Page 89 of All You Need is Alien Love
“Despite being undercover for so many years, your information proved woefully lacking, Adeline.”
She moves a telling distance away from him. “No one suspected me and everything was going according to plan for so long.” She scowls. “Until that idiot, River Sullivan, showed up. He’s caused no end of trouble.”
My hearts pound in my chest at the mention of my mate. He’s the threat no one ever sees coming—including Layne Madison.
“If our initial plan had worked, that fool Nirblob would have ended River Sullivan’s life,” Layne Madison says. “It seems as though I’ll need to take matters into my own hands.”
I can’t help it. I laugh—and loudly.
He stalks over, a thunderous expression on his face. “You find this amusing? I’m going to kill your mate and you can watch.”
I shake my head, ignoring the pain it causes, and grin at him. “I highly doubt that. None of your plans have worked out where River’s concerned. Nirblob defected and joined our side. Then you tried hiring Shilgar the Deadly, and he failed too. Hell, if the most infamous intergalactic assassin couldn’t kill River, you sure as shit won’t be able to.”
That actually gives him pause.
Adeline gapes. “That half-human fool evaded Shilgar the Deadly? I don’t believe it.”
I attempt to shrug against my restraints without much luck. “And yet, here we are now, aren’t we?”
She whirls on Layne Madison. “Surely one idiot couldn’t have thwarted our entire operation. What about the Vroknu warriors? They were supremely confident in their ability to wipe out the Alliance members at this facility.”
He scowls once again. “They were defeated. Hylgarten is dead.”
My eyes go wide.Holy shit. Zamir’s father is dead?
Anxiety churns in my gut. I’m relieved to hear that our team has the upper hand—which I anticipated based on River’s plan—but I hope there’ve been no unnecessary sacrifices to achieve our goals.
Dear galactic gods, please let everyone be all right. Especially River.
“That’s fucking fantastic. Years of covert work down the drain because you couldn’t kill one half-human fool! Now we’re trapped on this backwater dump of a planet and only have one lousy hostage to barter our way out?” Adeline demands, her voice nearing a shriek.
“Tone down the hysteria and help me figure out a way to turn this to our advantage.”
“I can’t believe I trusted you,” Adeline mutters, ignoring his rather obvious misogyny. “This was all your stupid idea. You said this would be a cake walk.”
His eyes narrow. “And it would have been ifyouhad done your job properly.”
“Fuck you,Layne,” Adeline says, exaggerating his name. “Or whatever you want to call yourself these days. I did precisely what I was hired to do.”
As we suspected, Layne Madison was merely an alias.
They continue bickering while I quietly make progress on loosening my restraints.
“We need to get out of here,” Adeline says.
“Precisely why we need to make use of our hostage,” Layne Madison gestures toward me. “They care about this man. They’ll give us what we want. For now, we’ll have to settle for an Alliance vessel to get us off planet and back to our ship in orbit. We must retreat for now and regroup.”
She glares at him for a long, tense moment until she relents. “Fine. But I need to take my samples and finish the last part of my experiment before we leave.”
I do not like the sound of that and continue to fight against my restraints, making progress that feels far too slow. River should be appearing any moment now, right?
Adeline moves to the cabinet and pulls out a large syringe that she fills with a mysterious clear liquid.
“What the hell is that?” I demand.
She flashes me an evil grin. “Just a little something I concocted to induce an episode of Tentaculum Calefaction again.”
I blink at her in confusion.
