Page 17 of Chased by the Alien Mercenary (Monster Mercenary Mates #6)

Raising the comm, I snapped a picture of his face, then laughed again when he blinked at me in surprise.

“You’re lovely too,” I said, happiness bursting inside my chest like champagne.

He was lovely, because he was so sweet and so different.

I’d never been treated by anyone the way he treated me, and already I knew that I could trust him more than I had trusted anyone before.

It was such a novel idea, and, feeling so safe after all the danger and fear, it made me want to tease and laugh and flirt. It made me want to feel alive.

As Solear offered me the sweetest, tentative smile, I knew I was going to make it my mission to bring out those smiles all the time.

To make sure he was no longer the threatened, buried, and oh-so-scared and lonely boy inside his dreams. First, though, we needed to find our ride off this damn planet and to safety.

***

Solear

When I had first met Evie, I thought she was a strange, confusing female—one who had come to take my brother from me, to usurp my place inside his heart.

I’d learned since then that the heart only grew; Aramon had space inside his chest for me and for her.

Now I was learning that perhaps it was simply human nature to be confusing and strange.

No, human females, it was their domain to befuddle the male mind.

I had no issues understanding Thatcher; after all, the human ex-soldier was almost as feral as I was.

I understood him better than most males aboard the Varakartoom.

So it was a female thing that made them confusing.

Sadly, I only knew Ysa, our Ulinial engineer, outside of humans, and only in passing.

That was not enough to know if this behavior crossed species or was unique to females of all kinds.

I’d have to ask Aramon, but he was sleeping with his mate, sleeping in, lazy and safe. I did not want to disturb him.

Lyra called me lovely, and that made my chest feel too large inside my armor.

It made me feel confused, because nobody had ever called me lovely.

As far as I knew, no one—not even Evie—had ever said that to Aramon either.

She took my picture as though she meant to cherish the way I looked forever.

When she’d lamented the lack of a camera last night, this was not what I had expected her to do with it.

We made good progress downhill, and she was patient as I carried her.

Though she occasionally wanted me to pause so she could take a picture of a view—sometimes a flower or even a rock—I didn’t understand what she was doing until I stopped by the edge of the ravine to let her do her thing.

She came back to me, her face shiny with excitement as she thumbed through the images on the tiny comm screen to show me what she’d made.

The way she’d captured light falling onto colorful striations of rock… that was beautiful. She was making art.

Taking the comm from her, I raised it to her face and snapped a picture.

Then I growled with disappointment when it didn’t come out nearly as beautiful as she looked.

There was a glare of light; her features had gotten washed out, and an odd shadow fell over the left side of her face—possibly my thumb on the edge of the lens.

When she saw it, she smiled, chuckling with delight.

“Ah, come, we need to turn for a selfie, so we don’t have the light glaring into the lens. Like this, big guy.”

She hooked her arm through mine and shuffled us around, then raised the comm and tilted it slightly left, then right, before settling on an angle.

At the last moment, she poked my side, catching me completely by surprise.

I growled, twisting to look at her, and that’s when she snapped her picture.

Confused, I yanked the comm from her fingers to look and was startled to see the two of us together on the screen.

Her radiant smile, the teasing light in her eyes captured to perfection.

My own face was angled toward her, surprised but also… happy?

The brush of her fingers against the edge of my jaw made me jerk my eyes from the tiny display to look at her.

“I thought that would make you laugh, but I guess you’re not ticklish.

” Ticklish? Blazing stars, fucking ticklish?

Aramon would laugh until he choked if he heard that, and, oddly enough, I wanted to share that with him anyway.

My female wanted to tickle me. My female—my mate—did the opposite of what everyone else around me did.

She came right at me, invaded my personal space without a hint of fear.

I snarled and growled, and all she did was burrow closer. Ticklish?

It did tickle something inside of me, not the touch, the word.

It caught me completely by surprise when a laugh burbled up from deep inside my belly, booming across the ravine and echoing against the mountainside.

A real, belly-shaking laugh. It filled me with a light feeling, easing tense muscles throughout my body until it wasn’t Lyra who was at risk of floating from my grasp, I felt like I was the one about to drift up to the stars.

And then a memory crashed through my mind—one I had not recalled for so long that I didn’t even know I had it, buried deep beneath the trauma of Jalima’s devastation to my hometown and my family.

Aramon and I at the table, our dad across from us, trying to make us eat our greens by pulling funny faces.

A tactic that had never worked before, but he always tried it anyway, and it always made us laugh until we were rolling under the table in fits of hilarity.

My father smiling with twinkling eyes, my brother happy, me happy.

Happy. Ah, fuck, that’s what I was feeling when I felt like floating. That was happiness?

Lyra was right there, waiting for me when I surfaced from the moment in the past. She smiled.

“Feel better?” When I nodded, she tucked the communicator away and became serious.

“Then let’s get to business, shall we? I see the mansion.

Are we stealing one of their ships? I know there’s some kind of surface vehicle they took to the landing patch.

Pretty sure the ship itself is heavily guarded, though. Probably not our best bet.”

The switch of context was abrupt, but I didn’t know I needed that until she deftly did it.

As if she understood the intensity of what I’d just been feeling and knew I needed a moment to regroup.

Feelings were hard, but happiness was not nearly as difficult as rage; I felt buoyed, energized rather than exhausted.