Page 34 of Chased by the Alien Mercenary (Monster Mercenary Mates #6)

I growled, abandoning the fight to dive onto Lyra and protect her at any cost. Not quite as I had planned, but I had my priorities straight.

I was not a mindless beast. I was not out of control.

Unlike before, I would never make the mistake of picking vengeance over the safety of my mate again.

The Xurtal wasn’t dead, just wounded, but he could limp away if it meant no stray lasers struck my Lyra.

The dust settled in moments, with not so much as a shout to alert any guards.

That didn’t mean they weren’t coming; they certainly would have heard the Xurtal’s initial scream when I caught him by the throat.

I didn’t know what had gone down, just knew that more guns had gone off than I could account for.

When I slowly raised my head and took stock, it wasn’t exactly a surprise to see Aramon jump down from the top of a stack of crates, guns in both hands. “Need some help, bro?” he quipped.

Around us, the guards had all gone down, dead by the hands of my twin or my crewmates.

I saw Tass’s green head pop around the edge of a corner, and Thatcher and the Sineater were holstering their weapons on the other side of the narrow passage we were in.

They’d come in time to take everyone out.

I should have known that’s what Aramon was up to when he closed his thoughts—he didn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Bastard. I grinned at him, infinitely pleased to see him.

Lyra was light as a feather when I pulled her to her feet, and I proudly turned her to face my twin, my hands resting on her slender shoulders in what was certainly a possessive manner.

The dead guards were all around us, but my Xurtal target had rolled away and was crawling, bleeding badly from the gut wound I’d inflicted on him with his own weapon.

He wasn’t going to make it, I’d see to that, or else Aramon would.

“This is Lyra,” I told my brother, and a smile split my face that I simply couldn’t hold back.

It was an odd feeling, the way my cheeks pulled, almost, but not quite, a cramp.

It felt like I was baring my teeth in a threatening manner, but that was what a smile was supposed to look like, wasn’t it?

My mate raised a hand and waved at Aramon as if she’d heard my introduction.

I could not see her face, just the crown of her brown hair, but I knew she was smiling at him.

Shy, but also friendly, no, perhaps not shy so much as reticent, and I liked that she wasn’t that way with me.

“Nice to meet you, Lyra,” Aramon said, casually stepping over the body of the guard at his feet.

He held out his hand in an odd manner, but Lyra seemed to understand it, reaching out hers, and they shook when they gripped hands.

Afterward, Lyra shook out her fingers as if my twin had squeezed too hard, so I gave him a warning growl.

He had the grace to look apologetic. “Sorry, I forget how fragile humans are!”

“Apologize later,” the Sineater drawled, a crackle of reprimand in his tone.

I was used to that; he always talked that way to me.

I did not take offense—I knew I was too hostile to the crew—but he could not talk in that tone to my mate.

When I glared at him, a smirk curled his gray mouth, and his dark eyes sparked with some kind of inner fire that made a chill crawl up my spine.

Everything about him made a male uneasy.

He was just… wrong. Not evil, but not right—a predator that slithered in the dark.

He might very well know exactly what I was thinking, and likely I was far from alone in that.

Lyra had shuffled back, her body pressing against my front as if she could not control the visceral response to flee from him.

It did not seem to matter to him. “We must leave right away, before the authorities descend on us in droves.” The Sineater was the official second-in-command aboard the Varakartoom; when he gave an order, you obeyed.

Even Aramon and I did, though we’d known Asmoded longer than he had.

When he made a sharp hand gesture, everyone fell into formation around Lyra and me.

My instincts did not like that, making me feel trapped within the circle of armor-clad bodies surrounding us.

One of them was my twin, though, and another was Tass, with his amicable smile and friendly eyes.

Vines twined along his shoulders, carefully out of the way, but also capable of shielding protectively.

I trusted both of them, so I tolerated the others.

It wasn’t about me, anyway—they only did that because of my mate.

We moved slowly at first, around the bodies, and I realized it was also because the pace the Sineater set had been adjusted to Lyra’s short legs.

Just as I dipped to pick her up, movement from the corner of my eye made me react without thinking.

I should have realized that “down” was not “out,” and a cornered beast was twice as dangerous.

Though not the only one responding, we weren’t fast enough to stop the bastard from raising the barrel of his gun.

A shot sliced between Tass and the big Tarkan Raukash.

It would have struck Lyra in the chest, but with a roar, I threw myself between her and the deadly fire.