Page 15 of Guardian’s Heart (Space Guardian’s Mate #1)

ZAAREK

Nova surprised me again when I entered our camp with my fresh kill. I had been lucky and stumbled upon a young koloch, just big enough to feed Nova and me until we made it out of this forest.

It was getting dark by the time I reached the camp, so I was happy seeing the fire she had kindled. I had thought about dressing the koloch where I had killed it, worried Nova might be squeamish about things like that, but an undefinable urge to return to her had driven me back.

"What did you get?" She moved forward, curiously eying my kill.

"A koloch," I filled her in, taking out my knife. "You might not want to—"

She took the knife from my hand and, in a practiced move that raised my eyebrows, cut the dead beast from one end to the other, careful not to nick the intestines.

"You have experience with this?" I noted.

She looked up, scooping out the bloody insides without flinching. "My uncle and Daddy killed gators and snakes for a living. I had to dress plenty of them."

I had no idea what gators or snakes were, but I was impressed. It was easy to see that she was much more experienced with this than I was. I couldn't even remember the last time I hunted and killed before we got here. Come to think of it… my brows drew together in concentration. When and how had I learned this?

All my memories were of space and chasing down and terminating criminals or protecting high-ranking people.

A dull ache spread in the back of my head. I automatically rubbed the spot, but the pressure only increased the more I tried to focus on how I learned my hunting skills.

"Alright, this should be enough for tonight?" Nova looked up at me with bloodied hands. "Zaarek? Are you okay?"

I broke from my stupor and nodded. "Yeah, yes. I'm fine." I nodded, noticing how the pressure in my skull lifted. I clenched my jaw when I remembered how this had happened before, but then got sidetracked by Nova putting the meat on a wooden skewer and hanging it over the fire.

"How did you make the fire?" I asked, honestly curious.

She held up a stick and a piece of bark. At my questioning look, she hunkered down on the ground, showing how she moved the stick between her palms vigorously, after a moment, smoke rose, leaving me impressed.

"You didn't know that?" she asked, putting her utensils aside.

"I had no idea," I admitted, sitting down across from her, relishing her nearness and the easy comfort I suddenly felt with her. To do something other than tackle her to the ground and repeat what we had done earlier, I picked up the stick and bark and tried to copy her moves.

She laughed, and the sound of it rang through my head, lifted my heart and spirits, and made me yearn for more.

"Like this." She put her hands over mine, creating currents of heat rippling underneath my skin.

I relaxed and allowed her to take the lead. To my astonishment, smoke plumed. Not as much as she had teased from the wood, but enough to see, bringing up an inexperienced excitement in me.

Emotions were something else new to me. Just like the unexplained markings or the way she had aroused me earlier and now. I had always taken my duties seriously and took pride in fulfilling a mission assigned to me, but those were the only emotions driving me for as long as I could remember. Sure, I craved sex, food, drink, and even a good fight, but the sex we’d had was so much more than anything that came before it.

Her palms touching me felt… comfortable, not just arousing but soothing at the same time. She made my chest swell with… with… emotions I had no name for. I wanted to be with her, protect her, hold her. Her presence confused me like nothing ever had. And yet the thought of not being here, with her, was torturous.

The smell of burning meat got both our attention, and we jumped up, bumping into each other. I held out my hand to stop her fall, put a bit too much vigor into it, and she ended up crushed against my chest.

The urge to kiss her was overwhelming, but she twisted out of my embrace, making her way over to the fire before I could react.

"I think it's okay," she said, turning the skewer.

I could not have given a flying frygg about the meat just then, but her rumbling stomach took priority. I noticed she had wrapped the same rope-like part of a plant around her waist as she had used on her feet. It kept the cloak off the ground for her and accentuated her small frame, which looked like it was drowning in my cloak. Somehow, her wearing it, wearing my clothes , filled me with pride. It was the same as her eating the food I had killed a little while later.

We both ate in silence, staring into the flames. I wondered if she was thinking about the same things as me. Our tattoos, our inexplicable urge to be next to each other. The explosive orgasm she had ripped from me. Had it been the same for her? By the way she had moaned, I was convinced it had.

I was about to take my comm out and do some research, but an inexplicable force held me back. Inexplicable , I mused how that word had snuck into my vocabulary and taken first place.

"I have some water," she offered, interrupting the silence and my thoughts.

"I'm good, thank you. I can simply drink from the stream." I had noticed how she had boiled the water earlier. Smart.

"You shouldn't; it might be contaminated," she warned.

"If it is, the Ohrurs have already given me the antidote to it," I explained.

"Ohrurs?"

"My minders," I filled her in.

"Minders?" Her head tilted.

"Bosses, superior," I elucidated, suddenly stumbling over the word minder as well. I had never questioned it before.

"Oh. They hired you to bring us humans to Astrionis?"

I shook my head. "No, the Pandraxians hired the Ohrurs to send us."

At her questioning look, I explained, "I'm a Space Guardian. At any given time, there are a thousand of us in the universe. The Ohrurs hire us out to rid the universe of criminals that the GTU can't touch."

I saw her next question coming and spelled it out for her. "Galactic Treaty Union."

"So you are an assassin for hire?" She wrinkled her nose.

"Something like that. I go after the worst criminals. I and my brethren find wherever they're hiding and terminate their useless lives."

I intentionally chose brutal words to see her reaction, but she didn't seem that fazed. She didn't even flinch.

"I've killed many," I bragged, just to see her react.

"But only bad guys?" she checked.

I nodded.

"How do you know they're bad guys?"

"The Ohrurs vet them before they give us the orders."

She tilted her head, her eyes challenging me. "But how do you know that's true? They could just say so."

"I sense it in here." I touched my chest where my heart sat.

"Okay, right."

I shook my head. I had never talked to anybody about this, well, there had never been a reason to, but with her, it felt like a compulsion to do so. And to make her understand.

"Space Guardians have a deep ingrained sense of a person's aura; bad people give off vibes—"

"Vibes," she scoffed. "And you truly believe this?"

"Yes," I confirmed. Why was she being so stubborn about this?

"And I'm a good person?"

I didn't hesitate. "Yes."

She laughed. "You're wrong. I'm as bad as they come. I killed my husband."

I stared at her. For the first time in my life, I was rendered speechless. As much as I listened to my inner self, I didn't get any bad vibes from her. I knew she had scoffed at the word, but it was true. I could tell a truly evil person by just looking at them. Felt it in the marrow of my bones.

"You’re lying," I accused.

"Nope." She glared at me. "So no bad juju coming off me, eh? Are you sure you didn't misinterpret it with others you killed?" I had no idea what juju was but ignored it.

"Positive." I studied her. "Why did you kill your husband?"

"He was bad in bed." She deadpanned.

Once again, I was rendered speechless until I realized this time she was lying.

"You're lying," I repeated the same words from earlier.

"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. You're the voodoo man here. You tell me."

Again, I had no clue what she meant. "Nova." I looked at her, and she looked down.

"I don't know why I did that." Her voice sounded apologetic. "It's not a joking matter. I think I killed a man, Zaarek. I am a bad person."

"I don't believe that." I took her chin and gently lifted it to look her in the eyes. "Why do you think you killed him and what did he do?"

"He beat me. It was only a matter of time before he would kill me, so I took him out into the swamp and as far as I know, he never came back out."

"Swamp?"

She waved her hands around this area. “It’s a wilderness like this. No houses, no people for miles on end and filled with water, gators, snapping turtles, snakes," she shrugged, "all kinds of nasty critters."

"So he got lost and died because he couldn’t figure out how to survive?"

"If you put it that way… " she trailed off and nodded. "Yeah, that's pretty much what I did."

She shook herself. "Enough 'bout that. Tell me what else you Space Guardians do when you're not assassinating people."

I didn't like how abruptly she changed the subject. I still had a hundred questions. But I understood. I could tell that what she just told me wasn't something she shared with anybody, and I felt a certain sense of validation and connection for her having done so. There was also a rising urge inside me to kill the man for hurting her. I wished I could have brought him back to life just to make him suffer for what he had done to Nova. It was surprising how intense this surge was, stronger than usual. Every fiber of my being inside me screamed to protect her. So I indulged her and said, "Sometimes I get to rescue people, like this mission proves, where I find stolen humans and bring them back."

"But not to Earth," she argued.

"Do you want to go back to Earth?" I asked, confused. As far as I heard, the Cryons were controlling the planet, killing indiscriminately, abducting, and pretty much raping the entire planet for its resources.

"No." Her hand moved through her black hair, detangled a few knotted strands. "There is nothing there for me anymore." She didn't look too heartbroken over it. She was a strange creature.

"So, how long have you been a Space Guardian?"

"Over twenty years," I answered proudly.

"And before?"

She confused me. "What do you mean before?"

"Well, have you always wanted to be a Space Guardian since you were a kid? Or did you do something else before?"

I stared at her open-mouthed. These were easy questions. Just none I had ever been asked before. I tried to think back to when I was a kid, but a searing pain in my head stopped me, and I reached for the water to drink some.

"I was tasked to take any humans I can find to Astrionis," I repeated what I had already told her earlier instead of answering her.

She looked at me funny but didn't push her question. The idea of becoming a refugee didn't sit well with her. "As refugees, yes, you said so before."

I was glad to take this opportunity to fill her in more. "Not as refugees. Lord Protector Garth has mated with a human female, like the Emperor and other high-ranking Pandraxian officials. They are doing their best to establish a new life for your species."

"I take it the Pandraxians are some kind of big deal?"

"They control one of the most influential planet systems, yes." I nodded. "The Pandraxians are actually very complex. Like the Lord Protectors, they live on their planets like they used to thousands of years ago. No modern technology is allowed."

I loved the way her nose puckered up. "Tilling fields and stuff?"

I laughed, yeah, that didn't sound exciting to me either. "There are other things besides tilling fields. They manufacture most of the wares needed in the Pandraxian Empire. And they're the first ones to colonize it if the Empire decides to add a new planet."

"How does that make them complex?" She took another bite of meat, again filling my chest with pride that her food came from my hands. So much so, that I almost missed answering her question.

"Complex in so far that Pandrax, their main planet, is filled with cities and all the comforts modern life has to offer. They produce the more high-tech wares, train pilots and soldiers."

She blinked a few times. "So let me get this straight. One part of the Pandraxians lives like in the middle age, while the others fly through space?"

"Like I said, complex."