Page 35 of Chased by the Alien Mercenary (Monster Mercenary Mates #6)

Lyra

To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement.

The past two hours had been a crazy whirlwind of events.

From meteors to sex and love declarations, to this standoff with the Xurtal bastard.

Now, I was finally meeting Solear’s twin in the flesh, and I was not sure I could reconcile what I knew of him, what I’d expected, with what I was seeing.

I barely had time to adjust to this new situation before it all changed again.

It happened so fast that, even afterward, I struggled to put the pieces together.

I just knew that I heard a laser pistol go off, and then everyone was moving.

The world spun as I was tossed about, and I found myself on my knees, then tumbling to the tarmac.

I never struck it with my hands, caught instead around the waist by Solear and buffered by something green and soft, as if my hands had struck a pillow of moss, not asphalt.

Blinking at the sight of plants suddenly draped across a previously barren ground, I struggled to get my bearings. Then I heard the pained groan.

I knew that noise, I knew it well, because it had filled those first, tension-filled moments when I’d first met Solear.

They’d tossed him, injured and unconscious, into my cell, and he’d made a noise exactly like that several times.

“Are you hurt? Solear, are you hurt?” I frantically demanded.

I scrabbled for purchase against the soft moss with my fingers, clawing through the spongy surface.

It withdrew abruptly, slithering away like a snake, but now I could push off against the firm tarmac and twist to look at my mate.

He held me around my waist with both arms, body hunched around mine in what had to be an attempt to shield me from that laser I’d heard. He’d been struck!

“Where? Where did he hit you! That bastard, I’m gonna kill him myself!

” I said, but despite the murderous words, I clasped Solear’s beloved face and searched his eyes—searched them for signs of pain, signs that he was dying on me.

I was barely aware of the others around us, but a whole horde of men in black armor, just like my mate, formed a shield between us and the space port.

His skin felt warm, but not hot; his eyes were bright and full of that heat he always had for me.

“Fine,” he said—and he said it out loud—a rough, broken growl, but understandable all the same.

Those men who guarded us? They froze, shifted on their feet, turned to look at us, and some even exclaimed in surprise.

That one word was the extent of his attempt to talk, though; the rest came to me along our telepathic bond, and I was so incredibly grateful we had that.

“ It was not a direct hit, ” he explained, which still sounded bad to me, but he shrugged like it was nothing.

“ But it would have killed you. I’m fine.

My armor absorbed most of it. ” That was followed, much more smugly, with: “ Dead now. Can’t ever hurt you again. ”

He twisted his head then, a tilt within the palms of my hands that allowed him to peer past his side, past the boots of his pals, to Heliosor’s body.

The Xurtal was definitely dead now, smoke curling from what might have been a dozen holes in his body.

Talk about overkill. Possibly every friend of Solear’s had fired at least twice in response to his attempt to shoot me.

Solear did not have a gun, though; his focus had been solely on protecting me, taking the blow in my stead.

Horrified at the near miss—for both of us—I threw my arms around his neck and clung to him, peering over his broad back to check that his armor really had absorbed most of it.

The crater I saw right in the middle of his spine made me gasp.

“What the hell do you mean your armor absorbed most of it? It made a fucking crater the size of Jupiter, damn it! What the hell, Solear? We need to get you to a doctor right now!” And he laughed—that crazy man—he tossed back his head and laughed.

The sound was so sweet, though: that low, husky voice with a belly laugh so bright and happy.

“He’s fine,” the creepy, bossy guy said over the merry sound.

And terrifying as I found this man, with his deep gray skin marked with all kinds of ethereal symbols and lines, I glared at him.

Glared at him hard. How dare he interrupt the happiness of my sweet mate?

If anyone deserved to have a good laugh, it was Solear.

Though, granted, I’d prefer he didn’t do that right after he’d been shot in the back.

“Get up and move out. Now!” the bossy guy said, despite my glare, ignoring me as if I didn’t exist. He sounded so angry that it made my eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Was he sour or what?

Solear and the others all responded to that order.

My mate’s laughter ended, and he swung me into his arms and rose to his feet in a fluid motion.

Then we were moving—me carried bridal-style—the others all surrounding us like before, rifles at the ready in their arms, their eyes on the dead bodies and the spaceport visible between the stacks of crates.

Alert and making up for not noticing the danger the dying Xurtal bastard had posed, their strides were in sync and fast enough that there was no way I could have ever kept up in my too-large boots.

In no time, they’d left the stacked crates and our illicit battle site behind, fleeing a scene I had no doubt the port authorities and those military men from earlier wouldn’t like.

“Thanks, Lyra,” Aramon said as they walked, and I clung there in the arms of my possibly injured mate.

Solear’s twin was on my right, leaning in a little to wink at me with a wide grin.

Sharp canines glinted at the corners of his mouth, but the rest of his teeth were blunter and straighter, like mine, and very much unlike Solear’s sharp rows.

“I haven’t heard my brother’s laugh in fifteen years.

” He made that sound so light and cheerful, like that wasn’t a punch to the gut—but something that glimmered at the back of red eyes identical to my mate’s belied that.

That mattered to him, a lot, and it made me choke up with emotion.

Damn it, the last thing I wanted was to start crying in front of all these scary men, even, or maybe especially, if they were Solear’s friends.

“Oh. You’re welcome?” I managed to choke out.

Glancing around, I noticed that, on my left, a green alien was peering at me from the corners of his eyes.

He had odd green hair that almost looked like thin branches of leaves, like a fern, maybe.

Something also glowed on his temple, like an extra eye.

But, more confusingly, he had tentacles growing from his back.

No, not tentacles—vines—and one was covered with a thick layer of moss.

So that’s what I’d landed on in the chaos, and that was probably not an accident.

The others surrounding us were harder to study, as they had their backs to me or were behind Solear, and I could no longer see over his shoulder.

I was pretty sure one looked like a gargoyle come to life, one looked distinctly human, and then there was the scary gray dude.

They were all different, but all the same too, in their sleek black armor.

Tall, insanely in shape, deadly. Yet they crossed through the port smoothly, drawing next to no attention, not even from the guards patrolling the tarmac.

Then a sleek black shuttle came into view, and I knew—without it being said—that this was their destination.

It just matched their armor and their deadly vibe.

And suddenly, I itched to pull out my stolen comm device and take pictures of these guys lined up in front of the small but sleek and fast-looking ship.

If I could convince them to take off their tops…

it would make for a fantastic alien take on a fireman’s calendar, and I would bet it would sell like hotcakes, even if I knew nothing about this Quadrant at all.

Then I spotted the two women trotting off the ship, guarded protectively behind one very big, very alien creature.

“Humans,” I breathed in surprise. I recognized Evie right away; her bright red hair gave her away.

She was Aramon’s human mate. The other woman was more hidden, standing behind a very large alien who wore black armor like Solear’s mercenary friends.

I couldn’t see much of her beyond her face peeking out around one muscled arm.

And the guy himself? He was more impossible than any of the aliens I’d seen to date, even the ugly warthog, Krektar, and the dude growing plants from his back.

He was half snake, half man, his coils possibly amounting to more than thirty feet in length, maybe more.

All of him was black, except for the streaks of green in his long hair and the shimmer of gold along his cheekbones.

I recognized his face and drew in a shocked breath when I realized this was the captain Solear respected so much.

I’d seen him in Solear’s recollection and on that one comm call, but not enough of him to grasp the reality of his shape.

“Naga,” Solear supplied for me, but that was all.

“Lyra! You guys made it!” Evie called out, waving wildly with one hand, while the other rested on the butt of a pistol holstered at her hip.

She seemed careful about her own safety, but that wariness faded when Aramon broke away from our little group to jog ahead and sweep her into his arms with a loud, “Hello, mate!”

“Yes, welcome to the crew, Lyra. You can’t imagine how happy all of us are to have you.

” That came from the other woman. We’d reached them now, and smoothly, everyone boarded the shuttle, settling into familiar places and guarding the hatch so we humans could enter first. Solear thumped down into a seat without putting me down, holding me tightly in his lap.

That made greeting these women awkward, but I did not care.

I was not leaving his side for anything.

I was fine with being carried around by him as much as he wanted, for now.

Solear knew I was thinking that because he rumbled a satisfied sound deep in his throat and nestled me closer, nuzzling at my hair.

The captain also welcomed me aboard, but then he moved away from the second woman to talk at the front of the shuttle.

Aramon was in the pilot’s seat, and the gargoyle guy was next to him, his big hands on the navigational computer.

He wasn’t plugged in with a wire like my mate had been, but perhaps that wasn’t necessary simply to fly up to the ship in orbit. That’s where I assumed we were headed.

“I am Manyin, but you can call me Mandy,” the new woman said.

She was small of stature, but she had a presence so confident that she seemed bigger.

Or maybe it was just the big roundness of her heavily pregnant belly and the obvious glow that came with it.

Of Asian ethnicity, she had beautiful, almond-shaped eyes and a cap of shiny black hair that just brushed her shoulders.

Her accent was odd; I couldn’t place it.

It did not have the distinct UAR tones I was used to almost everywhere in the Alpha Quadrant I’d gone.

Come to think of it, Evie sounded exotic too, but she had such a well-modulated and practiced speaking voice that I hadn’t immediately noticed.

“Hello, Mandy. I’m Lyra,” I said, and then, after a short pause, “I’m Solear’s mate.

” That made her smile, and I could tell I was being stared at with more than a little curiosity from the guys inside the shuttle, but nobody said anything.

Mandy smiled warmly, though, and she repeated what the captain had already told me before: that I was incredibly welcome aboard the Varakartoom .

Then the ship began to lift off, and while everyone else was sitting, neither the captain nor Mandy was.

She stood in front of me, hands on her hips as she gave me the greeting spiel.

His long tail uncurled as he braced himself against the pilot’s seat, sliding around her body to hold her.

She did not bat an eye; she just kept smiling like nothing was amiss, like she hadn’t just been snatched up like a python wanted to snack on her.

“This is my mate and the captain of the Varakartoom, Asmoded. I believe you’ve already spoken? ” Well, that explained it.