Page 6 of Chased By the Alien Mercenary
I blinked, still remembering the way the ashes had stung my eyes. It had been so real—so very real—but how was that possible? It wasn’t. My eyes locked onto his face, bigger, sharper, more mature, and far more ghoulish, but the same too. He blinked at me from my lap, red eyes swirling. Ah, shit, he’s awake! I wanted to move away, but the heavy weight of his head on my knees kept me pinned, and he wasn’t moving, not yet. This was bad, wasn’t it? I was entranced, though, trapped in his gaze.
Then his mouth twitched before pulling into a feral, wide grin that revealed sharp, narrow teeth, the kind that would shred and tear flesh. Gruesome. Horrible. But he wasn’t moving away. In fact, his body seemed to relax against me. The grin morphed into something akin to a snarl, and unease skittered up my spine. Cornered beast that he was, he was going to snap, and I had to get out of his path or feel the sting of those teeth. My heart was pounding in my chest, my knees locked in place, muscles tight and tense, paralyzed.
The snarl became a roar, loud, vicious. His throat worked as the sound slapped against the walls and echoed around us. I covered my ears with my hands at the onslaught, wincing backward, but I couldn’t get away, not from that. And then something switched inside my brain: a memory surfacing of a wounded animal I’d once freed from a trap, when I’d done a piece on poachers. “Hush,” I told him, and the growl cut off, silence filling our cell.
“That’s no way to treat a helping hand. You’re safe with me. I’ve got you.” The words felt extremely silly coming from my lips. I was the tiny, helpless human. I was the one trapped with a feral alien in a tiny cell. What if he was the one who was scared, notme? If that was his dream, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the scared, trapped boy he’d been.
When he remained quiet, lying against my knees without moving, I sighed in relief. I couldn’t believe that worked, but there was no denying that he’d calmed down. Now he was just staring at me. Staring at me with those big ruby eyes from beneath a heavy, bone-white brow, the rest shadowed in darkness. He looked otherworldly, alien. A shiver shot down my spine, followed by a curl of heat low in my abdomen. What the heck was that? This was so confusing and scary, but confusion was beginning to win out. Now what?
Chapter 6
Solear
She was in my dreams. I remembered her so clearly; walking through the landscape of horror that my mind conjured up each time I closed my eyes. Her hair, ash white and dotted with gray flakes; her blue eyes, beacons that drew mine. The kindness she showed as she pulled me from beneath the rubble had burrowed under my skin. I did not know how to deal with that, and it made me feel all jagged and broken.
Now she was in the dark with me, and her hair wasn’t ash white but glowing golden brown—a beautiful halo silhouetting her dainty chin and the nose with its curiously tilted tip. She was humming a song I did not know, a gently lilting melody. If there were any words in it, my translator implant did not have the language, and I did not recognize it. My mouth instantly pulled into a grimace. Recognize it? Of course I wouldn’t. Even after they’d dug me up, I’d continued to live in isolation. I knew nothing—except stars. About stars, I knew everything.
Her hand brushed along my jaw and head, just a soft touch of her fingers and the damp edge of the blanket she wore around her shoulders. I winced when I realized she was using it to dab away the blood that had coated my skin. I didn’t recall much from the fight; everything was a gaping black hole after Aramon and I leaped from the shuttle and charged into the manor.
I recalled the scent that had pulled me deeper, and the fury that had followed when I’d found the source. Now, I knew the scent was all her, the gentle woman who held my head in her lap asif I were precious to her. Like we knew each other. We didn’t, because if she knew me at all, she’d be cowering in the corner, not telling me to stop growling. She’d be terrified of me if she knew me, and that thought was the most depressing of all.
Despite the deep ache at the back of my head and the extreme pleasure of being so near to a female, I couldn’t let this go on. I jerked upright with a snarl that rattled the bars of our cage. A cage. Trapped. It just made me angrier, and I began to pace as I tried to make my mind focus. The last thing we needed was for me to sink into a spiral of rage and fear. So I paced and paced, while I glared at everything and thought until my head ached.
She was sitting where I’d left her, kneeling, blanket around her small shoulders, chin at an angle. She was watching me, but not the way Nelly did. I found I didn’t mind the shy glance of this human from beneath her long lashes. It made me want to fucking preen, and I’d never preened for anyone in my life; that was all Aramon. Ah, fuck—my twin. Why hadn’t I thought of him before? Where was he?
A panic filled me—similar, though not quite—to the rare handful of times I hadn’t been able to reach for him instantly. It was my rapid breathing, the tight confines of this damp, dark prison cell that got in the way, though, not anything nefarious, just my damn brokenness. A cell, yes, but not trapped. Not really. I reminded myself of those facts as I glared at the thick metal bars, some of them rusted enough that I should easily be able to break or bend apart. Nottrapped.
“Aramon? Where are you?”I called for him down our well-traveled mental pathway. It was a bond so strong that once, when he had needed me most, I’d traveled down it with morethan just thoughts. It was a pathway as big as a wormhole and traveled just as fast, and his response was immediate, flooding me with his familiar presence, with the knowledge that I was not alone, never alone.
“Ah, thank fuck, Solear!”Aramon shouted back at me. His mental voice was as loud as his speaking voice, and he was not nearly as practiced at speaking this way as I was. I loved it all the same, to feel his presence, his brotherly love that filled all the little broken cracks the panic had caused in my confidence. Already, I felt a bit more stable, but not enough to stop my pacing.
“Where are you?”I asked, accompanying the words with images of where I was: the dark cell, the hallway, the smell of blood that clung to everything, along with the scent of cleansers. Carefully, I avoided any thoughts of the human female behind me, determined not to tip off my brother about her. He did not need to know that I’d found my mate—my one. He’d insist I take her, and I wouldn’t. I was too broken.
“We were forced to retreat to the Varakartoom, bro.”Aramon’s thoughts spilled with images of his own, though I was certain he didn’t mean to share all of them. This was why he normally spoke out loud to me, while I shared my thoughts telepathically. I touched my throat, rasped a cough, and wondered if my vocal cords even knew how to form anything other than growls—or perhaps a yes or no. I had not spoken much at all since that...time.
I pieced together far more than Aramon shared with his words, and I winced when I realized how crazy I’d looked during that fight. Running off on my own, disappearing. Aramon’s fear andworry for me, the orders from Jaxin, and then our captain, Asmoded, telling them to retreat. He’d felt a lot of turmoil when he’d had to choose rescuing everyone else over me, and fly the shuttle back to safety without my help. I tried to let him know that he’d made the right choice, but I had no words for that—just tangled, messy feelings. I wasn’t sure if that helped.
“A cell, not too bad. We’ll be down again for you. You know Asmoded would never leave you behind. Just sit tight, bro.”I growled in response, flashing back to the last time Asmoded had gone above and beyond to save me. Not that I’d understood it at the time—I’d given him so much trouble once he took my twin and me aboard the ship. That’s why I owed him everything. I wasn’t making the same mistake twice; I would have faith in help, and I wouldn’t give up, not for a minute.
“It’s not so dire,”I told my brother, because while the cell door was reinforced and heavily locked, the bars would easily give way. I’d have my mate and me out of here by nightfall. It wouldn’t be long now; I could practically feel the way the light was fading along the western horizon at this very minute. He laughed loudly, and though he did not mean to share that either, I could briefly see the room through his eyes. I caught a flash of a naked Evie before I quickly reeled myself back into my own mind, warning Aramon to get a hold of himself.
“I do not want to see YOUR mate naked,”I said. But Aramon was hardly sorry for letting that image slip, nor was he repentant for sitting safely inside his quarters with his naked mate. Likely after having sex, because, if I knew him at all—and I did—he’d gone to distract himself from his worry for me. Nothing helped him more than Evie did.
“Your mate?”Aramon shot back, sharply and far too cleverly. Like he’d picked up the emphasis and inferred all kinds of things he shouldn’t have been able to leap to. But that was just how his mind worked; he saw connections where others didn’t. I bared my teeth, growling loudly to warn him to back off. The sound echoed down the hallway, but my sensitive hearing still picked up the shocked, muffled gasp of my mate. Aramon caught it too, proving to be more deeply enmeshed in our bond than I had planned—a side effect of our doubling that I still hadn’t gotten used to.
“I’ll wait,”I told him, but not for long. Then I cut the connection, shoving up a wall to block him from seeing through my eyes. He could still reach me, but now he had to “knock” first, figuratively. A nudge against my brain, and a conscious choice on my part to let him in. That way, he couldn’t snoop. Aramon did it all the time, especially when he was with his mate, but I knew he’d find it very unusual coming from me. It would only feed his curiosity, but I wasn’t going to let him see her. No way. She was for my eyes only.
I turned then, certain I was alone right now inside my head, though not alone, because she was here. I had to give that some thought, but now was not the time. Inhaling deeply, I drew her scent into my lungs and tried to tease out all the different notes: sourness from fear; a hint of sweat—soft and pleasant; and things that were uniquely hers. Something flowery, something musky, and something so sweetly enticing that my cock stirred beneath my armor.
Going onto the tips of my toes, I sank into a crouch, balancing there as I watched her. That scent, was it her heat? Was that heat for me? Her mate? I wanted to pounce on her, test her skin, thesilkiness of her hair, roll in her scent until it covered me from my toes to my head. Her blue eyes were wide in her pale face, and I had to reel back the spinning thoughts, the eagerness. I wasn’t claiming her, remember? I wasn’t allowed to chase her, and clearly, she wasn’t comfortable with me. That sourness, that was fear. I knew it. Fear for me?
That thought stabbed through me with such force that I reeled back a step, my back colliding with the bars. Trapped, my mind whispered then, and adrenaline surged, irrational fear threatened to swallow me. Trapped, so trapped, so alone. And then she raised a hand, her fingers trembling but clearly reaching for me. Her voice was warm and friendly, a melodic whisper across my frantic brain. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay. You’ll be fine. I’m sure your friends will come back for you.”
She was scared of me, and yet… she was the one giving me comfort. Confused, I sank to my heels near the bars, back wedged into a corner so I could see in every direction. Making myself small, I tried not to appear a threat to her, my tiny female. My mate. Ah, damn it. I was so broken inside, but that touch of her voice had calmed me like nothing ever had. I was going to keep her, wasn’t I? Yeah, I was, because I was a selfish bastard. My fists clenched tightly against my thighs, as if that was the only thing holding me back from grabbing her right now.
Maybe she was as confused about all of this as I was. She was the one smelling scared and aroused at the same time, after all. It was a strange, foreign thought to follow, but it made me feel less alone. She didn’t know what to do or how to act, either. We’d figure it out together. I was a broken mess inside my head, but I’d never been more motivated to fix it. Seeing Aramon’s Evie—even in that quick flash of a moment—reminded me how badly I wanted what my brother had. He was never alone anymore, and he’d even bonded telepathically with her.
I narrowed my eyes, leaning forward just a little on the balls of my feet.“Can you hear me?”I asked her, prodding against her mind with my own. Then I sighed with disappointment. No, that wasn’t working; it didn’t matter. Just having her near was good enough. Step one, I told myself: rescue both of us from this miserable place. I’d do better once we weren’t trapped.
