Page 9

ALICE

It turned out that going into Xyrek’s quarters hadn't been too bad. I had been prepared to be yelled at, but he didn't. It actually had been quite nice and quiet. Something I really envied him for. At this point, I would have given a kidney to be able to have a room to myself, even if only for a few hours.

With the additional refugees Xyrek had picked up, the already sparse space was filled even more. People had taken to sleeping in the hallway, and yes, even in the three spare quarters, but with open doors so we could still use the three bathrooms. Some even camped out on the breakroom floor.

"How much longer until we reach Astrionis?" I waylaid Xyrek a couple of days later, after waiting for him to exit the bridge for hours. I needed to know. I needed to know how much longer I would have to put up with this cramped space. That way, I could estimate if I would go crazy before then or not. I was getting pretty close.

"Alice," he acknowledged me. His dark gaze moved over the thirty or so people camping in the hallway.

"Well?" I pushed.

"Not here," he ordered, pushing through four men and two women to reach his quarters. The door opened, and all heads moved to catch a glimpse inside. He whisked me inside just as the door closed, and it was… heaven!

So peaceful!

I took a deep, calming breath. "Wow!"

He nodded, his face still set in a grim mask. "It's like a market out there offering free stuff."

I couldn't have agreed more, yet—"We were already bursting from the seams before you added more people." I couldn't stop myself from scolding him.

"And what would you have had me do? Watch them being sold?" He demanded. His black eyes landed hard on mine like he was testing me.

"Of course not," I admitted with a sigh. "It's just a lot."

"It'll only be for a couple more days," he said, his tone shifted, making him sound… friendlier? I wasn't sure, because friendly was the last thing I would accuse him of being.

"Two days then?"

He ran a tired hand over his neck and nodded. My gaze moved over his large, empty room—well, empty of people. There was a bed, a table, and a very, very comfy-looking chair that reminded me of an oversized beanbag—a very comfortable-looking oversized beanbag.

He really didn't have anything to complain about. He had this whole room to himself. My gaze moved back to the beanbag chair. How humiliating would it be to beg to sleep on it? At this point, I didn't even care what the others would say. Just a night alone, well, alone with him, sounded tantalizing.

"Was there something else you wanted?" He asked.

I sighed, very aware that I would never degrade myself like that, not even for a few hours of peace. Two more days. I could do that. I could deal with two more days.

"What about the black lines? Did you find anything?" I stalled. Since yesterday, they had stopped growing. Thank God. Intricate lines and swirls moved up and down my entire left arm, left flank, and thigh. "Did yours stop growing too?"

"They did." He sank down on one of the chairs by the table and indicated for me to take a seat also.

I shook my head. "I'm good."

"Trust me, you’ll want to sit for this."

Oh shit. With a heavy chest, I took a seat. "Are we dying?"

"What?" He looked perplexed. "No!"

I still didn't feel relieved, though. "So what are they?"

"They're mating marks."

"Mating marks?" I parroted, blinked a few times, and stared at him, trying to decide if it was him or me who had lost their ever-loving marbles. "What do you mean?"

"Mating marks, as in our bodies have recognized their fated mates in each other and marked us."

I snorted. My hand flew up to my mouth, and I laughed despite this not being funny, even if he was making a joke. "That’s not funny," I managed.

"No. It's not."

One look at his stony expression stopped any more laughter in me. "You're serious?"

"I don't joke."

Fuck!

"Is that even a thing?" I stalled because, honestly, my mind was a bit overloaded right then. Mating marks? Fated mates?

"I take it humans don't have fated mates or mating marks?" He checked.

Slowly, I turned my head left to right and then right to left, never stopping to stare at him. He had to be crazy, right? Maybe he wasn't rescuing us after all; maybe he was taking us to some godforsaken planet for some sinister games? Because this… this had to be a mind game. This wasn't real. Couldn't be.

Except, you have the marks .

Yeah, but that doesn't mean shit. I mean, we're on a spaceship. How hard can it be for someone like him to… to… dye my skin?

Sure .

Sometimes I hated myself when I had these internal debates.

"So… your people…" I fished. "They have that kind of mating marks?"

"I wouldn't know," he answered mysteriously.

"What do you mean?"

He stretched his arms in front of him and interlaced his fingers; his entire posture suggested that he was uncomfortable talking about this. Thanks to my very volatile parents, I was quite adept at reading other people. "I mean, I don't know who my people are."

My eyes narrowed, and my forehead creased as my mind worked through his words. The best I could do, though, was ask the same question again, "What do you mean?"

He sighed and stared off toward a window that didn't show anything but blackness. It was weird; I had always imagined there would be millions of stars, suns, a comet—something other than this endless blackness in space. But it was all I ever saw whenever I looked through one of the windows.

"Why is there only blackness?" I wanted to know.

He gave me a funny look, as if surprised by my change in questioning.

"Because we're in hyperspeed. We're going so fast that you can't see anything besides the universe's blackness. You'll be able to see more once we slow down."

"Okay," I nodded as if that made perfect sense, just like everything else he’d said so far.

"I'm a Space Guardian," he picked up our conversation—maybe that wasn't really the right word, but I didn't know what else to call it, so I went with that—back up. "I work for the Ohrurs. They give me missions, and I fulfill them."

"What kind of missions?" Little alarm bells went off in my head. Was he going to tell me he was some kind of assassin for hire? No, that was just my imagination running wild with me. Had to be, right?

He shrugged, "Anything from protecting people like you or high-profile beings to terminating criminals."

"Terminating… as in…" I moved my hands back and forward, unsure of how to finish that sentence. I didn't want to make a gun with my fingers and say pew, pew.

"As in permanent termination," he nodded.

I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. This day wasn't at all what I had pictured it would be. Then again, the last time I pictured how a day would go had been right before the Cryons invaded Earth. Nothing had gone to plan since. And now it seemed I was the fated mate of an intergalactic assassin. Yay me !

I read enough sci-fi books to know what being a fated mate entailed. I tilted my head when one word, well, actually two, came to my mind—incredible sex.

Surreptitiously, my gaze wandered over to the alien hunk across from me. His tight uniform didn't leave much to the imagination. He was exceptionally well-built. I wasn't a sex addict, but I hadn't had sex in… let's say a long time. Not that I was contemplating having sex with Xyrek; it was just something my mind went to because of the fated mate stuff.

"That's who I am, who I always thought I was," Xyrek continued the conversation, hopefully clueless as to where my internal monologue had taken me. That was good. However, his expression and tone of voice suggested a deeper secret, and I found myself intrigued.

"Who you thought you were?"

"I have no idea what species I belong to?" He admitted.

I blinked a few times. "You're not an Ohrur, I take it?"

He got off his chair so fast that it nearly tipped over. "Didn't I just say that?"

"Grouchy," my head bopped up and down, "and touchy."

He glared at me.

"Okay, so I still don't see why…" I trailed off because suddenly I realized what he was saying. "Oh. You have no idea what species you are, or if your species typically has this mating marks fated bond?"

His glares didn't intimidate me as much as they had at first. He was very much like the Pitbull my brother Damon had for a while. The beast was used in dog fights; he was all scarred up, one of his ears was bitten off, and he had a large tear over his snout and eye. The dog would bark and growl something fierce, but he never bit me, probably because I was the only person who would sneak outside where Damon kept him and bring him food and water. Without me, he would have starved to death. Anyway, Xyrek reminded me of that dog: all bark and no bite. Unless you counted the Cryons, he terminated … now that had been a massacre; not that Xyrek had any scars… alright, I was rambling again.

Oh, the dog? As far as my brother knew, he vanished one day. Damon was livid. He was supposed to go to another big dog fight that night. Lucky for the dog, Damon never spent any time with me. Otherwise, he might have known that my one and only friend’s parents were dog rescuers. They found a family for him, and I smuggled him in the middle of the night to his new home, where for the first time in his life, he got to go inside a house, sleep on a bed, and guess what—he got a sister, Chihuahua.

"Yes," he pressed out an answer to my question.

"Shit, that must be…" I searched for the right word, "unsettling, not knowing where you came from."

He sat back down, put his elbows on the table, and rubbed his neck again.

"What's wrong?"

"Headache," he mumbled, massaging his temples. "I get them whenever I think about my origins."

I didn't even like the guy, but he looked pitiful enough for me to get up and walk behind him. I swatted his hands to the side and massaged his neck. An ex-boyfriend told me I had magic fingers ; It could be because my hands and fingers were stronger than normal people's from all the work I did with them. Whatever it was, it allowed me to dig deep. It seemed alien physiology wasn't that different from humans.

"I think I would get headaches, too, if I didn't know where I came from," I sympathized.

He allowed me to minister to him for a few moments before he turned, ending the session. "Anyway, I thought you should know."

"You're not going to kick me out after dropping this bomb on me." I pushed my fists into my hips. "No way."

"What do you want?" He drew his brows together in honest puzzlement.

"Well… it impacts me too, thank you very much. I mean, I'm going to have to tell people about these sooner or later. So what am I going to say ? Oh, they're mating marks. My fated mate? He's gallivanting through the universe, terminating the bad guys ?"

Before he could reply, I kept going. "I mean, aren't people going to… to expect us to be together or something?"

In obvious frustration, his hand moved through his hair. "It doesn't matter what others say."

"Probably not," I admitted, "but I would rather not start my new life with a scarlet letter on my chest." This is another one of the many reasons why I preferred to be a side character instead of the main heroine. I just wanted to get to Astrionis and live a peaceful life without any drama or big adventures.

"Scarlet letter?" He asked.

I waved my hand. "Never mind that. Do you think the people on Astrionis might know how to get these off us?"

He shrugged, "Perhaps. Maybe. Hopefully."

After thinking it over, his gloominess lifted some. "That might not be a bad idea."

I should have been affronted, but I wasn't, because Xyrek wasn't really the type of person I wanted to be around that much. Yes, he had saved me and the others, but his unpleasant nature left a lot to… be desired. If I wanted to be around poisonous people, I would have stayed with my family or adopted the damn Pitbull myself. I didn't need that kind of toxicity around me.

Then why did my stomach sink and my heart feel so heavy at the thought of not seeing him again after the next two days? Had I somehow come to enjoy our little banter? I worried I might actually miss it.