Page 10 of Fated to the Hunter (Xarc’n Warriors #13)

Despite the speed and convenience of a Xarc’n shuttle, crossing the continent was no small feat, especially with dozens of nests still scattered along the route. It just made more sense to do the trip in portions, stopping at friends and allies along the way.

Our first stop was the Great Plains camp, which was not a campsite at all, but a repurposed strip mall. I was curious to see how they’d set everything up, especially the aquaponics system I’d helped research.

I remembered thinking how crazy brave they were when they’d first decided to leave the relative safety of New Franklin to join another hunter group and start a new camp. And now I was doing something exponentially crazier.

That reality hadn’t fully settled yet because our trip so far had been quiet. Sure, there had been a few flyers that followed us part of the way, but they’d given up after a while.

If we were lucky, we’d get to the camp without incident.

As we flew, I sat on the shuttle floor and went through everything in my pack. It was the only thing I could think of to distract myself from the fact that I was alone in a shuttle with Bael’k, and that we’d started our mission with a toe-curlingly passionate kiss.

It was impossible to focus on anything else but him. His broad shoulders. Proud curving horns. Warm golden eyes. I kept replaying that kiss in my head. And when I closed my eyes, I could still feel his touch. His firm lips. His warm hands. And gah! That hard cock pressing between us.

I blew out a breath, realized I was doing it again. I was thinking about him and that kiss. Maybe it was because I was so touch- and sex-starved. I’d shoved my body’s needs neatly into a drawer for years and tossed away the key, too afraid to fall in love when the world was such a mess.

Travis and I hadn’t been soulmates. That much I was sure. But we checked all the boxes. We met in college. Went on dates. Our family approved. So he proposed, and we moved into the only two-bedroom apartment in the area we could afford.

The wedding got put on hold for a few years as our white picket fence dreams were waylaid by rising living costs and inflation.

We’d just been fighting about him blowing all our disposable income on a boys’ night out again when the bugs hit.

He’d wanted to hide, and I wanted to run.

He’d called me crazy, and I called him chicken shit.

In the end, the scuttlers in our hallway, breaking down our door, had forced us to run anyway.

I forced my attention on my pack. The first thing I took out was a bundle with a note in Janice’s super neat, I-swear-she’s-a-cyborg handwriting.

The bundle was still warm, and I opened it to find two foil-wrapped breakfast burritos.

Even with the foil still on, the scent of eggy goodness filled the shuttle, catching Bael’k’s attention.

I read the note out loud. “Breakfast for our brave adventurers. Good luck and come back in one piece. PS, the bigger one is for your stud muffin hunter.”

That was nice of her, except I really didn’t need the reminder that there was a very big chance I might not come back at all.

I tossed the larger burrito to Bael’k.

“Shuttle, what is a stud muffin?” he asked innocently.

“According to the humans’ online dictionary, a stud muffin is a male perceived as sexually attractive, typically one with well-developed muscles,” his shuttle replied.

He looked pensive for a moment, then declared loudly into the shuttle, “I shall be your stud muffin.”

I burst into a fit of giggles from the sheer ridiculousness of it all. “I accept, brave warrior. I accept.”

Bael’k was still grinning when he unwrapped his burrito and started devouring it in huge bites. I wasn’t hungry yet, so I turned back to my bag and its contents.

There were two bottles of water and a small stash of emergency food bars, the kind that claimed to last thirty-plus years, stored in the right conditions. Then came all the survival gear and special tech. Bael’k had stopped eating, his eyes focused on the mini drones.

“Have you ever flown one?” I asked.

“I have attempted. They are challenging. Different from our shuttles.”

“Yeah, they’re a bit tricky, but there’s very little to do in the winter months so we have a drone racing league at New Franklin. I’m not great at it, but I’ve gotten better with practice. Do you know who our current champion is?”

“I do not.”

“Connie. It surprised everyone, but that woman flies a drone like it owes her money. Some of the guys are royally pissed that the title has been held by a woman two years running.

“She says she uses them to keep the flyers busy while Jorg’k fights the scourge on the ground. So she gets a lot of practice. In our case, we can use them to explore places that are too dangerous, or as reconnaissance.”

“But they cannot cloak.”

“No, they can’t. But they are quick. And if we lose one, it’s not the end of the world. They’re replaceable.”

“What else do you have?”

I pulled out the next device, which I recognized as a sonar repellent.

“Here’s the repellent that we’re supposed to use on the way in and out.

” I reached into the bag again and out came a pair of Eye-Spies.

This pair had freaky bloodshot eyeballs painted around their cameras. I wondered who owned them before?

Bael’k furrowed his brow. “I have not seen those before. What are they?”

“We call them Eye-Spies. We just officially announced them at the market and already have more orders than we can fill. They’re basically sticky darts with phone cameras attached, powered by solar energy.

” I showed him the small power cells we’d taken from old calculators.

“They don’t take the best footage, but they do their job. ”

He still looked confused. “And what’s their job?”

“We stick them on the flyers, and they transmit aerial views of the area. There are actually several flyers that frequently hang out around the edges of New Franklin with Eye-Spies attached to them for weeks now. We let them live so they can spy for us.”

“You let them live?” He made a face like the thought of letting any flyer live was abominable.

I laughed. “Think of it as turning their flyers against them. We can see what it sees, so we always know when a group of scuttlers are coming, or if a centicreep is in the area.”

He still looked unsure, so I grabbed my phone and pulled up the website with Numbnut’s feed even though seeing the nest gave me the creeps.

“We named this flyer Numbnut. He’s still circling his nest, so we know he’s not anywhere near New Franklin.

We’ve been using him to study scourge behavior.

And when he’s in the air, the video covers a large area and gives us advanced warning. ”

He hummed. “I admit this is useful.”

Next was a Xarc’n blaster tucked into one of the side compartments. And on the other side, there was something thickly padded with foam. I took out the padded pouch and looked inside.

“What the fuck, Sam! Warn me next time you put motherfucking grenades in my motherfucking bag,” I exclaimed.

“Sam is not here.”

“Well, duh. I’m just surprised.” I carefully placed the foam pouch on the floor.

Bael’k looked inside and grinned. “These are very useful. I have seen them in action. They will not detonate unless you want them to; it is safe.”

“I’m still not sure I want them in my bag. I have a shit throwing arm. You don’t want me to use these.”

“Then I will add them to my arsenal.”

“They’re all yours. Have at it.”

Not feeling anything else delicate, and tired of taking things out one at a time, I turned my bag upside down and dumped the rest out onto the shuttle floor.

I planned on reorganizing everything anyway.

I regretted it immediately. I’d completely forgotten about the smutty alien romance novel I’d shoved in there.

It landed, cover side facing up, the artist’s rendition of the aliens’ blue chests on full display,

And of course, Bael’k’s eyes landed on it right away.

He picked it up, flipping through it, and frowned when he found no more images.

“Is this a manual? I have not yet met this species.” He turned back to the cover.

“They wear lower-body coverings similar to ours. I was unaware that humans had prior contact with others.”

“We haven’t,” I said, my face heating up. “They’re just stories. Fiction.” I snatched it out of his hand and stuffed it back into the bottom of my bag.

“What is this?”

I turned, and what I saw had me instantly wishing the floor would swallow me whole.

Because there, in his hand, was my little bullet vibrator.

Kill. Me. Now.

And the worst part was, I had known it was in there. I shoved it in there because I didn’t want anyone to find it while I was gone. How could I have forgotten? I snatched it out of his hands and, without answering, tossed it unceremoniously back into my pack.

With my face hot and flushed, I started going through the rest of my supplies and equipment, trying to fit everything back into the bag.

Please do not ask your shuttle , I prayed silently.

And lucky for me, Bael’k did not.

***

We got into camp just as the flyers were starting to harass our little entourage. It sucked that so many of the flyers had ways of detecting cloaked Xarc’n vessels. It was one of the reasons why we’d flown in formation.

The whole formation flying thing wasn’t a Xarc’n habit, but something that developed here on Earth when someone noticed that flyers had a harder time attacking cloaked vessels when they were close together. They’d tried several shapes and found one that worked the best, but it wasn’t foolproof.

Last I heard, hunters on other planets had adopted the formation trick successfully.

The thought that our fight here on Earth was helping destroy scourge all over the galaxy gave me the warm fuzzies.

These nasty bugs destroyed my life, and like many humans still alive today, I hated them with every ounce of my being.

So when we finally came into range of the camp’s anti-air defense and broke formation, giving them space to shoot, I was grinning ear to ear. I clung to the pilot’s chair, my eyes locked on the screen.

“Ha! Deserved it!” I cackled as one of the flyers exploded in the air. “Die motherfucker!”

But two of the flyers had veered away just in time, realizing the trap.

“No! They’re getting away!”

I didn’t even have time to gasp when I found myself suddenly hauled into Bael’k’s lap, and the safety harness snapped over us both.

Then we were turning, cartwheeling through the air, as Bael’k chased down the errant flyer.

It took only a few seconds, some great flying, and several well-timed shots.

But the experience was exhilarating, a rush of pure adrenaline, leaving me breathless and buzzing, all my senses on fire. And I felt so… alive! It was a feeling I didn’t know I’d been craving.

Even as Bael’k looped back to the camp to look for a place to land, I couldn’t stop smiling.

My skin was still tingling from the rush when I realized I hadn’t been the only one affected. Something hard, impressive, and very naughty pressed against my back, and I was suddenly reminded that I was sitting on Bael’k’s lap.

I could feel the distinct shape of it. And yes, I knew what Xarc’n cocks looked like; I’d done plenty of research into it. What alien and monster romance aficionado wouldn’t? Each section was a hot, burning pressure against my back.

The feeling of thrill and excitement changed, morphing into something more carnal. Something sexier. Something that tickled my belly and sent need coursing through my body. All the sexy scenes from the books I read came crashing into my head.