Page 24 of Betrothed to the Alien Mercenary

I never saw the strike coming. There was a sudden lance of pain to the back of my neck. Even through the armor, it was crippling. I sank to my knees, tumbling forward with a last view of Aramon as he fought the Sythral. No, it wasn’t a Sythral—the male had worn a mask. That was the last I thought before blackness claimed me.

***

Aramon

It was a trap. I knew that as soon as my first blow struck the male across the jaw, and his skin split and cracked beneath my knuckles. It revealed that I was not fighting a clever Sythral, the orchestrator of all this death and chaos. No, this was only a simple goon—a sacrificial pawn to serve as a distraction. The Krektar male barely passed for a Sythral up close, his tusks pressing against the ill-fitting mask, his body too stocky. I should have seen it sooner, and now it was too late.

With a final strike against his rock-hard jaw, I sent the male sprawling. I climbed to my feet and scanned the sands for any sign of Evie or other dangers. I saw nothing, and fear grew in my chest. Then I heard it: the hum of a hover cycle. I spun and realized the bike Evie and I had abandoned was rising into the air. “No!” I screamed. Breaking out into a run, I chased after the vehicle. There was a male astride it in white clothing, and across his lap was Evie in her black mercenary armor. Her long red hair waved like a flag in the wind as they sped away, taunting me.

“No!” I screamed again. They had her! They had my mate. How had the tables turned on us this quickly? Rage always simmered in some part of me, quick to incite, quick to flare, but today it turned into a conflagration of fire and anger. When I got my hands on the bastard who’d stolen her, he was going to regret ever having been born.

“Aramon!” The shout barely reached me, but I could not chase after Evie on foot, and I had halted just in range. Panting from exertion, from the desert heat, and from the fight a moment ago, I clutched my fist against my side and searched the dunes. Which way did they go? They’d sped around a dune, and now I couldn’t see or hear them. Where did he take my Evie?

“Aramon!” the voice shouted again, penetrating the haze of anger and fury that had sunk its claws into my brain. “Aramon! Come back here! That’s an order.” Oh, the captain wanted me. For the first time in my life, it was tempting to disobey a direct order from the one male in the universe to whom I owed everything. The father-but-not-father, the male I trusted beyond trust—the captain. Turning on my heel felt like betraying my mate, and each step I took toward the shuttle felt like putting a thousand miles between myself and Evie. Somehow, I did it.

My feet were heavy, my chest aching, as I stepped over the collapsed form of the Krektar in disguise and onto the shuttle. There they were: Solear and Asmoded. My brother lay collapsed against the deck, bleeding from a gash across his white skull. He was breathing, but he was not conscious. It was Asmoded who had called to me, tied to a chair, his long, powerful tail locked to the deck with maglock bands. Their blue forcefields hummed and crackled against his scales.

“They took her, Captain,” I said. “They fucking took my Evie.” His golden eyes glowed at me, and when I looked into those shimmering orbs, it felt like they were telling me everything was going to be all right. For the first time in my life, that look did not feel as reassuring as it normally did. All right? How could anything be all right when Evie was in the hands of some evil, power-hungry bastard? If they had harmed so much as a hair on her head, I was going to lay waste to their entire world.

Moving stiffly, I freed Asmoded from his bonds, my body trembling with rage. The captain was talking, and it calmed me down, but that calm was merely a drop in an ocean of rage. When Solear woke, he’d be a feral, untamable beast. It was surprising that I was not tearing everything to pieces around me myself. But what good would that do for Evie? The shuttle was our only chance to follow her.

“The Varakartoom has a trace on the armor suit she’s wearing. Fly this shuttle, Aramon. Find your mate.” I flicked my eyes from my captain to the pilot’s chair he was pointing at, and, with a heavy feeling in my chest, I threw myself into the seat and did as I was told.

Chapter 21

Evie

They had taken off my armor. It was the first thing the bastard who snatched me did when he thought he’d put enough distance between us and Aramon. I warned him that he’d made a grave mistake—Aramon would stop at nothing to get me back—but the Kertinal male who had stolen me just laughed. His mistake. Even with at least a dozen notches in his spiraling horns, I knew Aramon would make mincemeat out of him. Those notches might signify twelve kills, but only an insecure idiot would feel the need to brag about that.

With my hands tied behind my back, my body draped over the back of the hover cycle, and his tail the only thing holding me in place, I didn’t dare throw myself over the side. We were moving too fast, and I wore only panties and a flimsy blouse. The bastard had even taken my boots—the very boots Aramon had given me. I was beyond mad, but I was also terrified. Without the armor or a com, could Aramon even find me? The hover cycle left no trace as it swept over the desert.

Then we reached the camp, and my heart sank in my stomach. This was bad, and it wasn’t at all what I had expected to discover. The shapes of the tents were exactly like the ones I’d lived in back on Xurtal, with their distinct triple peaks and the colorful bands of green and red painted along the edges of the thick, heavy cloth. I recognized the handful of Xurtal males who stood guard around the biggest tent too—males I’d seen training back on Xurtal, males with whom Evadne’s guards had regularly hung out. I might have even dated one of those guys.

They were the personal guard of Pelarios, and I was not surprised to see him step out of the tent beneath the shaded canopy to watch us land. The Kertinal male parked his stolen—previously stolen by us—hover cycle a short distance away, at the center of the camp. Then he jerked me upright by my hair, ignoring my pained yelp and protests. Dragging me across the hot, white sand, he tossed me to the ground at the advisor’s feet with a casual flick of his wrist.

I landed badly on my hip and shoulder, but I’d managed to protect my hands, which were awkwardly bent and twisted behind my back. The momentum carried me forward, and I rolled to a stop right at the toes of Pelarius’s shiny boots. The Xurtal advisor had been in the service of Evadne’s father, the King of Xurtal, for as long as I could remember. But he was not old yet—older, perhaps, but definitely not some graybeard.

His golden markings glowed with luster and health along his bare, muscled arms, and a short gold vest was the only decoration on his chest. Once a warrior and a general in the Xurtal army, he rose through the ranks quickly. Stern-faced, he was a male always surrounded by rumors. Some attributed his swift ascent to his status as the King's sister's favorite, a female who had never found her mate. I had never given credence to these rumors, yet I couldn't help but wonder if some of the other, darker ones might hold some truth. Like the whispers of his scheming to murder his opponents, anyone who stood as obstacles to his climb to power.

“Ah, Evelyn Mordew,” he said, “I had a feeling it was you, not Evadne, who’d survived Batok’s hospitality. Evadne was never as tough, never quite as clever as you were.” Though meant as compliments, in theory, each word landed like a blow. He’d known all along? Was he here to punish me for impersonating Evadne when the princess was dead? It was the only legitimate reason I could think of for his presence, but my heavy heart and aching belly told me he had far darker motivations.

“Too tough, as it turns out. But exposing you as a fraud will work just as well for what I have planned. The alliance will fall apart when those delegates realize they’ve been tricked by a lowly human.” He smirked, flicked his long braid of black hair over his shoulder, and lowered himself to a crouch next to my head. When he reached out a hand, I wasn’t fast enough to dodge it, and he curled his fingers tightly into my hair. “You shouldn’t have stripped the dye from your hair. We’ll have to reapply it to make the transition more striking.”

I curled my lip and spat in his face. This was the bastard responsible for Evande’s death; he had as much as admitted it now. Why he could possibly want the alliance to fail could have only one reason: he wanted to grasp power over Xurtal, and he needed a powerful ally to do it—one he had to buy with Xyraxin. When the alliance failed to form, the new Tarkan Queen that would succeed Ashcrao would be able to strike; and with Pelarios having so many loyals inside the military, the army would make way for her.

Pelarios hissed, wiping my spit from his face with a hastily proffered handkerchief. Then he raised his hand to strike me, and I jerked back from the blow, unable to dodge, as he still gripped me by the hair. I tasted blood, but he’d held back, thinking I was weak. My teeth ached, my lip was split, but it could have been much worse. A Xurtal male was far more powerful than a human woman.

“You’ll pay for that,” he remarked with a malevolent glare, rising to his feet. “Lock her up. We’ll get Imala in there to fix her up. I will be speaking to the delegates in an hour.” He addressed two of his guards, dismissing me as though I no longer mattered now that he’d had his say. That was nothing new. The two warriors reached down to pull me to my feet by my arms, and I went willingly. There was nothing I could do to fight this, not from here. It sucked, but it felt like all I could do was wait and hope for the best—stall and give Aramon the chance to find me.

The guards escorting me did not care that the white sand burned my bare feet. Maybe they did not know that it would; maybe it was malice. Regardless, I had blisters along the soles by the time they reached a small tent and brought me inside. There, a raw mat of woven weeds native to Xurtal covered the bottom, providing coolness against my abused feet. There was nothing inside the tent except the poles that held up the triple peaks. They branched out from the center in three directions, and that’s where they sat me down and tied me up.

Nobody said anything; it was all done in silence. I met their eyes, glaring at them, but that was the extent of my defiance. They were only pawns, simple soldiers obeying their commander. Did they choose to follow a traitor? Yes, but could I blame them for following someone as charismatic as Pelarios? No. I had believed he was a good guy, too. I thought that if he could talk to Kalzudaud and the other delegates, everything might turn out fine. Never for a moment had I suspected that he was staging a coup and that he’d go as far as seeing the crown princess murdered to do it.

Once the tent flap closed behind them, I was stuck in the warm, dry heat inside the tent, but it was better than the scorching heat outside. My legs and face had been burned by the sun, and my feet ached. I felt thoroughly miserable. Here I’d been trying my hardest to save a kingdom that didn’t even care about me, and as a reward, I was going to get thrown to the vultures. I shuddered, suddenly cold, and my belly turned queasy, my head pounding the longer I waited. I knew the signs: the beginning of heatstroke.

Things were getting more dire by the minute, the hot tent smothering. My body was switching between cold and hot, my mouth was dry, my head aching. If Aramon did not find me soon, I was going to expire. Hell, if Pelarios didn’t have his meeting soon, he would have nothing. That might save the alliance, actually, but I did not feel like dying for the Xurtal cause.

By the time a Xurtal female entered the tent, I had collapsed in my bindings and thrown up my breakfast. I stared at this supposed Imala through blurry eyes and wondered if I was mistaken—or if this wasn’t one of Evadne’s much younger sisters. Power-hungry, or ensnared by Pelarios’s charisma? Whatever her role, she took one look at me, screamed, and ran from the tent, dropping her hair-dyeing supplies at my feet.

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