Page 9 of Chased By the Alien Mercenary
With a growl, I shoved a boulder to partially block the cave entrance. That would keep more of the wind out and possibly deter any predators. Not that Llykhe had many, it was a veryquiet and peaceful planet, smack in the middle of Aderian territory. A very clever hiding place for a crimelord’s vacation home. Nobody would think to look for, or bother, Jalima in a place like this. Except us, of course.
I was barreling down the mountain at breakneck speeds, my feet digging into the grassy surface, carnivorous plants nipping at my heels. Taking a shortcut across a narrow ravine required a few dangerous leaps, but I was certain it shaved off even more time, so it was worth the risk. All the while, I kept trying to reach my brother, but my twin was probably asleep. When he did answer, the mansion was already filling my vision.
“What do you need, bro?”Aramon asked without hesitation, though he was sleepy and a little groggy. I drew in a relieved breath and tossed all caution to the wind. Though I’d had plenty of reasons not to share yet that I’d found her—my mate—this was much more important. Lyra needed help, and fire was impossible, so… whatdidshe need? How much time did she have? The anxiety of not knowing was horrible, and it made me want to run faster and kill things. I’d already killed plenty earlier, though, and that wasn’t going to help her one bit.
The memory of touching her tiny, cold feet and discovering just how icy they were would forever be engraved on my mind. It was followed by the terror of not knowing what I was supposed to do next. My only thought had been to put distance between us and the mansion so they wouldn’t be able to find us. Lyra needed more than I knew how to give—but I was determined not to fail her.
So I shared Lyra’s existence with Aramon, asking him what he thought she needed. At the same time, I leaped over asmall protective wall and slashed my claws through the camera hanging from the edge to disable it. Then I was over and thudding onto the back of a patrolling guard; he was silenced with the snap of his neck. I checked his belt, taking his knife and pistol and wrenching his com unit from his wrist. Those could help, but he had little else of use on him. I stuffed his body behind a shed, then snuck around the building to find away in and get what I needed.
My twin was a relentless tease to most crewmates, but, much to my relief, he did not crow in delight at hearing my news. He did not ask questions or prod for more information, like an image of Lyra’s face. He just started listing all the things I’d need to keep her safe and healthy, and I dutifully piled everything into a blanket as an improvised duffel as I raided one wing of the house. Nobody had noticed my incursion yet, but I wasn’t going to stick around long enough for them to find me. The last thing I needed was a fight to distract and delay me.
In and out, as fast as possible, that was the goal as I raced to follow my twin’s instructions. I was back over the wall, supplies on my back, in less than ten minutes, but those were agonizingly long minutes, anyway. She could be freezing, dead, dying, and I’d just abandoned her in that cave! I was a terrible mate.
Going back uphill was tougher than my race down, but I was not going to pause—not for a minute—even when my breathing came sawing in and out of my lungs in sharp, painful bursts. Even when leaping across the ravine was twice as dangerous as before, tired, laden with heavy burdens, and in the dark. I was not stopping for anything, because Lyra needed me.
“You can do it, Solear,”Aramon whispered in the back of my mind, filling me with confidence and warmth. He lent strength along our bond in a way that would be considered illegal if we were on an Asrai world. I took that strength greedily and felt immensely grateful for it. And relieved that he kept me company all the way to the top of the hill, to the outcrop of rocks with the cave. He did not leave me alone but offered me quiet support until I’d assured us both that Lyra still breathed.
Then my footsteps crunched on the stones scattered in front of the narrow cave opening. I winced at the noise, so loud in the quiet night, and looked down. It wasn’t gravel or sand that covered this area, but stone that shimmered like glass. When I leaned down to pick up a handful, the small shards ruthlessly cut through my skin. Horrified, I dropped the fine stuff and raced for the cave opening. I’d already been in a rush, but now I was doubly worried, if that was even possible.
I should have checked the cave more carefully before I left Lyra in it. I should have checked what that odd, crunchy stuff was beneath my boots. Lyra had no shoes, if she stood on that... What if it was inside the cave too? I hadn’t even checked. Then another horrifying thought filled my mind, one that made me feel even worse: I’d trapped her. By putting her inside a cave with the ground outside lined with that stuff, I had as good as trapped her. That was unforgivable.
When I slipped around the boulder into the cave, my supplies on my back, the question wasn’t if Lyra would be there. No, the question was how injured and scared she would be. The thought of her seeing me as her jailer, I could not stomach it.“What’s wrong?”Aramon asked me, but, enraged with myself, I did not have the focus to answer.
Chapter 9
Lyra
I must have napped for a little while, but the warmer air inside the cave and the lack of wind meant I was beginning to warm up again. That was good news and a stroke of luck. Something about this cave was very good at trapping heat. I touched the hard rock I was lying on and had to conclude it was a property of the stone itself. It had felt icy when I’d lain down on it, and it should have sapped my strength, cooled me further as it took my heat. Instead, the stone had heated beneath me, as if I was lying on a hot pad.
I wriggled my toes beneath the blanket, against the rough surface. Firm and unyielding, it definitely felt like rock, only rock that had been warmed by the sun for a couple of hours. That freaking rock had saved my life; I had no doubt about it. I was loath to abandon it, but now that I was awake again and feeling slightly better, I knew I had to investigate.
It was dark inside the small cave, but a bit of starlight filtered in through the opening—enough to show me that my beastly protector was not here. He’d vanished without a trace, leaving me behind. Either because he couldn’t be bothered to haul my ass around any further, especially if I was dying from the cold, or because he’d gone to get supplies. Maybe he’d just lost interest. That was a possibility, too. After all, I knew absolutely nothing about him.
No, that wasn’t true. I did know one very important thing. In his nightmares, he dreamed of being a child, trapped beneath therubble of a devastated world. Call it foolhardy, call it naive, but I was convinced I’d seen his dreams, and that they reflected an actual traumatic event he’d gone through. My poor feral alien really had been trapped as a young boy, with only the moans of the dying to keep him company. And knowing that...well, it made me want to believe he needed a friend. That I could be that friend, even.
“Don’t cool down while I’m having a look,” I warned the rock I was lying on. Then I slowly rose to my elbows and then my knees. I kept the blanket wrapped tightly around me as I carefully scuttled along the edge of the cave to the sliver of starry sky I could see. The stars were bright and very clearly visible—millions upon millions of them—the dark outside unpolluted by lights from massive metropolises or spaceports. I saw the shiny cap of a snow-covered mountain in one direction and dots of glowing bioluminescence that had to be the strange, carnivorous flowers that dotted the hillside.
If I squinted just right, I thought that perhaps I could see the lights of the mansion in the distance below, but I wasn’t sure if I was seeing that right or not. Nothing civilized nearby then, no place to walk to for help. Unless I wanted to scale a mountain just for the chance to peer down the other side of it. Not an appealing thought. At least my feral companion had not trapped me, he had left me behind, but I was free to leave if I wanted to. Now that I wasn’t in danger of dying from hypothermia, I was pretty all right with that situation.
The ground was oddly shimmering just in front of the cave opening, and when I ducked down to inspect, I took a hasty step back. That looked like broken glass, crushed nearly to a powder but possibly still dangerously sharp. If not glass, it could besome kind of quartz, but I was not taking chances with my bare feet. One could think this was on purpose—a method of trapping me here after all—but I was pretty sure my companion hadn’t done this. I didn’t think he was a local either, so it was unlikely he’d known about this location beforehand. Besides, it had been an impulsive decision to go here when I’d begged for shelter. No, my companion hadn’t known about the scary ground. This wasn’t on purpose.
I retreated into the cave and grimaced when I realized it had gotten colder in there. I hurried back to my rock, perching on it like a chicken on her nest. It felt silly, especially since the rock had absolutelynotlistened to me and had cooled down considerably. At least I wasn’t so freezing cold right now that I was shaking, and I could literally feel the stone heating up beneath my butt. Neat trick, that. I hoped my alien came back soon, though. Warm it might be, but it wasn’t comfortable, and I was really hungry and thirsty.
My head was a bit achy and foggy, my mouth dry, and my stomach cramped painfully at the thought of food, edging toward nausea. I was so hungry I’d scarf down anything he offered me at this point. He? I was still hopeful that my beastly alien had come back to me, not just hoping, but fairly certain that he would. I couldn’t explain why I felt that kind of faith in his reappearance, but I did.
Still, when I heard the faintest sound of something crunching outside the cave, my heart rate skyrocketed with fear. What if it was a predator? I needed a weapon, and I hurriedly cast my eyes about the small cave to search for one. It was a curiously bare place: smooth rocky walls, a smattering of sand and dirt across the floor, and several bigger flat rocks like the warm one I wassitting on. Along one wall, there was a meager stick that had blown in, barely visible in the minimal light of the stars.
When I picked it up, it felt flimsy and insubstantial in my hand, but I held onto it anyway. The crunching sound came again, a bit louder, and then the light from the stars was abruptly blocked out. I stumbled back, caught off-guard, and pressed myself against the wall at the back of the cave. Raising the flimsy stick in front of me seemed utterly ridiculous in the face of a huge, black shadow. Then a pair of red, glowing eyes blinked inside all that darkness, and my belly did an odd, swooping thing. Heat tingled at the back of my skull and slid over the top of my head, until even my forehead seemed to glow with warmth.
A growl rattled through the darkness, clashing against the walls of the small cave and echoing back at me. Chills shot down my spine. My hand trembled, the stick crunching as my fist squeezed around the brittle wood. So much tension filled my body that my muscles ached with it. A monster had entered this cave, was it the den of the beast? A much more likely possibility also occurred to me, but fear still prevailed. I felt hunted, cornered, trapped in the red glow of that gaze.
Then, abruptly, the growl cut off and something clicked before a soft, pale light illuminated the darkness. A light source cradled in the large palm of a hand. My eyes flicked from it to the pale features above it, the ghoulish mask of a face marked like death. I knew him now, and any fear vanished like snow before the sun. Yes, thiswasthe den of a beast, but it was my beast by now, wasn’t it?
“You came back!” I exclaimed, dropping my stick with a clatter to the ground and rushing to close the distance between us.There was a moment of awkward hesitation as I got closer, a worry niggling at the back of my mind that he might bite my hand off rather than let me pet him. I went anyway. My hands collided with his wide, armor-clad chest, cold fingers stroking heat. My mind seemed to be on fire, and I blamed the beginning stages of dehydration for that. Maybe it made me reckless and irrational, but I was just so relieved to see a familiar face. To have my dangerous ally back at my side.
He did not say anything—of course not—because I didn’t think he could talk. He was frozen beneath my palms. The light only seemed to throw more shadows over his alien features: the way his red eyes glowed in the deep-set eyesockets, the needle-sharp teeth and fangs in his mouth, drawn into an angry snarl. He appeared to be glaring at me, but he did not move away, did not make a single sound. The heat against my head seemed to grow even stronger, as if a giant hand had grasped hold of my skull and was gently squeezing. It wasn’t painful, not exactly, but it wasn’t comfortable either.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” I said to him, and I meant it. He hissed—a furious sound—and then he did something that made my heart somersault inside my chest. His free hand lifted from his side, and with one calloused, claw-tipped finger, he gently stroked the curve of my cheek. It was a caress, the gentlest of touches. A greeting, but one that felt tender and caring, like I was precious and delicate, and he feared breaking me if he got too rough.
