist, drawing her closer to the bigger bulk of his body. She nestled against his chest, so tiny and delicate against him even if she didn’t know it. He’d noticed that with human females, the smaller they were physically, the more competitive they seemed to be—perhaps to make up for their lack of stature. Despite himself, a small smile curved his lips and he nipped lightly at her fingertips.
“No, you definitely are not,” he agreed, his voice rougher and deeper than he’d meant it to be. “Okay, you can have a gun.”
Her smile was bright, a flash of something in the backs of her eyes he couldn’t read as she reached up on her tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his lips. Heat flared through him, his hands tightening automatically, but almost as soon as he’d registered the pressure of her lips on his, she stepped away.
“Uh-uh,” she wagged her finger at him as, automatically, he made to follow her. “No more until we’re safely away from here. Wouldn’t want you distracted. Now would we?”
She couldn’t have ensured a distraction more if she’d planned it. He growled again, the sound low and dangerous in the darkness of the corridor, but she just shot him an amused look and indicated he should precede her.
“I will never understand human females,” he hissed and stalked ahead of her.
“Haven’t you heard? Men are from Mars and women are from Venus.”
The soft sound of her laughter filled the smaller maintenance corridor as she followed him.
He shook his head as they came up on the turn and he reached into an old storage locker. On his recon through the base after the B’Kaar had arrived, he’d planted several caches of weaponry and supplies in case they needed to leave in a hurry. Drawn from the base’s inventory as they’d catalogued, he’d made sure the figures didn’t reflect that some were missing.
* * *
“I don’t like thi
s,” Seren grumbled as he rooted in a bag he’d pulled from a disused storage locker in an equally disused-looking corridor before handing her what looked like a small assault rifle.
“You don’t have to. You just need to deal with it long enough for us to get out of here.”
She was lying of course. Now she had hold of one of these things, she wasn’t letting go. With quick and efficient movements, she turned the alien weapon over in her hands, quickly figuring out the similarities and differences to the weaponry she’d handled over the years. Her unit, so far down the rabbit hole in black ops that they might as well be black cats in coal cellars, were trained for everything up to galactic apocalypse and alien invasion. Which was why she hadn’t argued or demanded to be returned to a Terran world or facility when the Lathar had arrived on Hextas-Four. She’d just adapted her mission parameters to intelligence gathering.
“Okay, handsome. Wanna lead the way?” she asked once she’d checked over how the gun worked. It would be embarrassing to have demanded a raygun from him and then have to ask how to use it in the middle of a fire fight. Looking up, she found him watching her, a dark, dangerous heat in the backs of his eyes that caused a thrill down her spine.
He nodded, turning with a low grunt to stalk off down the corridor into blackness. Hands loosely on the gun, she followed, watching her step in case any of any loose floor panels. Falling on her ass would be marginally less embarrassing than having to ask how the gun worked.
She kept her eyes peeled as they walked. This section of the base seemed even more abandoned than the rest. Half the lights were out, and she hadn’t missed the unmistakable bulk of two alien enviro suits in the pack Seren had slung over his shoulder. If he’d packed them, the structural integrity of this section was in doubt. A shiver of a different kind stole down her spine and she hurried to catch up, keeping close to the tall, alien warrior. If this area decompressed, they wouldn’t have much time to get into those suits. Every second would count.