Page 34 of Tamed By the Alien Warlord
Our dynamic shifts in that moment. Again. More honest. More raw. No more pretending.
We’re not enemies. We’re not captor and captive.
We’re...us.
Right then, the door slams open and a Reaper scout barrels in like a grenade.
“Captain! Urgent!”
Lanz’s entire body tenses beneath me.
“What is it?”
The scout, still breathing hard, flicks a holoscreen open. “Helios Combine just put a price on both your heads.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Both?”
“Twenty bars each. Alive. Ten, if dead. They want the woman and her ‘genetically interesting sister’ returned. They wantyoudead.”
Lanz growls low in his throat.
I lean against his chest, smirking. “Well. I always wanted to be famous.”
He grunts. “They’ll regret putting that bounty on you.”
“Sweetheart,” I whisper, grabbing his jaw and kissing him again, “they already do.”
CHAPTER 15
LANZ
Reapers have a way of preparing for battle that makes human soldiers look like toddlers with foam swords. Weapons are sharpened with religious fervor. Armor is oiled and painted with streaks of blood from past kills. The mess hall turns into a strategy den where knives double as pointer sticks and laughter sounds more like war chants.
And in the middle of it all stands Lanz—wounded, one-armed, scowling—and somehow more intimidating than ever.
“If it were up to me,” he growls, “we’d glass the whole Combine outpost and salt the moons.”
“Or,” I say, perched on the edge of a crate, swinging one leg idly, “we could expose them publicly and ruin their credibility galaxy-wide.”
His single brow arches. “You want to fight bureaucrats?”
“I want tohumiliatethem,” I reply. “We leak the footage from the lab. We drop their crimes right into the Galactic Council’s lap. And if we time it right, we might get diplomatic protections while we’re at it.”
He scowls harder, which is his version of deep thought.
“I hate how much sense that makes.”
“Thank you.” I smirk. “I’ll take that as agreement.”
We work fast. My contacts on the Holonetwork salivate over the footage—Jasmine on a table, the Combine insignias, the logs showing human experimentation. But leaking alone isn’t enough.
We needproofof intent. Of repeat business. Of Dr. Nakamura’s hand in the system.
Which is why we’re going to the worst planet in three sectors.
Gur.
Even saying it feels like spitting.
