Page 3 of Hunter's Valentine

Now, to locate the little female who had ruined my carefully planned hunt.

That wasn’t hard at all because the handful of scourge that remained were all hovering around the entrance to one building. I jumped off the roof, axe drawn, and let out a battle cry, catching the attention of the scourge.

They’d broken through the store’s window, and there was spitter acid sizzling in a puddle just outside the door. The acid would soon eat through the door, and although that would take some time, it told me there was a spitter in the mix.

Death by spitter was one of the worst ways to go. We could regenerate lost muscle and skin, and even nerves and sometimes bone. But there was nothing to regenerate if we melted into a puddle of goo.

I scanned the surroundings and found the spitter off to the side. With its one and only attack already spent, it would take some time for it to re-arm, so I ignored it for now.

Another loud gunshot came from inside the store. The female had pulled down several shelves in an attempt to stop the scourge. Two dead scuttlers lay twitching on the floor. She must have gotten them in the head. Only a few Earth weapons commonly carried by civilians were strong enough to pierce through the main body carapace, and hers hadn’t been loud enough to be one of them. A third scuttler lay trapped under a fallen shelf.

The female looked up and our eyes met through the broken store front for a split second. There was recognition in her gray eyes. I might not have noticed her because I was so engrossed with the scourge, but she’d known I was here. But there was no time to marvel that her eyes were the color of storm clouds because the first scuttler was already on me.

Years of training took over as my body effortlessly went through the movements of a deadly dance, slashing until there was nothing left but severed, twitching limbs, and headless scourge. As I moved, I could feel the female’s eyes on me. I sure hoped she wouldn’t turn that weapon on me now thatthe scourge were no longer attacking her. She seemed to know exactly how to use it, which was incredibly sexy.

I approached my last adversary, the spitter. Knowing it couldn’t attack me without its acid, it turned tail and fled. But I didn’t let it get away. I threw my battle axe. The edge of it glowed with plasma energy as it spun through the air and arced toward the creature. Then it sank into its thick skull with a satisfying thud.

Another loud crack had me turning to see the female landing a heavy iron bar into the head of the scourge trapped under the shelving. She tossed the iron away, then pushed the hair that had fallen out of her braid back from her face before leveling her gaze at me.

She looked ready to fight me too.

Krux! That was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

But I reminded myself that she was the one who’d ruinedmyhunt. And now, I’d savedher. I should be the angry one!

Unlike other warriors who were eager to find their mates, I just wanted to hunt. I didn’t need a human female dragging me down. We hadn’t known the humans were mating compatible with us until we’d already arrived on Earth. Having never found such a species before, we hadn’t thought it was even possible.

We were the only ones left of our species, and we technically weren’t even the original Xarc’n race. We were genetically modified soldiers, clones of the ten thousand Original Hunters created to fight the scourge. And until we found Earth, we’d thought we’d eventually die off from clonal decay since there were no females left.

Still, a mate and a family were the dreams of other hunters, not mine. I was happy to spend the rest of my life hunting the scourge.

“What are you doing here, female?” The translator at my belt repeated my words aloud.

She didn’t reply at first, and I wondered if perhaps I had my translator set to Mandarin again. When I first arrived on the continent, my translator had been set to the wrong language, and it had taken an embarrassingly long time before I figured out why none of the humans could understand me. That was another thing the survivors at New Franklin had helped me with. But I double checked, and it was set to American English.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded again. “You ruined my hunt.”

She narrowed her eyes at me and spoke. “What amIdoing here?I’mtrying to survive. And what the hell do you mean, ruined your hunt?”

“I was luring the scourge to the traps I’d set.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stood in front of the broken window, blocking the only way out. The acid was still eating through the door and giving off noxious fumes. “Then you got in the way and drew their attention instead. You owe me a hunt.”

To my surprise, the female didn’t shy away. Instead, she swung her weapon, which was on a strap, over her back and picked her way over the broken glass, her eyes bright with determination. She tried to hide a limp, but I noticed it anyway. She nudged over a piece of debris and stepped on top of it so that we were almost eye to eye.

“Listen here, buddy.” She jabbed me in the chest so hard with her finger that it almost hurt.Almost. “I owe you nothing.”

Chapter 3: Sara

I didn’t know what gave me the nerve to get all up in the terrifying hunter’s face like that. Maybe it was because I’d been living with people who didn’t give two shits about me, and I was sick and tired of being pushed around. Or maybe it was the adrenaline from being trapped by the bugs and killing three of them in as many minutes. Either way, I wasn’t going to let this asshole blame me for squat, and my body moved before my brain even realized what it was doing.

His musky, masculine scent drifted through the air, momentarily overpowering the stench of the dead bugs around us. I wanted to step even closer so it would keep blocking out the offensive smells, but then we’d be touching. Technically, we were already touching because I still had my finger on his chest, which was so warm I could feel it right through my ultra-thin gloves. He was basically naked from the waist up, save for a few pieces of armor. And yep, I called it, he was wearing the trademark Xarc’n loincloth.

The alien warrior looked as stunned by my actions as I felt, but only for a second. A grin replaced his look of shock, showing a row of white, gleaming teeth and a set of sharp fangs, reminding me that he was a predator through and through. Something blossomed insidiously in my belly—

Wait just a stinkin’ moment! Did I find fangs sexy? Holy crap, I did. What was the matter with me?

Was I really that desperate after being trapped in a bunker with the same people day in and day out and not getting any? Whatever the reason, finding any part of a Xarc’n hunter attractive was not acceptable.

I tried to pull my finger away, but he grabbed it, trapping me.

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