Page 12

XYREK

A murderous fury still raged through me the next morning when the lights began to brighten. I hadn't slept much, and that made me even angrier. I wanted to blame it on the padded chair, but it was comfortable enough. Not even the human female who had taken my bed could be blamed for it. No, this was all me.

I didn't even understand myself any longer. I had nearly killed a human male last night for using a filthy word. Alice didn't seem to care, so why had it worked me up so much?

Tom didn't have a dark aura around him; it wasn't white and innocent, but he was a far cry from the type of person I usually was sent after on a job. Last night, I would have terminated him just for the pleasure of it, and that thought didn't sit well with me. Not at all. It made me no better than the other criminals I had dealt with all my life.

The rage that had fueled me, though, was beyond anything I had ever experienced before. Still was. I worried if I laid eyes on him again today, I would give in to my murderous desires.

Only one thing calmed me—Alice's steady breathing on my bed. I wasn't even mad anymore that she was in it and I was not. It was the opposite. It soothed me, just like her steady breathing in and out, a sound I thought I could get used to.

My comm activated. I had set an alert for any new messages or information on the networks. Curious, I activated it. On my feed, Nock, the holostreamer I had watched before when I was bored, appeared. He could be entertaining, especially when he went off on a rant about Space Guardians. For whatever reason, we had this little Kred truly riled up.

I didn't understand why his new holocast would alert me, though. I fiddled with my settings and missed the first part, but when he mentioned the words Space Guardian , I stopped and focused on the stream.

Don't mind him. He's a bit shy today. It's not every day that he's being called a hero! But that's what he is. You all know I'm not a big fan of the Space Guardians, but Zaarek has opened my eyes to the fact that these brave males are more than just extermination machines. We just returned from Astrionis, where we unloaded eight humans Zaarek rescued. Eight! Zaarek was one of the traitors I was supposed to be hunting down right now.

Let me tell you, the work Lord Protector Garth and Lady Silla are doing is invaluable. Those poor humans are being used for slavery and medical experiments, and the gods only know what else.

Is this live? A voice demanded in the background . A voice I had never heard before, but for some reason, knew belonged to Zaarek.

Unperturbed, Nock continued, from what I understand, Emperor Daryus has not shied away from paying a fortune to hire four Space Guardians to rescue even more of these humans. We should all follow this shining example of Emperor Daryus. As entertaining as this was, I was about to turn it off when Nock mentioned mating marks.

Something completely unrelated. I want to follow up on my mating marks show, especially the ones that emerge unexpectedly. What did Nock know about mating marks? My interest was piqued, especially by the mention of unexpected . I sat up to listen. Zaarek has offered me a ride to UX938, where I heard of an outbreak of unexpected mating marks affecting the most unusual couples. Couples of different species! You know me, I need to investigate this a lot further. I'll be sorry to leave Zaarek, but this new development is calling me, and this holostreamer has to go where fate takes him .

The screen went blank. I checked the time and date of the holocast. Strangely, it didn't give me a location. Not so strange, it was a few days old; our paths must have, unbeknownst to me, crossed somewhere in the past few hours. Otherwise, I wouldn't have received this message at all. UX938 was a few days from where we were.

Unexpected mating marks , I mused. A coincidence?

I wanted to put it off as such, but I had a nagging feeling that it wasn't. Nothing that had happened since I took the humans aboard had been a coincidence or random. I wasn't a believer in a greater power or gods, but something was happening that defied regular logic. For some reason, I was also sure that it was related to my strange dreams. Dreams that had become more intense over the last few days. I wasn't simply running through a forest any longer or seeing myself reflected in the water of a lake. No, there was a town, almost a city, with many people who looked just like me, though dressed in clothes I didn’t recognize. Same silver skin, same black hair, just longer.

I wasn't sure what I would do after I dropped the humans off. I had defied Moddekdum's orders—a crime I was sure would not be magnanimously overlooked. Which reminded me, I hadn't heard from him since the last comm.

"Good morning," Alice said, stretching on the bed. She looked beautiful, even when sleepy, with tousled hair.

"Good morning," I heard myself repeat the strange combination of words. I had an idea what it meant, but nobody greeted one another like this. A stupid smile pulled my lips up, and my cock twitched.

She rose off the bed, wearing some of the new clothing I had ordered on Morrakbarr before we left. The new shirt was short-sleeved, exposing her mating marks, and seeing them on her did something to my insides. It was an undefinable sensation of heat spreading through my chest as if I were internally bleeding, but it made me feel good. Very strange.

"I hope the chair wasn't too uncomfortable?" She stretched again, and her perky little breasts poked straight through her shirt, hardening my cock to a near-painful level. Frygg.

"It was… fine," I managed to reply, watching her as she walked to the bathroom. Her hips swung enticingly. Why hadn't I noticed that before?

"For what it's worth, your bed is really, really nice," she smiled at me before entering the bathroom, leaving me to stare at the now-closed door.

I readjusted my dick because I couldn't sit like this any longer. Frygg. I wondered if there were any pleasure houses on Astrionis. My body was in desperate need of relief, but just the thought of having sex with someone else deflated the body part in question.

"Are you frygging pouting now?" I hissed between clenched teeth.

"What?" Alice called from the other side of the wall.

"Nothing," I yelled, banging my head against the table.

Why was I being tortured like this?

To have something to do besides imagining the human female in my bathroom, naked and soaped, I pulled up several cubes. I checked if there were any new Holostreams from Nock, but if there were, I hadn't received them yet. To occupy myself, I browsed through his older casts, including the one he had mentioned about mating marks.

Not much later, Alice came out of the bathroom, freshly dressed in a shirt with long sleeves, I noticed. Part of me didn't like her hiding the mating marks, but it was probably the sensible thing to do. I had no idea how the humans would react if they saw both of us marked like this.

The comm pinged, a request from an Ohrur, Callopea, another minder. I had worked for him before. I motioned for Alice to return to the bathroom and stay quiet. It seemed like a small miracle when she did.

This was my third minder in a very short amount of time for the same mission. Highly unusual.

"Callopea, did you miss me?" I asked sarcastically.

"As pleasant as always, Xyrek," he responded as his form materialized in my quarters. "I've been ordered to take over for Moddekdum. Before we begin, I need to see?—"

I knew where this was going and decided to go on the attack to get him distracted, "What happened to Moddekdum? He was supposed to replace Possedion, who also just up and vanished. What's happening on Ohrur? Some kind of disease I should know about?" I kept my tone aggressive.

"That is none of your concern, Space Gu?—"

Again, I interrupted him. "I beg to differ. When two of my minders have been replaced within a few short months, it is very much my business. Where are they?"

Callopea glared at me, "We're handling it."

"You're handling it? Funny, that's exactly what Moddekdum said right before there was some kind of explosion and he had to get off the comm."

For a moment, Callopea looked nervous, but then he pulled himself back together. "You seem to be forgetting who the minder is in this relationship, Space Guardian."

"Trust me, I'm not," I gritted out. I had never liked any of my minders , least of all Callopea, who enjoyed reminding me of the power balance between us. This time, though, I asked myself, what power ? What is he holding over me, and why do I feel the need to listen to his orders? Strangely, I didn't feel it like I had before.

"I've been sworn to protect the Ohrur, so if they start vanishing around me, I have a vested interest in finding out what is happening," I explained.

Callopea stopped his pacing and regarded me thoughtfully. "I understand your point," he surprised me, "but you have to trust me. We have everything under control. You just need to follow your mission."

"I'm on my way to Astrionis to deliver the humans." I pretended that Moddekdum hadn't changed my orders—a gamble.

"Moddekdum was supposed to inform you that your orders changed."

"He was?" I widened my eyes. "That must have slipped his mind after a bomb went off in his living quarters." I didn't know that for sure, but that's what it had sounded like, that or a missile hitting his house.

It turned out Callopea wasn't as smart as he liked to make me believe, because he fell for both of my bluffs. "It wasn't a bomb, just an unfortunate experiment gone wrong. Moddekdum should have never allowed a scientist to use his house for a trial."

Callopea was blatantly lying to me, but I didn't mind since it diverted his attention from my ignoring of Moddekdum's orders and the mating marks. Or so I thought. Because, with his next words, Callopea proved that he was more cunning than I had given him credit for. He had done the same while I was busy trying to snare him.

"Why were you on Morrakbarr?"

So, he found out about that.

"My orders are to free as many humans as possible, and Morrakbarr is a known slave trading harbor," I stretched the truth.

"Funny, since it is the same planet Moddekdum was supposed to send you to."

That was funny. When I spoke to Moddekdum, it sounded more like he was just making contingency plans after I told him about my human cargo.

"He never mentioned it," I deadpanned.

"So you want me to believe it is a coincidence then that you were on the same planet Moddekdum was supposed to send you to and terminated the very same person Moddekdum was supposed to arrange to meet you?"

I shrugged, "How many slavers providing human slaves are there on Morrakbarr?"

He didn't believe me, but a small tick around his lipless mouth said he was willing to play this game. Since I was interested in his ulterior motives, I played it with him.

"I acknowledge your point and will take it under consideration. Here are your new orders. Get rid of the humans and meet me on Ohrur."

"We're only a day away from Astrionis. I will leave them there and come straight to Ohrur."

"I don't think you understand me, Space Guardian," he stopped right in front of me, but since I had programmed his holocast to be on the smaller side, he barely reached my hips as he stretched to his full height to look intimidatingly at me, or at least what he thought would intimidate me. "Drop your cargo and turn around, straight for Ohrur."

"Drop my cargo? As in out into space?" I clarified.

"I don't care if you drop them in an asteroid belt right now!"

"As you wish, I'll see you soon." I ended the comm. A small gasp from Alice told me that she had overheard the conversation.

"I won't do that," I felt compelled to assure her. "I will take all of you to Astrionis as promised."

"That was your boss?"

"One of them," I nodded.

"But… what will they do to you if you don't follow their orders?" She asked, and her voice's true concern touched a place in me I hadn't realized was alive.

"I don't intend to follow their orders and go to Ohrur," I replied, hoping to ease her mind, another thing I had never considered before.

She frowned, "I don't understand. What will you do? Are you quitting your job?"

"This is not really a job you simply quit," I explained. "But this," I rolled up my sleeve to indicate my mating marks, "is a mystery I intend to figure out."

"Oh," her face lit up, "you're going to find out where you came from."

"Yes," I said because it was simpler. I would try to chase down the other Space Guardians who had been assigned the same mission as me. It didn't escape me that both Moddekdum and Callopea had asked to see my arms; well, Callopea had tried to ask. At least I had been able to distract him from that. I was sure both of them had been checking for mating marks. It left me wondering, if the other three Space Guardians had defected after being in contact with humans, did they also have mating marks? Were they searching for our origins? There was only one way to find out, but first, I had to find them.