Instead of shying away this time, though, she watches me curiously, lips parted slightly.
Yes. This is good. This is more like it.
The medic hands a translator implant to Kanuz first, and everyone cheers as he takes it. The medic comes to me next, and I take the tech from him carefully. My woman watches with big eyes.
I motion for her to turn her head. Even her ears are insubstantial looking, thin veins visible along the incredibly soft shell of it.
“This will not hurt her?” I demand of the medic. I cannot imagine harm coming to this creature, would rather cut off my own hand than administer something to her that might mar her smooth flesh.
“No. We engineered it with the information her government sent. It will work. They’ll be fine.”
“It better,” I snarl at him. The medic ducks his head in a sign of respect, scurrying away as he seems to remember who he is speaking to.
“I am going to put this in your ear now, sweet wife,” I tell her. “He says it will not hurt.” I touch my own ear, trying to show her what’s going to happen.
Obediently, she tilts her head, allowing me access. Her thick brown braid slips over her neck, falling away down her back.
My cock strains against my pants. I yearn to claim her, to mark that smooth shoulder with my bite, and to make her fully mine. My mate.
I thought I would never have one, not after the virus that swept through our people devastated our female population.
And here she is.
Not Suevan, it is true, but perfect nonetheless. And to think, the southern separatists were against finding a way to interbreed with other species. Idiots.
I pinch the small part of her ear, and she goes still under my hands. I grit my teeth, trying to push down the thick wave of desire and concentrate on inserting the miniscule translator into the tiny opening of her ear canal.
It slips in, and she tenses under my hands. The device crawls along her inner ear until it slips from view. My mate makes a hissing noise, the sound slipping from her teeth, her eyes squeezed shut.
“She is in pain,” I yell, anger burning through me. “My mate is in pain,” I say. I am not the only one yelling for the medic however. Kanuz is near frantic, the yellow-haired human dropping to her knees.
Another human female screams, a garbled stream of words that my translator interprets as fecal matter and other foul words.
None of us are paying attention to anything other than the women we’ve mated to when their ship explodes, sending spirals of flame and heat into the dark Suevan night.
My mate’s eyes go wide, her mouth open in a silent scream, showing off her tiny flat teeth, and then she melts into me, unconscious.
Everything in me screams to haul her away. I have to get her to safety.
“It’s the separatists,” Alvez screams at me, whipping his tail in a frenzy behind him. He hauls his own mate to his chest. “We were short-sighted. We should have shielded this place. We are too exposed here.”
“Separate,” I bark the order. “We lead them through the jungle, and we do not make it easy on them by staying together.” I should have known they would try something like this. “Reconvene at Edrobaz,” I shout over the chaos. “Protect the females, they are the future of our people.”
“Do as he says.” Prince Kanuz hauls the yellow-haired woman over one shoulder, her head lolling.
The Acriset tree, the bustling hub of this outpost, explodes a moment later, sending bark and shrapnel through the clearing. The rest of the couples, the older ones, scream as pieces of wood sail by them. One bleeds from a head wound, and her mate drags her to the safety of the woods, surrounded by the others, all ready to fight.
By the hand of Sueva, I am relieved I cleared the few families from it two mornings ago to prepare for tonight. The feast is ruined, our mating ritual luckily over before the separatists struck.
The tables and meal can be replaced, the ceph flutes remade, but the people cannot be. Our numbers are too thin as it is, and it cracks my heart to think the discontent among the southern Suevans is high enough to warrant such bloodshed.
My legs stretch as I break into a run, holding my beautiful female tight to my chest, swearing vengeance on the short-minded separatists attacking us.
I will make them pay.
CHAPTER FIVE
NIKI
My lids are too heavy. Something’s crawling inside my ear, scratching so damn loudly I can hardly hear myself think. Every time I slap at it though, trying to dislodge whatever nasty’s crawled inside, someone holds my wrist back.
I have weird dreams, too, of exploding ships and an attack on the Suevan city.
Attack on the Suevan city…
My eyelids fly open, and I sit up with a gasp, my heart racing a mile a minute. The knowledge that something has gone terribly, completely wrong, weighs heavy on me, and my adrenaline kicks into overdrive.
“Calm yourself,” a deep, gravelly voice says.
I clap a hand over my ear, fishing for whatever has crawled inside. “Get it out, get it out,” I say, deeply unsettled, but too woozy to do more than clutch at my head.
“It cannot come out, nor would I want to take it out,” the same voice says.
A scarred, green face swims into view, and my eyes go wide.
Draz of Edrobaz. The night’s events come rushing back to me, and I lay back down, my mouth dry and my head pounding.
The ship. Oh my God, the ship blew up. My crew.
“What happened?” I rasp, blinking up at the stars, twinkling in patches of deep black through the jungle canopy. Okay. We’re in the jungle. Animal sounds rush at me, the startlingly loud chirp of insects, the calls of an alien creature that I can’t place. A large white flower blooms in the night, a living moon suspended from a green vine. A fire crackles beside me, blinding me as I glance at it. “Is my team safe?”
“They were well last I saw,” Draz says.
A cool rag swipes across my brow, and I turn my head. He’s sponging my forehead off. The sides of his mouth curl up, showing a hint of fang. I swallow, because despite the scales, the green color, the flattened nose— he’s almost handsome. Brutally so, his jaw too square and brow too strong to be human… but there’s something undeniably attractive about him, all masculine power.
The packed-on muscle of his chest still on full display doesn’t hurt, either.
What the fuck is going on?
“We split up to make it harder on the perpetrators. We will reconvene with your team at an agreed upon location up in the mountains.”
“The perpetrators of what? Who are they?”
“There are separatists who do not approve of… the hard choices we have had to make.” He says this carefully, unblinking, so still and alien that a shiver runs down my spine. “They blew up your ship.”
“Okay,” I say, trying to process. So that was real. The ship is gone. A wild laugh tears from my throat. “I guess I’m not getting my candy tonight.”
“Can-dee?” The word sounds strange coming from his mouth, and I realize it must not have translated. He’s repeating it in English.
“Sweets. I love sweets. Sugary, gummy, sweets.” Fuck. And I’m not getting them. They’re all gone. Blown to smithereens.
The ship is gone. My throat constricts. A luminescent green insect floats over the flower, drawn by its glow and delicate fragrance. The winged insect crawls along the petal, long proboscis darting from its mouth, surreal as it drinks from the—