Page 49 of The Alien Warrior's Mate

Rune strode to a table and picked up a tool. Spinning it in his fingers, he murmured, “What do you think that means?”

“So much happened since then.” Korben thought of Sah-ah’s itching in the bushes and her screams by the lake. He would die for her and he would kill for her as well, but he needed answers. “This is my first time considering that question.”

Rune set his tool down. “Ga Eun has the birth mark. Sah-ah does too.”

“Are you certain?” Korben leaned forward. “A Plutonian birthmark? One that transforms into the shape of the mate?”

“Did you not see it on her?”

Korben thought of the moment Sah-ah undressed at the lake. He had been too busy staring at her soft places and thinking of how good he would feel mating her to study the shape of her birthmarks.

“When Ga Eun’s birthmark took on my likeness, I thought it was a product of our mating. I thought I had mated her so hard that her body changed.”

Korben’s lips twitched. “A rather pretentious thought.”

“I had no other case to compare it.” Rune slanted him a dark look. “But now I do.”

“I have not mated Sah-ah yet.”

“But you tasted her.”

Korben’s cheeks heated.

Rune waved his silence away. “She has already begun to form your face on her skin.”

“You think the females have Plutonian blood?” Korben asked. “Is that what you are saying?”

“Do you have any other explanations?”

“No, but that is much too far-fetched.”

“We had ships.” Rune strode toward him, his eyes aglow. “Before the Uldimar stole our technology, we could have flown anywhere. Our elders had no interest in earth, but maybe our early forefathers did.”

“You are ridiculous.”

“It is the truth.”

“I have bigger issues at hand,” Korben snapped. “It matters not who Sah-ah was. All that matters is who she is now.”

“And who is that?” Rune asked quietly.

“Mine.”

But will you give up your own brother for her?

He lifted his chin and pushed that voice out of his head. “We will find another way to rescue Clavas and the Healer.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I will stand with the humans. Ga Eun is my mate and her comrades are my comrades.”

Korben glanced away. “I understand.”

Rune eyed him intently. “Although you will not be murdering your brother with your own hands, you may be condemning him to death. Are you prepared to do this if you fail to rescue him?”

Korben frowned. “Failure is not an option. Clavas got captured on my mission. It is my fault his brain was probed. It is my fault our entire species is on the verge of collapse.”

“It was Clavas’s choice to go. He knew the risks.”

“Yes, but it shouldn’t have been him. I should have been captured instead.”

---