Page 1 of Sheltered in the Storm (The Fortusian Mates # 1)

PROLOGUE

VOS

The ambassador was a dead them walking.

From my hiding place inside an air duct, I watched through the metal grate as the Kurutan ambassador N’vors emerged from their transport, ambulating on four oversized flippers. They clacked their six-fingered claws in greeting to the five trade delegates and well-armed embassy guards who had gathered to welcome them.

My wrist chronometer showed 1400 hours. Right on time. Kurutan considered arriving early or late to be unconscionably rude. An admirable trait, but one that made them an easier target, even with the embassy’s extensive security measures, which were some of the best I had ever encountered.

But not nearly good enough to keep an elite assassin out, or to save the ambassador from their fate.

Nor would N’vors’s thick, insect-like carapace protect them. Attempting to shoot the ambassador through the tiny gaps between the plates of their exoskeleton would be difficult if nearly impossible, so I had discarded that method as a means of attack.

Instead, I readied my weapon and waited for N’vors to finish their traditional dance of greeting and speak. My heartsbeats remained steady, my breathing slow and even. Quick kills and speedy exits were my trade, and I was very good at my trade.

I had gained entry during the night, in the wake of a diversion I had paid a street gang to create near the embassy’s entrance. My body ached from my long, silent wait inside this duct, from the tips of my human fingers to my webbed toes, squeezed inside heavy boots that were part of my worker’s disguise.

Even my tentacles twitched and ached, though I allowed them to stir and explore the interior of the duct as far as they were able to reach. I was a large man, powerfully built and two meters in height, with four large tentacles each as long as I was tall growing from my back. This duct was not designed for someone my size, much less my tentacles. The people of this planet, Bordians, were much smaller and often ran on their feet and hands. At least the slick, almost frictionless fabric of my coveralls helped me slide through the duct fairly easily.

I expected the ambassador’s transport to depart as soon as N’vors got out. Instead, a small Kurutan child, so young their carapace had not yet hardened, hopped from the transport’s open door and padded on tiny flipper feet across the stone floor to their parent’s side, claws clacking in excitement.

The ambassador paused their elaborate greeting dance to chitter at the child. I did not speak Kurutan, but a scolding tone needed no translation. The child leaned against their parent and chirped softly in reply. N’vors caressed the little one’s head and resumed their dance. The other ambassadors bobbed their heads in acknowledgement of their colleague’s greeting.

Damn it to all the hells. I lowered my weapon.

The poison gas dart I had prepared was deadly only to Kurutans. The gas would not harm the other delegates, which was essential to my mission. It would, however, kill the ambassador’s child if they inhaled it.

My intel had said nothing about the ambassador bringing their child to the negotiations. My employer’s intel was never wrong. Too many lives—mine included—depended on its veracity. The Silent Guard could not afford to lose one of its best and most experienced assassins because of poorly vetted information.

These few minutes in the embassy’s foyer would be my only opportunity to dispatch N’vors before the delegates moved to the embassy’s ultra-secure meeting room. My brief stated the ambassador must die before they began negotiating for export rights. My life depended on fulfilling my mission. The Guard demanded extortionate prices from its clients in return for a guarantee of success. That guarantee only held up if there were no failures.

I had received my latest update on N’vors’s movements only an hour earlier when the ambassador was already on their way to the embassy. The Guard must have known about the child.

Unlike many less scrupulous guilds of assassins, the Guard prided itself on its precise kills. While their clients might not care about collateral damage, the Guard’s commandants did. Collateral damage drew the attention and ire of planetary leaders, the Central Alliance Defense, and various federations and interplanetary coalitions. Neat, surgical, quiet kills were not just the Guard’s point of pride—they were a necessity for its ongoing existence, while other, more careless organizations came and went.

I could count the number of times in the past five years my hearts had raced before or during a mission on one tentacle. Twenty standard years of training, conditioning, and service in the Guard had rendered me all but indifferent to danger and death, even my own .

But when the ambassador’s child rested their head against their parent and sighed in contentment, my heartsbeats—normally so steady and even during a mission—pounded in my ears. My vision turned silver around the edges, and my glowing eyes reflected in the metal duct.

I did not kill children. Not even if it would mean my own life were forfeit. Not even on my last mission prior to my retirement.

Most of my fellow Guard assassins would not have hesitated to pull the trigger. And perhaps I would have had a difficult time explaining why after all the death I had dealt over the past twenty years I could not bring myself to end a single child’s life.

The child’s happy sounds and the way their wide eyes peered worshipfully at their parent had reached perhaps the last, tiny part of my primary heart that had not turned to stone.

On the other hand, if I left N’vors and their child alive, made it out of the embassy, and fled, the Guard would hunt me across the galaxy. They would bring me to their headquarters and make a spectacle of my death. All Guard assassins would be called in to witness the consequences of failing to complete a mission and trying to leave the Guard before a contract term ended. No greater suffering or horror existed in Alliance space.

I might put little value on my life, but I did not want that kind of death. I did not want my pain to be an exhibition. I had spent my life in service to the Guard; I would be damned if my death would be used to keep my brethren in line.

Also, the sight of this little Kurutan family filled my belly with bitterness. The genetic manipulations on my homeworld of Fortusia had given me extra speed, senses, and strength, along with my gills and tentacles, but they had also eliminated the dangerous and potentially costly biological instinct to seek and find a partner. I had been created to kill, not to love or treasure a mate. I would never know that kind of belonging. My life, if I reached my retirement and none of the ghosts or enemies of my past found and killed me, would be a solitary one.

But a lonely life would still be a good life, one I had wanted since my youngest days. Freedom was a dream for someone created to serve in the Guard. Few assassins survived the dangers of their twenty-year enlistments to reach retirement. I had not dared to even hope to reach mine until just this year.

I had not fought so hard for so long to reach this moment to have the only dreams I allowed myself to chase ripped away by one child and my own soft hearts.

I raised my weapon again and took aim. If I timed my shot perfectly, I might be able to get the dart to pierce the back of N’vors’s throat. The gas would kill in moments. Embassy security would likely get the child and other delegates to safety. The child might not die from the poison?—

—But they would see their parent die. If I recalled correctly, a Kurutan child was not likely to survive without its parent, especially if they witnessed the death.

The decision was impossible, but that did not prevent me from having to face it.

My human hand tightened its grip on my weapon and my index finger rested lightly on the trigger. The mechanism was so precise that less than three pounds of pressure activated the dartgun.

Time slowed.

N’vors finished their dance of greeting, bowed deeply, and opened their mouth to speak. I took aim at the soft pink inside of their throat.

In my peripheral vision, I caught a flash of movement from the doorway at the other end of the foyer that led to the landing platform and the busy street beyond.

The energy field guarding the opening flickered and died. Two black spheres flew into the embassy’s foyer and landed on the stone floor about a meter apart. The embassy guards shouted the Bordian word for bomb and dove for cover, but the enormous lobby offered few places to hide.

Fear and adrenaline washed through me, turning me cold before my training kicked in. I dropped my weapon, scrambled back from the grate, and tapped my wrist cuff to activate my personal shock-absorbing field.

The shockwave rolled through the building with a deafening roar and a rush of crackling blue lightning. The embassy shook violently and plunged into darkness as the foyer collapsed. My lungs filled with smoke and dust. The ringing in my sensitive ears drowned out all other sounds.

Around me, the air duct sagged and buckled as the building rumbled.

A single thought cut through my disorientation: This is how I die: alone, unknown, buried under megatons of rubble on a planet light-years from my homeworld .

I expected grief or bitterness to overwhelm me. Instead, my gut felt hollow, as if I had nothing to lose and therefore nothing to regret. Nothing to fight for.

Nothing to leave behind, and no one who would mourn.

The hollowness gave way to rage, and my rage propelled me toward the metal grate as the duct crumpled under the collapsing weight of the building. If I were to die today, I would at least be on my feet.

I deactivated my forcefield cocoon and pulled up the collar of my coveralls to cover my nose and mouth. I also breathed through my gills, allowing them to filter out the smoke and dust particles that clogged my airways and threatened to reduce me to uncontrollable coughing.

A glance behind me confirmed the duct had collapsed in the direction of my initial entry. My only escape would be through the foyer—or what remained of it.

As my hearing returned, the first—and only—sound I heard other than low rumbles of falling stone was a high, thin wail .

The explosion had reduced the embassy’s foyer to rubble. The ceiling had collapsed, revealing what appeared to be the roof of the building five stories above. The doorway that led to the landing platform had collapsed as well, but my enhanced eyesight made out a sliver of daylight that offered what might be my only hope of escape. Assuming, of course, I could get through it and disappear before emergency crews arrived.

From the rubble, the thin wail faded to a weak, warbling cry that compelled me to move . I gripped the grate with my tentacles, twisted, and pulled. The grate tore away with the sound of shearing metal and broken bolts.

I tossed it behind me deeper into the vent and clambered through the opening, careful not to cut myself on the sharp edges. I did not want to leave any trace of myself at this scene of carnage.

Regardless of my own feelings on this disaster, my training demanded I take note of every detail for my report. At a glance, I determined the guards and delegates were all dead, including Ambassador N’vors. Who had chosen to end these trade negotiations before they began in the messiest, most cold-blooded way possible, I did not know. The Guard was not the culprit—of that much I was certain. Equally certain was the fact others besides the Guard’s client, whoever that was, had reason to prevent a trade deal. The Guard would conduct their own investigation using operatives trained for that role. My job now was to leave immediately and report back to my superiors.

My final Guard assignment had not ended in the way I had intended, but it had ended. The daylight at the far end of the foyer beckoned, offering escape and a path forward to the retirement I had yearned for.

Another wordless, fearful wail came from under N’vors’s bloody corpse. In an ultimate loving sacrifice, the ambassador had covered their child with their own body and died protecting them from the blast. I was in no way prepared for the force of anger and grief that rose within me at that realization.

“ La La ,” the child cried. “ La La? La La, La La! ”

A child’s plea was a universally understood sound.

My enhanced hearing caught the distant howl of emergency sirens. My window of time to escape without being questioned was dwindling quickly. I let out a hiss. The building rumbled as something else collapsed. Maybe an exterior wall nearby.

A small pincher on a long, thin arm appeared from under N’vors’s body, clacking helplessly. “ La La! ” the child wailed.

What was my survival worth if I left the child to die?

With a grunt of effort, I hefted N’vors’s massive body with my human hands and arms just enough to scoop the child up in my tentacles, covering their eyes so they could not see their parent’s body. Then I dropped the ambassador’s corpse back on the rubble and clambered over fallen stone toward the sliver of daylight.

I had never held any child, but I had no time to process the emotions of the moment. N’vors’s child fought my grip with surprising strength and pinched my tentacle that covered their eyes hard enough to draw blood. Cursing, I climbed the pile of rubble and reached the fresh, salty air that blew in through the opening.

Several pairs of webbed hands appeared and voices called out in alarm: a small group of Bordian citizens trying to help survivors. Not emergency services or embassy guards, though those would surely arrive within moments. Generally speaking, Bordians were a kind people, to a fault. No doubt only the likelihood of another collapse kept them from rushing en masse into the building.

With N’vors’s body now safely out of sight, I uncovered the child’s wide, wild eyes. Through their bright blue tears, they stared up at me in fear and wonder. And thank all the gods above and below, they finally released my bloody tentacle from their pinchers.

“ La ka na? ” the child asked, their voice trembling.

I had no idea what the child asked—I heard only their hopeful tone. For that reason alone, I nodded.

The child’s silent blue tears spilled over and became sobs.

The volume of voices outside the opening increased and the half-dozen webbed hands moved frantically. The Bordians must have heard the child crying. I thrust the child into their waiting hands.

“ La ka na! ” the child wailed, reaching toward me.

My hearts lurched. The building rumbled once more. The rescuers retreated with their young charge, leaving me alone.

As the child’s wails faded into the distance, I pulled a cap from the pocket of the maintenance uniform I had donned as my cover and put it on to hide my white hair. I changed the color of my tentacles to match my gray coveralls and make them less noticeable. Hopefully, the chaos outside would allow me to slip unnoticed through the onlookers and make my way to a chartered ship bound for Guard Headquarters on Fortusia.

Once I filed my reports, I would be free.

I slipped through the opening in the rubble and into the shadows, moving slowly until I reached the edge of the crowd. And then I walked away, heading to the closest port?—

—And my future, whatever it might hold.