Page 63 of Alien Prince’s Fake Bride (The Tentacle Throne #1)

- Mareliux -

“Their behavior is strange, sir. They keep falling back, only rarely attacking.” My executive officer points to the strategic display.

I glance at the big main screen in the control room of the Gladiux .

“Pulling us deeper into space. Either to ambush us at some point or to just get us away. It’s well done, though.

They mix retreating with small attacks so it doesn’t become too obvious.

But they’re definitely dragging us away from Khav. ”

“Into an ambush?” my second in command thinks out loud. “If their main force is waiting somewhere out there, we wouldn’t be able to spot them until we’re too close to get away.”

“That’s possible,” I agree. “But it’s too early to draw conclusions. We’ve barely started chasing them. We clearly have more and better warships than they do.”

The Vyrpy ships are too far away to spot, but the enhanced image shows only the glow from their engines as they retreat. As I watch, one of them turns around and comes at us.

“Another small attack,” I muse. “By a ship that can have no hope of even harming any of our ships. Yes, they are really eager that we follow them. Open fire.”

I try to get comfortable in the seat. I’m aware that I’m squirming in the made-to-measure chair.

I just can’t seem to get into the battle focus that I usually fall into when we fight.

My thoughts keep returning to Khav, to the one I left behind there.

She’s safe, of course. The Calanians will watch over her, and anyone who wants to harm her will have to go through Caret’ax.

No Emperor was ever safer in his citadel.

And yet I’m unsettled. The atmosphere in the whole palace city was so strange, so subdued. Umbra was so unsure about her own safety. What did she sense through the Syntrix? Should I have brought her with me?

The shudder from the Gladiux’s main guns goes through the ship, but there’s no sound. A ray of white briefly connects my ship to the small Vyrpy ship, and then there’s only a debris field left of it.

“Good hit from the first shot,” the weapons officer reports. “Target destroyed. Completely destroyed, in fact.”

“Good aiming,” I praise her. “Now let’s slow down and let some of the other ships of our fleet get some gunnery practice, too.”

“Yes, sir,” the navigation officer says. “We have time.”

Umbra. Shadow. But what she brought into my life wasn’t darkness.

It was light . A light I haven’t seen for a long time, and had no hope of seeing again.

With Terieli, a got a short glimpse of it.

But that was a young love, raw and wide-eyed and uncritical.

With Umbra, things are different. It’s an adult, calm and certain love that burns with a constant, white-hot passion.

And to my astonishment, I even trust her! We’ve fought together so many times now. If she was going to betray me, she already had every chance to do that. And the Soulbound thing is obviously real, despite the Syntrix being so quiet now.

A coldness settles in the pit of my stomach. I left her. Shes alone in a slike’s nest. Stuck in one place, locked up. By me.

“Sir, the Pilum reports target destroyed,” the tactical officer says. The other, bigger ships in our task force pass us, their gun turrets rotating to track the enemy.

I tap my lips. This all seems too easy. And that doesn’t look like the full Vyrpy fleet.

An unpleasant suspicion goes through my mind. No, it’s too far-fetched. But if it isn’t…

“Let’s fall back to the rear,” I order, starting to worry for real. “We have to see where this could be going.”