Page 18 of Alien From Nowhere

Varger wheezes, managing to sit up and continue arguing his case. “To be spaced would be mercy. La’Nira deserves death. Clearly, he cannot control her. That female should be brought to heel. I only sought my due revenge for the eye she took from me!”

“I offered compensation, but that’s off the table now that you’ve started a fight with the Kar’Kali for no good reason—”

“He tore off my arm! I should be receiving additional compensation. My feelers will be permanently damaged if they’re not properly reattached!”

“I’ll take you to the medical unit before we head to the airlock, but don’t misunderstand me—You’ll never be hired on theKrid Puncheragain.” The captain’s shutdown is finally enough to leave Varger silent.

He turns his attention to the Verguli males that had participated in the fight. “You three, grab Varger and his arm and follow me this way. Niko, control your female and patch yourself up. When I return, you’ll be next.”

My mate and I are left alone in my ransacked room.

“So what does this mean? We’re being spaced? Is that a quick death or a slow one?”

“We’re going to be dropped out the airlock in the middle of nowhere,” I tell her.

“Great,” she mutters.

I ignore that mysterious comment and grin at her. “You came back.”

She glares at me. “I don’t let others take the fall for my actions. I wasn’t about to let Varger kill you for what I did.”

“How very honorable for the woman who tried to shoot me in the cock earlier,” I say.

She raises a brow and glances at my crotch for a moment.

“Maybe I was trying to do a favor to all the women of this universe,” she quips.

We both laugh at that before settling in to quietly catch our breath.

“Have you been spaced before?” she asks me.

“Oh yeah. Three times actually. Still breathing, aren’t I? Don’t worry.”

She looks over the cuts she inflicted. They’ve stopped bleeding as heavily, but my arms are stained red from the damage. Her eyes linger on my naked chest.

“I’m sorry I hurt you, but I couldn’t be sure you weren’t a slaver.”

“I understand,” I tell her. “But I’d rather you didn’t stab me again.”

“I don’t promise anything. You get what you give, so if you keep calling me your mate, then I’ll lose my patience.”

I cock my head at her. “So you truly don’t feel the mating fever?”

“The only thing I feel when I look at you is annoyance,” she says. “Now sit down. If you tell me where to find what I need, I’ll clean those scratches I gave you.”

It might be a pathetically small step in the grand scheme of things, but if I cannot have her as a lovestruck mate, then I will gladly take begrudging ally. I will take anything she’s offering.

CHAPTERNINE

RAINA

Niko lookssmug when I kneel beside him with a bandage kit from his cupboard. So I take out an alcohol pad and press it to his cut until he winces.

“You got out of those bonds faster than I thought,” I say to fill the silence. He’s staring at me, those dark eyes focusing on my features with a reverence I find both discomforting and oddly sensual. Thankfully, his eyes have returned to normal. Normal is a relative term out here in space, but since he resembles a human in most ways, the differences stand out to me starkly. Differences like pupils that expand to chase away the white. Technically, I don’t know what it means. But I do know that he’s not someone I’d want to cross when it happens. When his eyes were black, his demeanor changed to something closer to animal.

He ripped a man’s arm off. I can’t ever un-see the way he twisted and pulled without hesitation, plucking out the limb that had groped me moments earlier. And if the captain hadn’t walked in? He might’ve taken the other one too.

“My blade has a heat function that makes it handy for cutting most metals,” he explains. “You held your own against Varger for longer than I thought.”

---