Page 4 of Entangled by the Alien Mercenary (Monster Mercenary Mates #4)
Elyssa
My wrists had been bound tightly in front of me, and the Elrohirian male was now working to bind my ankles. He made sure I knew exactly how vulnerable I was with each motion of his hand, brushing it blatantly along my thigh, cupping a feel of my ass and breasts. I hissed in fury but said nothing. There was nothing I could do. “You shouldn’t have chosen this path, Elyssa,” the male drawled with a satisfied smirk. “Why would you do this? Wasn’t your brother good to you? Where’s your loyalty?” He tsked as if this annoyed him, but I knew he was far too pleased about having me in his control.
This male was cut from the same cloth as Elpherian had been, a bully, a control freak, and a sadist. I was not surprised by what he was saying or doing, but that didn’t make it any less terrible. I was no stranger to fear; I’d lived with the shadow of it most of my young adult and adult life, ever since my parents had been killed in an accident and I’d become my brother’s responsibility. At some point, that fear for your safety stopped being so debilitating, and rage and anger took its place. I had had enough of this; that’s why I’d chosen to reach out to Brace and do something good for once in my life.
“We’ll talk loyalty when you’re not holding a knife to my throat,” I said to the male who so reminded me of my brother. He rose to his feet, towering over me with an angry scowl. The Caratan chain that dangled from his nose ring to his earlobe declared his Clan, his family, and his profession with proudly gleaming disks of gold. It was not lost on me that he had more statements to make than I did on my chain. He was something in the eyes of Elrohirian society, and I was not.
“You don’t have to talk at all. Unless it’s to tell us where you hid the information we are after.” Before being tied up, the asshole had patted me down, emptied my pockets, and taken the meager supplies in my satchel. They had not located any type of data storage, and I knew this was the only reason they had not proceeded to use me for their entertainment before killing me. As soon as I handed over what they were after, I was a dead woman.
Raising my chin as haughtily as I could with my pulse pounding in my throat, I looked him square in the eye. “I hid it somewhere. Kill me, and you’ll never find it. Kill me, and in ten days’ time, that information will be leaked to every major news outlet in the Zeta Quadrant.” My voice didn’t tremble as I bluffed as hard as I could, and I could see how they shared uneasy glances with each other. There was no data in a secret location, and I definitely hadn’t talked with any major news outlets. But as long as they believed that was true, they wouldn’t kill me.
The Elrohirian male appeared to be in charge, and with a snapped curse, he gave me a nod. “Tomorrow, you will take us to where you hid it.” He didn’t say it outright, but I knew what the threat was. I was dead if he thought I was playing them—but maybe , if I gave him what he was after, he’d let me live. There was no other option but to stall them as long as possible and hope for a chance to escape in the meantime. No one was coming to rescue me. Brace was dead, and even if he had survived, I doubted he would have considered me his responsibility to save. I was on my own.
Biting my lip, I watched through tired eyes as Jalima’s men began to make a quick camp for the night. It appeared that they did not feel like trekking through a dark jungle anymore than I did, and I was relieved when they made a fire. Surely, that would scare off any predators? The smoke did seem to help keep the bugs away, and with my back against the stone cliff, I was somewhat sheltered. Cold was still seeping into my bones from the damp ground, and with my hands and legs bound, no position was comfortable.
I counted at least twelve people by now. There were several more Kertinal, a pair of Asrai, and a Tarkan who kept giving me uneasy glances. There was also a Hoxiam like Brace, whom they kept collared, though the lights were suspiciously lacking on the thing. I had a feeling that male was no slave, but Viridara did not readily allow a flesh-eating Hoxiam into their colonies. Too many people were watching me to try and sneak away, so I tried to curl into a more comfortable position and ignore my empty stomach. If I couldn’t escape, I should rest as much as I could to save my strength for tomorrow.
“She could be lying, Tahirel,” one male hissed from across the campfire while he glared at me. “She probably doesn’t have anything on Jalima, and we’re camping out in the woods for no good reason.” The Elrihirian male, Tahirel, did not take kindly to that kind of criticism and complaining. A quick slap-down followed, and the Kertinal who had dared to speak out was quickly assigned the first watch of the night. People were rolling themselves up in blankets around the fire, getting ready to sleep, and I was completely ignored but also completely surrounded.
Things were quieting down then, but the jungle seemed alive with noise around me: the rustling of leaves, the creaking of a tree branch scraping against the cliff, and the sounds of hundreds of insects and night creatures—bird calls I did not recognize, one in particular eerie enough to remind me of ghosts and death. Far away, there was also still the sound of a large fire roaring, and if I squinted in a certain direction, I could even still see the glow of the wreck burning.
I heard it because all my senses were still on high alert—so wired that, even when exhausted, I couldn’t shut anything off. Whether the poor Kertinal who had been ordered to keep watch heard it, I wasn’t certain. Elrohirian hearing was much better than that of most species in the quadrant, and this was a high-pitched noise to which my ears were extra sensitive.
Jerking upright from my slouch, I craned my head left and right to look for the source. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and my stomach did a somersault. Every instinct inside of me said that something really bad was about to happen, but I couldn’t tell what. Was it the high screech that shivered through the night, eerie and cold, like nails on glass? Slipping to my knees, I prepared myself for the worst, certain that a predator was going to leap from the trees at any moment. What did happen wasn’t far from the truth.
The ground opened up beneath the fire as if whatever was down there was drawn to the heat. With a crack, the earth split, and the fire crashed to its depths in a flurry of ashes and sparks. The sleeping people closest to the fire were tossed about, and one unfortunate soul went the way of the fire, tumbling into the hole. The others leaped to their feet, drawing weapons and shouting. For several seconds, everything was absolute chaos, and nobody knew what was happening. Then it happened again—the ground split right beneath the feet of a cluster of males.
The sinkhole that opened this time was not as deep, and with horror I saw the jagged edges and points of a hundred teeth inside that pit. If I’d been scared for my life before, the fear I felt now was a thousand times worse. What in the blazing stars was that? I couldn’t recall anything about pit monsters with a thousand fangs in the tourist brochures. What was that thing?
With my feet tied together, I was extra vulnerable, unable to run or jump. The ground was closing again, and though several of Jalima’s goons had managed to leap out of the way, I heard the crunching of bones and the screams of the dying who hadn’t escaped. If that thing decided to open the ground beneath me, I was a goner—swallowed in a single bite, though I was certain it was not going to be a quick death.
Tahirel appeared out of the dark at my side, his scowling features now accompanied by wide, fearful eyes. That wasn’t good. His knife flashed, cutting quickly through the ties around my ankles, but he did not free my hands as he yanked me to my feet. “Run” was all he said, his fist tight around my upper arm as he propelled us away from the cliff and toward the woods. Almost immediately, the ground seemed to buckle beneath my feet, and a hole began to open.
I threw myself to the side, and Tahirel did the same, landing heavily on top of me. My breath slammed out of me on a pained gasp, but there was no time to feel pain. I was already elbowing myself back up, scrambling to my feet on unsteady legs to begin running. A scream ripped from me, breathy and high, as I had little oxygen to spare. It was chaos all around me—males fighting with laser pistols and knives against whatever was in the ground, and also against shadows that leaped from the cliff above ground. This was like nothing I’d ever seen before, though that didn’t say much; I’d lived a very sheltered life.
Predators didn’t attack like this—I was certain of it. What kind of crazy dangers could a lush, peaceful planet like a Viridara colony possibly hide? My brain just couldn’t make sense of a threat other than Jalima’s men right now. Wasn’t that enough to deal with? Then I saw him, and even less made sense.
A Viridara male came racing out of the woods and threw himself, heedless of his own safety, into the fight. It was very clear from his apparel that he was not one of the males under Tahirel’s control. The black armor he wore was already torn along his side and back, hinting at beautiful emerald skin streaked with purple. His body moved like poetry, like water, as he slid around males and wreaked havoc on the ground creatures with carefully aimed blasts from the pair of laser pistols in his fists. Instantly, the tide of battle was turning—people stopped screaming and started fighting back, rallying around him: the green stranger.
Across a gaping pit filled with teeth, beneath a squawking canopy of flying things , our eyes met. His were black as night—dark pools with no iris and no white. They were large, and his face was narrow and sharp. As our eyes met, spots flared along his temples, glowing bright and golden. They looked like eyes, giving the illusion that he had an extra pair on each temple. It should have been terrifying, but instead, it was beautiful and exotic.
I had never seen eyes like that, which was silly because, since arriving on Viridara Three, I’d been surrounded by Viridara people all day, every day. They all had eyes exactly like that—no exceptions—and yet… this guy was different, and I didn’t know why. It was the high of the battle, the danger that surrounded me—that was the only answer. It was the only way I could explain how my hormones went utterly nuts at the sight of him. He was the sexiest male I’d ever seen, moving so gracefully yet so economically as he dispatched these terrifying ground monsters. He made it look like he did this everyday without breaking so much as a sweat.
I felt like time had frozen, but it was me who had stopped in place to stare. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as he fought. Our brief moment of eye contact was broken because he had thrown himself wholeheartedly back into the fight. Seriously, did he just somersault over a guy to fire his guns at the next beast? That was a superhero move right there. The way he moved was incomparable to any of the other males—like this jungle was his home. Using a tree as a springboard, he swung one-handed from a branch and kicked with both feet. It was then that I realized he wasn’t just fighting the beasts—he was fighting everyone .
Our eyes connected again just as Tahirel tightened his grip around my bicep and began pulling once more, urging me in a gruff voice to run and keep up or he’d put a gun to my head. Even as I was forced to backpedal awkwardly, I held that connection as long as I could with the stranger. That look made me feel like I knew him—like I’d known him all my life. The fine hairs on my neck stirred again, but this time, the sensation was joined by the rough perking of my nipples beneath my shirt. This was the kind of look I’d read about in the romance novel collection my mom had left me—the love-at-first-glance kind of look. Too bad life had taught me not to believe in that sort of thing.
It felt like I was wrenched away by a hook in my chest when the connection finally broke. A pained gasp escaped my throat, betraying my weakness. It was echoed in the loud roar my green action hero let out. He was coming after me, but Tahirel was not going to let me go. He propelled me into the woods, away from the fight, and into the darkness. I knew, even without seeing, that my stranger was doing everything in his power to reach me. I also knew it wouldn’t be enough—there were still dozens of opponents: pits, flying creatures, and Jalima’s goons between us.
Tahirel was a coward for running, but he was a smart one.