Page 20 of Entangled by the Alien Mercenary (Monster Mercenary Mates #4)
Elyssa
“No! Go back! Damn it! Turn around right now! We can’t leave him…” It felt like someone had just torn my heart right out of my chest. Dramatic, but it was the truth. Leaving Tass behind like that felt far worse than anything I’d ever experienced before. It felt similar to how I’d felt when an Elrohirian police officer had come to the door of my home to tell my nanny that my parents had perished in a crash—like I’d never see him again.
Evie, the human woman I’d only just met, held onto me with both arms, awkwardly twisted around in her seat. It felt like her arms were the only thing holding me together and the only thing keeping me on the hover vehicle. If she hadn’t immediately turned to grip me like that, I would have thrown myself off the speeding vehicle to race back to Tass’s side. Tass and Nelly—both of them had been left behind. “We can’t,” Evie said. “They’re after the data you have. They’ll chase us when they realize you’re not there. Tass is strong, and he has the home advantage.”
Yeah, I knew all that, but he wasn’t invincible, and he had Nelly to protect. Knowing Tass, he’d try to draw them away from the sacred grove as much as possible, but how would we find him again after that? He had no comm with which to reach us. “We can’t leave him!” I said again, but I knew that the Asrai male wouldn’t listen. He was gunning the hover vehicle, pushing it to its limit and dangerously zigzagging around trees to avoid crashing. Soon, he launched us higher into the sky via a small clearing, and then we were speeding away above the treetops.
When I craned my head back as far as I could and squinted, my sharp eyesight allowed me to see a faint shimmer—the protective shielding of the grove. In front of that faint glitter hung the dark gray silhouette of a shuttle. That’s where Tass was, and it was already so far away that it was only a tiny blip on the horizon. We’d spent days trekking through these woods on foot, through weather that had turned dreadfully wet. Now, in less than two agonizing hours, we made it back to the beautiful stone cliffs where Tass and I had first met—the location of the abysmal Takchaw attack.
In minutes, we’d left those cliffs behind, too, and we were entering Bloom’s suburbs, where traffic picked up, and suddenly, we blended in. “You’ll turn around to find him?” I demanded of Aramon when the large port came into view—a coming and going of cargoships and passenger ships that filled the air with a constant hum. A particularly menacing black ship appeared to be our final destination, and my stomach clenched painfully. It felt so wrong to be heading to safety when Tass could be dead or dying back in the jungle, all alone.
“I will burn down the whole fucking jungle if that’s what it takes. Don’t worry,” Aramon assured me. I didn’t doubt that he would, but would that be enough? He could already be dead, and unlike my brother’s death—which had felt like freedom as much as it hurt—I didn’t think I’d ever be the same again if I never got to see Tass’s smile. Or feel a hug of arms and vines. Hear the deep rumble of his laugh, with that one tiny dimple.
We landed the vehicle beside the ship’s hangar bay doors, and I felt positively tiny beside the huge ship. From the ground, it was massive and impressive, bristling with weapons and sharp angles—a tank of metal and machinery—with only a handful of tiny windows breaking up its void of a shell. The sight of uniformed Viridara males patrolling around it confirmed what Tass had already explained: the ship had been detained until the shuttle crash that Tass had only barely escaped with his life had been investigated and the Varakartoom cleared of wrongdoing. They took a fire in their forests very seriously.
Our landing brought them rushing to our side, weapons—if not aimed our way—definitely at the ready. I was very grateful I did not have to deal with them and that it was Evie who glided gracefully into their midst to start explaining things. Aramon rushed me to the nearest airlock, and then I was with other black-armor-wearing males. It felt like I was a prisoner as they escorted me onto the ship, but I was glad to see the last of the Viridara police force, too. One of them had to be a plantist just like Tass; when he turned, his silhouette in the distance was unmistakable: a pair of vines rose from his shoulders.
Seeing that was like a punch to the gut. It finally dislodged the fearful tears—the worry I’d been holding back. Doubling over right there in the hallway beyond the airlock, a sob rose, shuddering painfully through my chest. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t move. All I could do was sink to my knees and clutch at my middle so I wouldn’t fall completely to pieces in front of all these strangers.
Through wet lashes, I saw a collection of big black boots, all of them attached to tough-as-nails, sinister-looking mercenaries. None of them knew what to do with a female having a complete meltdown in their hallway. It wasn’t until Aramon and Evie popped in through the airlock sometime later that anything changed. I was struggling to breathe between hiccups and sobs, and Evie hurried over to curl me in her arms with tender, soothing words. Aramon was barking orders in rapid succession, and one of the mercenaries ran off to do as he’d demanded.
“We can’t fucking leave,” Aramon hissed, and I struggled to contain a wave of despair at that news. No, Tass needed help now—not in three weeks, when the Viridara finally got it through their thick heads that the fire and crash were not caused by the Varakartoom. He needed help now . And if they couldn’t leave, then I would. I was not part of the crew; I wouldn’t be on the ship’s crew list, and that had to mean I was free to go.
Surging to my feet, Evie stumbled up with me but managed to gracefully keep her arm around my shoulders. “Then I will save him!” I declared furiously to the silent hallway of deadly but oh-so-useless mercenaries. “I am not leaving Tass behind. I’m not.” Reaching up, I yanked the stupid family medallion ruthlessly from my Caratan chain and tossed it to the floor at Aramon’s feet. “You can give this to Brace. It’s what he was supposed to retrieve instead of Tass.” Then I shrugged out of Evie’s supportive embrace and stalked back to the airlock, all too aware of the many eyes on me as I did so.
I wiped the tears from my face with the sleeve of my jumpsuit, then grabbed hold of the manual lock that kept the airlock shut. When I pulled, it didn’t budge, and I hissed in frustration, turning to glare at Aramon and the silent mercenaries crowding the hallway with him. There were four of them, all looking confused and uneasy, but Aramon looked grim.
“Nobody leaves my ship without my say-so, Elrohirian,” a sinister, sibilant voice announced. I froze, fear suddenly rushing through my veins—sharp and sickly. My legs wanted to tremble, but I forced them to lock, forced myself to stand tall in front of that door with my chin raised. No cowering, no weakness. Tass needed help, and I was going to make sure he got it. If not for him, none of us would have made it to the Varakartoom. We owed him everything.
The new arrival was a Naga male—tall, covered in black scales that reminded me of the black armor the mercenaries on this ship all wore. His front was speckled with a fine dusting of bright green and gold, and his eyes glowed with intelligence and danger. Hair rose from a widow’s peak, cascading in silky locks around his shoulders, some of it partially restrained by braids. His mouth was pinched with displeasure, and I fought the instinct to shrink into myself, to wither like a misbehaving child. There was no doubt that this was the captain of the ship. Every single male inside the hallway snapped to attention for him; even Aramon seemed a little brighter, a little more behaved.
“But you are right, female. We will not leave a man behind.” Those words took the wind right out of me, and I shuddered, pressing my back against the cool metal of the airlock to stay upright. With my eyes locked on the menacing presence of the captain, I hadn’t noticed that he had not come alone. Another Asrai stood at his left, and a human female was on his right. “Aramon, ready an away party. This has taken long enough.”
“And I’ll take our guest to the mess hall,” the human woman said, and she stepped over the tail of the captain without hesitation to approach me. She had black hair that hung straight down to her shoulders, exotically tilted brown eyes, and a no-nonsense attitude. I couldn’t help but feel calmer as soon as she took charge of me, like there was no other option but to trust her. It helped that I could see Aramon unite with the other Asrai and how the pair was directing the rest of the mercenaries out of the airlock. Of course, for them, it did open. I wondered how they were going to manage to get away if they hadn’t managed to convince their guard yet.
“Come, let’s go, sweetie. We’ll take care of this. Tass is going to be fine.” The human woman did not introduce herself as she urged me to follow her, but that was okay. They were doing something, finally. Evie came with us, murmuring assurances, and I forced myself to explain about Tass.
“Look, he just got some kind of paperwork processed that proclaims him a plantist! Maybe if you explain that you want to rescue one of their plantists who’s in danger, that’ll work! Some criminals shot down one of their own… Maybe they’ll finally let you off this damn ship! Tass needs help now; he stayed behind to fight dozens of Jalima’s men. I saw the shuttle. De’tor is there, and Tahirel.” I was spewing a lot of words, hoping that any of them would help him. If it were up to me, I’d still be charging out that airlock myself, but it was already sealed behind Aramon and the few men he’d picked to take.
At least both women were politely listening to me, murmuring agreements. They were allowing me to let it out of my system, and that helped a tiny bit. It helped enough to say what really bothered me: “I should never have left him. We should have stayed there and helped him…” I had abandoned him, run to safety while he delayed De’tor, and I was certain that cretin had come in force this time. If Tass was lucky, he would try once again to capture him alive for Jalima’s gladiator stables. That would give this crew the chance to rescue him, but I didn’t have faith in that. I was pretty sure Tass had proven too dangerous to contain, and De’tor was going to kill him.
“Aramon did exactly what he was supposed to do; he got you to safety.” The male voice that announced that spoke in a curt tone, which made me feel like he, unlike the women, was pretty fed up with my blabbering. The sibilant tones told me it had to be the scary-looking Naga captain, and when I twisted my head to look over my shoulder, I was instantly proven right. He was right behind me and the other two women, slithering after us silently but with deadly poise. This guy was a beast, a monster, and as close to a real-life representation of the ancient Elrohirian god Vamor, the deity of death and ice as one could get.
“You mean he got the data to safety,” I said, the snide remark coming from the deep fear locked in my chest—the fear that everything was already lost, that Tass, my bright, beautiful mate, was dead. I pointed at the small medallion he was holding in the scaly palm of his hand. In that grasp, the gold disk looked even smaller—looked meaningless, unimportant, the way the family that disk represented had become inconsequential. “That’s what really matters, isn’t it? That’s what you came here for?”
I’d learned enough from Tass to know that it wasn’t just Brace doing me a favor by accepting my request for help. Their captain had a long-standing vendetta against the Pretorian crimelord, and with that data, they could strike at the male. It had been stamped into me all my adolescent and adult life that you couldn’t trust anyone, that everyone was out for their own gain. It had taken me disastrously long to warm up to Tass and trust him when I’d known from that first glance that he was my mate. Trusting Tass’s captain was beyond me right now.
The Naga male’s features were hard to read, and he flicked out his split tongue as he tasted the air. Sharp gold eyes pierced mine, and I felt like he was staring straight into my soul with that gaze. “I said what I meant,” he drawled, “but yes, bringing me the data—that was important too.” His fist closed around the medallion, and he lifted his head to look at the exotic, dark-haired human. “Sweet mate, make sure this one gets a medical check-up. I have a call to make to the authorities.” With those parting words, he slithered rapidly past us and down a hallway.
“Don’t mind him,” the black-haired woman said. “He’s grumpy because Tass is missing. I know he doesn’t sound like he cares, but my mate is a regular bleeding heart, I promise. I’m Mandy, by the way.” Mandy was the captain’s mate. I struggled to wrap my head around that and struggled even more with the concept of a “bleeding heart.” What was that supposed to mean? It sounded painful, but he hardly looked like a male in distress. He looked deadly, powerful, and utterly terrifying. Mandy was a brave woman for mating a male like that.
My expression must have shown my bafflement because Mandy laughed, though it wasn’t wholehearted. “I mean, he cares a little too much. He takes in all kinds of strays and makes them part of his family. And I’m pretty sure that’s going to include you now.” I was trying to process that—a terrifying man who was secretly kind—as I followed the women. The hallways all looked confusing and the same—dark and gloomy—but Mandy and Evie had no trouble navigating them to reach the mess hall.
As soon as I stepped foot inside the large room filled with tables and the smells of cooking food, I knew: this was Brace’s domain. He had always said he’d open his own restaurant when he managed to escape Jalima’s stables; that’s where I’d expected to find him when I reached out to him months ago. Life had not turned out that way for him, but it had a way of doing that. I searched the room to find him and was dismayed to discover a nearly entirely pulled-down hatch between the galley and the mess hall. Was he there, behind that sliding panel? He wasn’t hiding, was he?
“Go sit down,” Evie said to us. “I’ll see if Brace can make us some tea and sandwiches. You must be hungry, Elyssa.” As soon as my name left her mouth, a loud bang came from the galley, followed by a low voice growling swearwords. It was such a familiar sound that a fresh wave of worry caught me in its talons, as if the sound of Brace’s familiar rumble made me unravel a little more and I couldn’t hold in that fear for Tass and for Nelly.
Shrugging from between Mandy and Evie, I ignored their startled sounds of surprise and raced for the nearly shut hatch. “Brace! Brace, is that you? Ah, stars, I thought you were dead! I’ve been so worried!” I caught the hatch with my hand, meaning to yank it up. It rattled as it began to move, but I never got far. A hand reached out and caught my wrist, holding me in place with a firm, though not painful, grasp. The blue pelt that covered that hand made it obvious it was Brace, but the scars that marred the knuckles were new. Or at least, they were new to me, but they looked old and healed.
“Don’t,” he huffed in a low tone. He had always been gruff, but when I knew him as a young girl, he had been a young male still filled with dreams and hopes. The voice I heard now did not sound hopeful; he sounded… lonely. “It is best if you stay on that side, Elly.”
Screw that, I didn’t want him to feel lonely when I was right here, and I could really use a hug from someone kind. Evie and Mandy were trying, but it wasn’t the same as having the support of your childhood buddy. Brace had once been like the brother I wished I had. It was only for a short period of my life—a few intense months when Elpherian and I stayed at one of Jalima’s homes. I had forgotten how close I’d felt to him until I heard his familiar voice; even the way he swore was familiar.
“No,” I said firmly. “I don’t accept that.” I twisted to look over my shoulder at the two silently observing humans behind me. Evie was looking on with a very polite expression, but Mandy seemed intrigued. When our eyes met, it felt like she was quietly urging me on. “By Vamor, god of death and ice, you better open that hatch and hug me, Brace. My mate is in danger; he might be dead… I could really use a friend. You’re still my friend, aren’t you?”
I knew he was. He wouldn’t have reached out to me and left me the contact details of his comm device all those years ago. He’d done that as soon as he got away from Jalima. I’d looked up the news articles about the escaped “Ice Beast” at that time. There hadn’t been any pictures, but I knew they were talking about Brace. He would not have done that if he didn’t care about me at least a little.
There was a long, protracted silence during which I could hear his labored breathing, accompanied by a buzzing in my ears from nerves. Then his thumb feathered over the pulse leaping in my wrist, and I knew I’d won. “Fine, but you must close your eyes. The rest of you, leave,” Brace growled in the grumpiest, snarkiest tone. Of course, neither Mandy nor Evie moved. I was pretty sure they had been ordered to stay at my side, though I hadn’t heard it.
He released my hand, and though I wanted to shove the hatch back up, I restrained that impulse and waited to see what he’d do. I was glad I did when I heard his heavy footsteps move through the galley to a side door on the left. It opened a crack, and I hurried over to it. He only opened it far enough for me to wriggle through, and he had turned off all the lights inside the galley. But Elrohirians saw well in the dark, especially when aided by a sliver of light from the mess hall coming from beneath the cracked hatch.
That didn’t mean I saw much of Brace other than a hulking outline. As a Hoxiam, he was eight feet tall, and he was clearly well-fed aboard this ship, too. He had fleshed out from the skinny, lean young male I’d known and become a hulking figure. Tass was a big guy—though lean—but Brace was easily twice as large. And he’d hung some kind of cloak around his shoulders, the hood drawn over his face. I couldn’t see anything but the faintest glitter of the many fangs inside his huge mouth.
“Well?” he growled. “What are you waiting for, Elly? This is what you wanted.” He made that sound like an accusation, but when I stepped forward and tucked myself against his massive, thickly furred chest, he was the one who sighed in relief. He awkwardly patted my shoulder, unsure of how to hug me, but that was okay; his presence was enough.
“I missed you,” I said against his fur, tears welling in my eyes. I’d never known how lonely I was inside Elpherian’s control—not until I’d met this male. For those few months we’d known each other, I’d run off to hide inside the gladiator stables every chance I got, and we’d talk—endlessly talk. I hadn’t found that connection again until I met Tass, and with him, it was even more because there was the mate bond that augmented it all.
“Missed you too,” he begrudgingly admitted. My sensitive ears could pick up the sighs the two women in the mess hall let out at that statement. “You really went ahead and fell for that skinny green fellow?” he tsked as if he disapproved, but then his voice turned less growly. “Tass is good at what he does. Best scout there is. If he’s in the jungle, they’ll never get him. Promise.”
I really hoped he was right. A world without Tass—a world without my mate and his strange companion—was not a world I wanted to face. But waiting for him to return to me felt impossible, and even with a hug from my friend and my stomach full of his food, I did not feel better. I didn’t think I could sleep, but when Mandy took me from the doctor’s quick health check to a room, I found that I could.
It was clearly Tass’s room aboard the Varakartoom. I recognized his hand in the maps that hung on the walls beside his bunk. There were three more beds, but they had to be unoccupied, as only one locker for personal things was in use. As I curled up in his blankets, it was his scent that helped lull me to sleep, and I dreamed of him back at my side, his arms and vines around me.