Page 20 of Chased By the Alien Mercenary
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Lyra
We’d made it. For the first time since I’d woken up on this planet, I truly believed that I’d get out of this. Life as I knew it might be over, there was no way I could ever go back to the Alpha Quadrant, but it felt like good things could be waiting for me. Like Solear. I looked away from the small window to the male sitting beside me, his entire body tense as he worked the controls of the vessel. There was a furrow on his pale brow, his eyes intense as they glowed with laser focus at something in the distance, something I couldn’t see.
The cable he’d used to hook up to the computer shimmered with light, a tendril that seemed to hold a thousand stars. It was so thin and flexible that it seemed as if I could wipe my hand through it and break it, like cobwebs. A nav port, I still marveled at the revelation. That little string had taken Solear’s mind somewhere I could not go, yet things teased at the edges of my mind anyway: shapes of mountains, a massive ocean, and the warmth of brotherly love, of all things. Everything was different now.
When Solear’s eyes turned to me, the intense focus he often pursued me with was back. Often, that had been accompanied by heat along my skull, but this time Isensedhis feelings—his half-formed thoughts. That telepathic connection had fully formed.Medkit.The thought came at me just as Solear leaned forward and clawed open the small compartments below the controls of the ship. It tumbled out, and then he was all over me, still feral, rough, unpolished. I couldn’t help but laugh as he began pulling my pants down so he could get at the cuts that dotted them. That was familiar ground, and I knew his intentions were good. He was caring for me, as always.
I winced when he freed my legs and pulled them into his lap. He growled. It looked pretty bad, dozens upon dozens of nicks and cuts from the plant’s sharp thorns and fangs. They stung, too, but at least they’d stopped bleeding, and I didn’t appear to have any reaction to them. Hopefully, that meant they weren’t venomous or something. Solear was very gentle as he began dabbing some kind of ointment on them, followed by a pass with a handheld device emitting a soft blue light—a dermal regenerator of some kind, though I hadn’t seen one that looked quite like this before. Whatever it did, it worked wonders, soothing the sting and closing the cuts until only little pink blemishes remained.
“Thank you,” I said to him, a little uncertain when he kept one warm hand folded around my ankles, pinning them in place. He was done, wasn’t he? I wriggled my toes, but that just made him growl and hold on a little tighter. One thumb feathered over the arch of my foot, tickling me, and I tried to muffle the sound. He knew anyway, he was in my head now. We needed to talk boundaries about that, but... first, we just needed to talk. Period.
“Talk,”Solear echoed in my head, and then he closed both his hands around my ankles and, with a pull, had me in his lap completely. His armor was sleek but firm beneath my bare thighs, and I felt the prod of the steering yoke against my spine. With his arms around me, tucking me against his chest, I felt safe, though, and something eased inside me. It had been such a close call, and I really didn’t like how helpless I had been. There had been nothing I could do against those Krektar and their boss—nothing at all—and that was rather humbling for an independent girl like me.
“Will you tell me about the boy beneath the rubble? Is that you?”I asked, settling my ear against the steady heartbeat in his chest. It was the piece of him I was certain he shared with no one, but I’d been privy to it since the day we met. Dragged into his nightmares with him through this connection we shared. Mates, I reminded myself. That’s what we were, and I still needed to get used to that concept, but it was already growing on me.
Solear’s response to that question was, at first, just the low rattle of a growl, not quite angry, mostly just discontent he could not hide. That was a sore spot, and I thought he’d shut me out then, but he didn’t.“That is a memory. I am sorry.”Sorry? What was he sorry for? Subjecting me to the nightmares that plagued him? I’d been awake—or at the very least in control—each time. I felt like I’d been able to help him by dragging him from that tomb to the surface each time it happened.
“That is me. Back on one of the many Asrai colonies scattered throughout the quadrant.”Images accompanied those words—stars and planets, glowing points across a vast map. Perhaps those were the many colonies he’d mentioned. Then, though he’d never been eloquent before, his story unfurled for me. Itwasn’t so much told as shown, and with it came the feelings—heart-wrenching and terrible as they were—that he’d felt at each of those moments.
The poverty of their colony, the struggle to survive day to day. Out of school for work more often than in school, if their father struggled to put bread on the table. The laughter the three of them—the twins and their father—shared despite the hardships. Then the arrival of a ship and a wealthy master, the changes in their town. Solear then had not known what was happening, but the Solear now knew that a crimelord had staked his claim on their slice of the galaxy. Jalima. And he’d set out to destroy everything the twins had ever known.
Their father had left home. Solear had skipped school to follow him, intensely curious about the secret, clandestine meetings he was having. But his twin had gone to school. They had been split apart, alone. Then the bombs had rained down, and Solear had gotten trapped. Barely twelve, and stuck beneath piles of stone, unable to move, hearing only the sounds of the dying and the raging fires above him. Then the silence… endless silence, as he called until his voice was hoarse, but no one heard him. That loneliness had sunk so deep into him that it had never left.
“How long?” I asked, and discovered that tears were streaming down my face. I wiped at them roughly and tried again, voice hoarse, to make my question clear. “How long were you trapped underneath that rubble?” I knew exactly what that had done to him; I’d seen it in his dreams, felt it in every rumble and growl. My poor alien had been so badly hurt by that experience, and I wanted to soothe that wound. Let him know that he wasn’t alone now.
His hand curled against my throat, his thumb brushing my chin, and then he pressed our foreheads together.“I know,”he shared with me, and I felt those words settle over me, sink into my bones. He did not feel alone now.“It was three weeks before Aramon managed to find me and dig me out.”Those words came with memories: drinking rainwater that had pooled beneath his head, enduring awful hunger until the hunger went away, Aramon’s distress when he found his brother—then suddenly, the image of a daunting male covered in black scales and the sense of protection.“The captain,”Solear explained.“He came with his mercenaries. Too late to aid our father in his rebellion, but in time to save us.”
That was his story, and now I tried to rhyme the image of that terrifying male with the voice warmly welcoming me aboard his ship. That was the same captain? I could not imagine that such a terrifying male could be a good, soft place to land for two traumatized twelve-year-old kids. The loyalty my Solear felt for this male was undeniable, however, so I’d reserve judgment.“Three weeks must have felt like forever. I’m glad you made it out. And I’m glad you found me.”
Looking back at my own life, I’d had plenty of adventure, but none of the warm memories or the bonds that Solear had with his people: his father, his twin, and his captain. It was a little barren in comparison, actually, as if I’d always been moving too much to really care about anything at all. But Solear didn’t let me run—and if I did run, he’d just chase me down. He’d come after me no matter what. Once, that kind of commitment would have frightened me, but I was coming around to the idea.
One small, lonely boy who’d turned into this big, caring, somewhat feral alien had done that. He did not respond to whatI said, but one arm remained tightly around me, the other on the yoke of the small vessel as he flew us. I let the thoughts churn in my mind as I processed what had happened, and exhaustion from it all caught up to me then. I fell asleep as stars flew by above my head and mountains made way for the endless mirror of the vast ocean’s surface. Sheltered and safe in the arms of my alien.
Chapter 18
Lyra
After sleeping for a few hours, I’d woken to a dawn crashing bold and bright across the horizon in front of us. The colors had been so tempting that I’d rooted around the tiny space until I’d located the comm device. It had fallen out of my pants when Solear took them off earlier so he could take care of my injuries. I wanted to catch that sunrise on camera so I’d never forget it—and the way it made me feel.
Alive, safe. Like Solear and I were headed for a golden future, together. He rumbled a growl as I searched, then pulled it free from between the seats with a huff and amusement dancing in his eyes. “Well, excuse me,” I said, “I don’t have super senses like you do.” I patted his muscular shoulder and traced a few scratches along the shiny black of his armor. Then I snapped a picture of the sunrise gleaming orange against his face. “You’re unfairly pretty after pulling an all-nighter.” I poked at my own messy hair and was warmed by the rush of thoughts that tumbled abruptly into my brain—not words, but snapshotshe’dtaken of me, pieces of memory. And in all of them, I glowed, looking like the most beautiful being I’d ever seen. That wasn’t me thinking that; that was what Solear thought when he recalled those instances.
He particularly liked his memories of the wet shirt clinging to my boobs and turning almost entirely transparent. But his favorite moment was watching me sleep, just after we’d first had sex—like he couldn’t get enough of me. I was actually blushing at that; how could I not feel pretty when he looked at me that way?
“Okay,” I breathed. “Okay.” I kissed his cheek, then turned to finally take my shot of the rising sun. It caught me by surprise when I discovered the edges of a continent in the distance. Waves crashing onto pink and yellow shores, and more jagged mountain peaks rising in a craggy landscape. Dotted with craters and rising mountains, green grass grew lush and verdantly over everything. Or maybe it wasn’t grass so much as a type of moss. “We’re almost there?” I wondered.
“Yes,”Solear responded, and I smiled, starting to get used to hearing that response inside my head. Since we were aboard this small ship, he hadn’t responded to my thoughts anymore, so I knew he was giving me privacy. I appreciated that. But I liked being able to hear what he had to say more, anyway.“We’re almost there.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, gesturing at the landscape we were now flying over. The layer of green on everything seemed thick and soft, lush. We passed beautiful waterfalls and springs, and I shifted onto my knees on the seat, my coat abandoned and only my shirt brushing against my thighs. With the comm in hand, I leaned against the window and snapped pictures. Who knew—maybe I could sell them to some editorial or magazine out here?
“Your brother was meeting us in that city, right?” I vaguely recalled that being the agreement. Then, even more vaguely, something tickled at my brain, possibly inspired by the crater-like landscape around us. Something about time pressure, a rush for us to get to that port.
“Meteors,”Solear said grimly. I twisted against the window to look at him. Oh, fuck, yeah, that’s what the captain had said in that last call. Something about a meteor storm striking theplanet. I’d seen a few of them, but usually they were not a danger; the stones would burn up in a planet’s atmosphere. When I eyed the large craters around us, the prospect of a meteor storm took on an entirely different meaning. Those were huge holes. Was that what we could expect, and when?
“I’ve been adjusting our course, tweaking the autopilot with my twin while you slept, but we can’t outrun it.”That sounded bleak, but when the first meteor struck not much later, it was just a small streak of flame and a distant crash. The photographer in me could not resist, channeling worry into curiosity. Raising the comm, I began to snap pictures of each strike and each hurling stone falling from the sky. They weren’t big, and they were oddly beautiful as they rained down and sowed destruction.
I also knew I could not distract Solear, his intense focus on the controls weighed on me like a heavy blanket. His hands shook against the yoke as he was forced to take the small vessel off autopilot and fly it himself. My guy did not like that, but he was not alone, guided, I felt certain, by his twin brother whispering to him in his mind. I could not hear those thoughts, but I sensed they were there. Kind of like hearing voices talking in the other room without understanding the words.
