Page 1 of The Hive

Chapter One

Alexi

We weren’t supposed to be here. When I’d told the regent we were going on a mission to save our stolen princess, he’d said no. But we were doing it anyway.

My team knew this forest well, and we avoided unwanted attention as we prowled through the cover of brush. The loamy earth muffled our steps, and dense shadows clung to our bodies like cloaks. Nothing could shake our focus.

We had one goal: find her and bring her home.

A balmy wind carried the sound of battle to my ears as we stalked an enemy unit through the trees. They made their clumsy way toward the meadows where our livestock grazed, and we followed. My muscles tensed and my blood sang, ready to join the fray. Today, our mission wasn’t to fend off the raiders, as it so often was, but to enact a secondary plan long in the making. A plan to steal back something precious they had stolen from us ten years ago.

Like smoke and ghosts, we crept along until a smaller group had separated from the rest. Then we fell on them like angels of death. Valyx’s daggers whistled through the air, embedding wetly into their unsuspecting throats. Reflex made them grasp blindly at the pain, worsening the wound when the blades dislodged, followed by gouts of thick, coppery blood. Axion had one by the throat, hanging limp in his arms, neck already broken. I intercepted the final two as they attempted to flee. With the swipe of a long blade and my alpha strength, I severed the closest one’s head from his shoulders and stepped in front of the last.

His eyes went round with fear as he studied my huge frame blocking his path. After years of rough living and hard fighting spurred by his Empress’s attacks, I was more than a force to be reckoned with. He was wrong to ignore the other two, though. They had been forged in the same fire and were just as deadly.

Moving like water, Ax appeared behind the remaining soldier. In the space of a single breath, a precise maneuver had the crack of the soldier’s neck joining the gurgle of his downed brethren choking on their own blood.

“Get dressed before others come to investigate,” I said, growling out the order. My friends were already working to comply. I may have been the commander in name, but a deep, unquestioning respect had been built between the three of us over the years, fighting side by side.

The alpha soldiers lying dead on the ground were big, but not as big as we were. Given the situation, their uniforms would have to do. Ax and Valyx grabbed the two with broken necks, avoiding the blood drenched corpses. That left me with one of the blood-soaked shirts from the others. The options weren’t optimal, and before I finished peeling the shirt from the soldier, the steady beat of marching boots reached us in the trees. We were out of time.

I hadn’t received my command position without being able to think on my feet. Ax and Valyx were already dressed, so I altered our plan. Whatever happened, we were getting on that fucking space station.

“Toss the naked ones behind the bushes,” I hissed at the others, and raised my blood-coated hands in surrender. “And take me prisoner.”

Done with stashing the bodies, my friends advanced on me just as another group came through the trees. There were fifteen alphas, too many to take on our own without the advantage of surprise and terrain, which we no longer had.

The lead soldier called out, “Well, well, what do we have here? Report, soldiers.”

Ax and Valyx shared a look before Ax replied, “He ambushed us, took out the others before we could subdue him, sir.”

“And why didn’t you finish him? He’s too old for the program,” the leader of the newly arrived group asked. The men behind him shuffled uncomfortably. They were probably considering the punishment that would befall their fellow troops for subverting protocol and not killing the captive immediately. We knew something they didn’t, though, and I was banking on it saving my neck and getting my team to the Hive alive.

Even though we hadn’t discussed it in advance, Axion knew what I had in mind. The Imperatrix wanted a piece of me. To what end, the soldiers we had tortured intel from had never been able to tell us. We were going to use every bit of information we had gleaned through the years to our advantage until, Stars willing, we made our way home and won this war.

Ax didn’t like this gamble, because that’s what it was. A gamble. There were other ways this could have gone that would have been safer, which was why the Regent hadn’t sanctioned it. But this was the opportunity we were handed, and he knew we needed to take it. We were running out of time.

“We didn’t kill him, sir, because this is Alexi, son of the Regent Titus, Prince of Verden,” Ax said, choking out the words as if they were painful. They probably were. We had no idea what the Imperatrix wanted with me, but we knew the orders were to deliver me to the Hive alive and preferably uninjured. Once we were on that giant hunk of floating aurinium together, we could figure out the rest.

“Very good, soldier. I thought he looked familiar. The Imperatrix will be pleased,” he said, and glanced at the bloody bodies littering the ground, shaking his head. “What a waste. I hope you’re worth it.”

There was a pause, and no one moved. “What are you waiting for? Get him to the transports,” their commander said, impatience lacing his command.

That got my men moving. They advanced on me, grabbed me by the upper arms, and pushed me toward the open fields where the large black and gold ships waited.

Ax shoved my shoulder, and I strode out in front of them with their newly acquired plasma rifles pointed at my back. Once we were out of earshot, I said, “Feel free to make it look believable,” and chuckled at Axion’s gleeful grin.

Ax laughed and poked me in the spine with the gun’s muzzle. “I’d never miss a chance to rough you up a little. Just wish it was under better circumstances.” We fell quiet. Even Valyx seemed more somber than his normal, silent self.

The sun glinting off the gaudy, golden aurinium trim on the otherwise matte black-hulled transport ships as we cleared the forest edge. I knew our time for conversation was nearing an end and we would soon be surrounded by enemy soldiers again.

“We all know this wasn’t the plan,” I muttered to my ‘captors.’ “It’s not ideal, but it will get us where we’re going with the least risk and bloodshed. We’ve been given the intel we need and this one opportunity to use it. We will save the princess, no matter the cost.”

“No matter the cost,” Ax echoed. He barely remembered our honey-eyed princess, stolen by the Imperatrix ten years ago. Even though we were children at the time, I could never forget her golden hair and sweet smile. She was supposed to have been my future, the future for all our people, and I was determined to get her back.

“No matter the cost,” Valyx said, his voice gruff with disuse, as if he could hear my thoughts.

With a nod, I continued forward in my place at the head of the group. With my hands bound behind my back in high-tech manacles Ax found with the stolen uniforms, we marched away from our home and toward a dangerous future.

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