Page 17 of Betrothed to the Alien Mercenary

“Enough,” I growled, and I stepped in front of Evie to block the bastard’s line of sight. “You are done. You have nothing constructive to say. You can get the fuck out of here.” I raised my hand to grab him by the shoulder and steer him away, and he turned with me, taking three steps toward the door. He was protesting loudly, but he was moving, and that’s why I didn’t expect the move. I should have, and Solear screamed in my mind as we both noticed it, but too late.

A blow struck me in the neck—not one of those cute, dainty ones Evie had laid on me, though the move was similar. He hit my vocal cords, silencing my growl, and a sharp pinch told me he’d struck me with an injection. Whatever it was, it acted fast, rolling over me like a tidal wave of heaviness. My body went limp; I sank to my knees and crashed heavily onto the fancy marble floor. That floor was hard, and I felt every bruise as I struck it with my head and shoulders, pain radiating through my kneecaps.

Whatever he’d injected me with, it was a paralytic, but it did not dull my mind or my nerves. I continued to feel and hear everything that happened around me. First, I heard Evie’s shocked squeak and an angry demand for Theronix to explain himself. I could not see her, but I could see the bastard’s boots as he stood over me.

“They don’t see the danger!” Theronix spat. “But if you are killed, the delegates will know. They will fear for their lives and surrender to our terms. Pelarios will have this treaty written and signed before noon. This is how you can serve the Xurtal Kingdom. Prepare yourself for your final act.” Then the bastard had the nerve to add, “This is a great honor. Now kneel and receive your fate.”

I howled in my mind, but I could not make my vocal cords obey. No, I couldn’t do anything—I couldn’t even breathe. Ah, stars, what had he dosed me with? Evie—where was she? I couldn’t see her, and now my vision was growing dim, spots dancing in front of my eyes in dizzying patterns as the world went gray around the edges.

“Honor? Fuck you, Theronix! If you want to kill me, you can try, but you won’t succeed!” Ah, brave woman, I loved those fighting words, but I feared the worst. I knew my Evie, knew her strengths and weaknesses from the way she moved, but I’d seen the Xurtal spar in the gym. I knew he was formidable and almost completely back in shape by now. She did not stand a chance.

I saw only a pinprick now, with everything else black except for a narrow spot of gray. The foot of a table leg, the edge of a rug, that was all I could see. I heard everything though, and it sounded awful. Fighting was supposed to be fun, but this wasn't fun at all. Listening to Evie as she struggled with that man, it was the worst thing I’d ever gone through. I’d sat with Solear in his mind while he starved and the rubble pressed down on him for days and days. To feel so helpless while my woman fought for her life? That was a fate worse than death.

First, I heard her scream and Theronix curse. I could hear them trade blows and the clatter of something as it crashed to the floor and broke. Then, I heard thudding and a muffled sound I could not place, and I vividly pictured the bastard with his hands around my female’s throat. No. Enough! I couldn’t take this. I would not lie here and do nothing while she lay dying. It did not even cross my mind that I was dying as well, my lungs as paralyzed as the rest of me, unable to draw in breath.

Solear,I said in my mind, reaching out to the raging, terrified presence of my oldest ally, my best friend, my beloved brother.I need you right now. Calm down. You will save us. Understand? Come. NOW.The raging, fearful shape of my brother shifted where he rode in the back of my skull. My words reached him in that deep place of fear—the fear of abandonment, of being alone, of losing those he loved. And he knew what I was asking of him: a practice both thought impossible and cursed by my kind.

Solear did not hesitate, not for a moment. His presence surged inside my brain, filling me, swelling along the pathways that threaded through my mind and my flesh, knitting us together as Asrai twins. For one second, I could see through his eyes—vividly and in bright color. He was on the bridge and had suddenly risen to his feet, startling those around him: the Tarkan grunt at the helm, the Rummicaron at the weapons station, and Sineater in the Captain’s seat.

“Something is happening to Aramon,” I heard the second-in-command say as my brother’s body thudded heavily to the floor, echoing what had happened to me. And then I was back in my own skin, but I wasn’t alone—Solear was with me. We surged to our feet together: heart pumping, lungs heaving, and vision flaring back to life. Neither of us had to think about what to do; we moved as a single unit, one entity.

There she was, on her back on the cold floor with Theronix on top of her, his hands around her slender neck. We leaped together, flooded with rage, and crashed into the bastard. Rolling along the floor, we traded blows—the Xurtal male caught completely by surprise and unprepared for the strength of a doubling Asrai. This power came at great cost, and that was soon apparent, but it was all we had needed to win this round.

Blood dripped from our nose, and our head felt like it was ready to burst, filled to overflowing with two minds instead of one. Fire raced through our veins and made our heart ache in our chest. Theronix fell from a final blow, and then we, too, collapsed with agony bursting along our nerves. It was a pain so awful, so indescribable, that we knew why this was cursed. And yet, we did not regret it—not when we saw Evie rise, gasping and panting. She made it.

Chapter 15

Evie

Aramon!” I screamed through a crushed windpipe, as I struggled to get up and reach him. Chaos surrounded me, but my eyes had only one focus: him, my mate. He’d collapsed next to Theronix, and he wasn’t moving again. This time, I feared it was final because blood was dripping from his eyes, his nose, and even his ears. It looked awful to see all that red coat his ivory, skull-like features. It pooled beneath his head, staining the white marble floors.

I did not know how Jaxin had known something was wrong, but they burst into the room just as Aramon wrested Theronix from on top of me. Jaxin was restraining the bastard, and someone at my side was steadying me, helping me up. They tried to steer me away from Aramon, but I wouldn’t let them. Wrenching my arm from the grip on my elbow, I stumbled forward and threw myself down at Aramon’s side.

“No! Come on, wake up, Aramon. What’s wrong? What did you do? Come back to me! That’s a fucking order! Do you hear me? Come back right this instant. I need you…” Wiping the blood from his face with my robe, I searched for a pulse but couldn’t find one. I whirled on Theronix and jabbed a finger at the Xurtal male. “Tell me what you injected him with! What did you do?!”

Two mercenaries held him between them, his arms tightly restrained behind his back, but the male was not resisting. He laughed. “What do you think? There’s only one poison that makes a male bleed that way.” That was not true. Sadly, there were many poisons that could, and I’d had to learn about all of them—their tastes and their symptoms. But I knew instantly which poison he talked of, as it was considered so cruel and awful it had been banned on Xurtal. There was no cure.

My heart dropped in my chest; pain seemed to swallow me whole. I could not lose him—not like this. Not my always-so-irreverent, full-of-life Aramon. Not him. A sob rose in my chest, and I muffled the sound with a bloody hand, trembling all over. “Aramon, please…”

“It’s not poison,” someone said, but that came to me from far away, beyond the rushing in my ears. I couldn’t breathe, though not because of the bruising around my neck. I couldn’t breathe through the fear. Hands were reaching past me for my mate, but I felt as feral as Aramon’s twin sometimes became. I slapped the first hand away by instinct, striking it on the wrist with a hard blow. The second I caught with a pinch at a pressure point in the elbow, then threw myself forward to protectively cover Aramon’s prone body.

“Don’t touch him! Aramon, wake up! Please!” I ducked my head and pressed it against his chest, searching for a heartbeat. If it wasn’t poison, then what? Why wouldn’t he wake up? I wanted him to open his eyes and grin that cheeky, slightly sinister grin. I wanted him to laugh and ask me why I was making such a fuss. I wanted my loud-mouthed, often slightly obnoxious Aramon back.

I could not hear a heartbeat. I could not hear him breathe either, and panic clawed at me, filling me. There was so much of it that it felt too big to keep inside, and it spilled over—spilled in tears, in wrenching sobs, in the words that fell from my lips. Maybe it spilled in other ways too. I’d never know, because the mind of an Asrai was as confusing as it was complex.

“Ah, sweet princess, why do you cry?” I swear that sounded like his voice, and he was saying exactly the things I had imagined he would say. “See? I knew she loved me. You lose, Tass.” It felt like a warmth enfolded my head, but that had to be the lack of oxygen from my stupid, useless crying. Then it felt like warmth against my back, just like it felt when Aramon held me. “Princess, I’m okay. I’m here. It was just a little stint of doubling—nothing to worry about.”

It was the mixture of words, which I did not expect, that made me flick my eyes up to his face. There was that grin, but I had to be imagining it; I still couldn’t sense a pulse inside his chest. His red eyes were stained with blood at the corners, but they glimmered with life. His hand slid up my spine, curling gently beneath my hair to touch the bruises that marred my flesh. His expression went dark as a thunderstorm. “Where is that bastard? He needs to pay for these.”

“Aramon?” It really was him, but how? I grabbed his hand and pressed it to my cheek, leaning close. His fingers were warm, and they wriggled in my grip before settling against my face. “How is this possible?” I recalled his previous words: he had said doubling, that it was doubling that had done this. But that word held no meaning for me in this context.

He sat up slowly, but he caught me around the waist and pulled me into his lap. I went willingly, refusing to let go of him for even a moment, and threw my arms around his neck to hold him close. My fingers roamed over his bare skin to test how real this was. He felt alive—everything about him seemed alive—but I was certain I still felt no pulse in his neck, and I kept checking for it.

“It’s bloody illegal, that’s what it is,” Jaxin barked out, startling me. I had forgotten about our company, about anything but Aramon’s apparent death-but-not-death. Awareness rushed in, and I felt unease shiver down my spine at how absorbed I’d been in him. Anyone could have sunk a dagger into my back while I’d focused on him; I would have never noticed.

The head of my security detail stood behind me with his portable laser cannon cradled against his massive chest with one arm. His black armor gleamed, but blood streaked along his left palm as he held the gloved hand out and pointed at my mate. “Those idiots doubled: Solear joined Aramon in his body to save you from that nutcase and warn the Varakartoom that you were in danger.”

I glanced from the weapon master to the others—Tass, the Tarkan guy, Raukash, and a human male I hadn’t noticed before. Then I glanced at Aramon, my eyes widening with confusion. Solear in his head? Sharing a body? All those things seemed as implausible and unscientific as they were bizarre. He rolled a shoulder. “Don’t listen to what he says. I’m fine, anyway. Where did you take that asshole? I’m not done with him.”

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