Page 32 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Stars
Aiken
“Yield!” I scream in Cherise’s face. “Yield or you die!”
Cherise’s disgusting maw peels back into a sickening smile as she stares me straight in the eyes. She’s not going to yield. They never do. I’m going to have to snap her neck to get her to stop. Yet another name for the endless tally of lives I’ve taken. When will this end?
I push her harder against the wall as a plasma arc grazes my shoulder, and I hiss in pain. Cherise uses the distraction to her advantage and slides out from under my grasp, but she’s unarmed save for that nasty tail of hers. But instead of flaying me alive with it, she snaps it in the air and looses a spine-tingling laugh that turns my veins to ice.
“Your little mouse seems to have run away,” she taunts me in a sing-songy voice as she looks around the room. “Your pet. Where is she, I wonder? Not where you left her.”
Margot. Dammit, little wife. I told you to stay put. I whirl around to the bench where I left her. She was supposed to be safe and hidden under there until I could deal with Cherise and the others. But she’s not there. My hearts pound together, and the adrenaline spiking through my body is unbearable.
I let out a roar, and Cherise cackles behind me. Abel chases Emily across the room, and he looks like he’s about to catch her when Xavian leaps onto his back and sends him spinning into one of the benches. Using his training from Terra Ball to his advantage outside the sphere, I see. Mister Too-Good-to-Get-His-Claws-Dirty stands off to the sides with the plethora of Handmaiden bots. Why aren’t they firing? They could have taken us out easily.
“Toying with us?” I ask aloud, and Cherise snarls behind me.
“Something like that. General Atraxis might’ve been too soft to deal with you, but General Arcadia won’t be,” she says.
I set my jaw and whirl around, launching my fist straight into her face. She collides with the wall and sinks to the ground.
“Your General ain’t worth shit,” I growl.
Cherise may be slumped over on the ground, but her tail snaps forward to grab my plasma pistols from their holsters and toss them aside. I should have used them when I had the chance, but stupid me wanted to keep them alive for interrogating later. A costly mistake.
Cherise leaps to her feet as though she hadn’t just been blasted into the wall and bares her fangs at me, ready to fight again.
“Fine. We’ll do this the old-fashioned way,” I say.
“You think you can take me on? My people eat yours for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Remember that time we invaded your precious asteroid belt and took it for ourselves, and all your people could do was sit around with their thumbs up their asses?” Cherise sticks her forked tongue out at me like some gods-damned hatchling as the anger within me swells to a boiling point.
I’m going to kill her, I decide. And I’m going to actually enjoy myself doing it.
She races for the middle of the aisle, and I give chase without thinking. I’m about to charge her when, without warning, her head explodes in a pile of glittery dust.
Poof. Gone.
One moment she’s talking shit and the next she’s eating it.
When the cloud disappears, my hearts swell with pride as I take in Margot standing there, plasma pistols aimed at where Cherise’s head used to be. And then she lifts her knee up to knock the female’s body over with a sickening thud.
“Ugh, shut up. So annoying,” Margot mutters as she looks down at the headless corpse. Then she looks back up and tosses me one of my pistols. “Here, you lost this.”
I catch it mid-air and grin at her. My tongue flicks across my bottom lip as I feel the most intense desire I’ve ever felt in my life. No woman has ever been as sexy or delicious as Margot is in this moment.
“That’s my wife,” I murmur.
She arches a dark brow at me, and it’s only then that I realized she’s covered in blood. That better not be hers.
“Well?” she snaps. “Are you coming to kill the rest of them with me or are you just going to stand there and stare?”
Like hell I’m going to let her have all the fun without me.