Page 7 of The Alien Warrior's Mate

Tapping his wrist, he awakened his holographic monitor. The interface brightened and words shifted across his arm. Korben hunched over to hide his movements from those nearby.

With deft fingers,he maneuvered to the translator widget. Plutonians had every language installed inside neural connector implants in their brain. The connectors allowed them to communicate with any species they encountered, but tonight he did not want to be surrounded by these bastards’ words. Korben pressed a bar and turned the translation volume to low so he could tune the world out.

In the quiet, his mind ran circles around the events that had led him here. Two sun rotations ago, his brother—Clavas—had been abducted. Soon after, the Heronas sent him holo images of a bound and bruised Clavas and commanded his tortured brother to plead for his life.

Instead, his brother had issued a warning.

“Korben, they probed my mind and discovered the secret of our immortality. The Heronas have the Healer in their clutches. You must save him. You must save the H—”

A guard had slapped Clavas across the face, stealing the rest of his speech. But Korben knew exactly what his brother was trying to say.Save the healer.

Clavas’s abduction affected only his small tribas, but the Healer’s kidnapping threatened the existence of every single Plutonian living on his planet. The devastation that would erupt on his species if the Healer was harmed was immeasurable.

Korben had a plan. The Heronas were willing to negotiate for Clavas—a human female in exchange for his brother’s life. They denied having the Healer in their camp and threatened to cut his time in half if he didn’t agree to the exchange.

Korben had quickly agreed.A human for his brother’s life.But he did not intend to let the Heronas keep the Healer in their clutches. Clavas was the only one who knew of their elder’s whereabouts inside the Heronas’s city. He would get his brother back, find the Healer and restore the peace of all Plutonians.

His life depended on it.

So did his brother’s.

He had no choice but to succeed.

The crowd’s excitement suddenly stirred to a deafening noise. He glanced up and saw a human female being auctioned. Rulari guards clamped the human’s scrawny arms and dragged to the edge of the stage.

The human had pale skin, a thin body and long black hair. Her face seemed to have been bruised many times. She gazed upon her captor with the resigned acceptance he’d seen on so many Plutonian faces after the Red Death.

Denizi. He’d been so caught up in his thoughts that he’d let the human get away. But no matter. Whoever purchased her would have to give her over.

Or he’d take her.

Either way, he was leaving with a human.

Just as he was about to grab his weapon and seek the female’s owner, he heard an ear-shattering shriek. Asecondfemale rushed onto the platform.

The crowd went still, staring at the human female in awe. Indeed, Korben felt a strange heat pulse through his venas as he studied her. The human’s skin was dipped in pure, unbrokentiren—a specialty Plutonian dessert made from the bark of a sweeterata. She was dressed in the tunic of a captive. Her hair lay in thick, unruly black curls that fell to her shoulders. He wondered if her hair could activate and become a weapon.

Thetiren-colored human launched herself at the pale one. “Eema…ples noooo!”

The adjustments he’d made to his interface warped her language, but he did not need his translator dialed to a hundred to feel her terror. The horror in her expression drilled down into his body and squeezed his heras.

The pale female shook her head. “Giv eet up, Sah-ah.”

Korben anxiously tapped the interface on his arm and fiddled with his translator. It went up halfway and then began to glitch. He slapped his arm, hoping to jiggle the device into working. Why wasn’t this denizi thing translating?

Annoyance filled him. Translators were paramount to survival on this planet. Korben was as adept with his weapon and his fists as he was with negotiations, but he first needed to understand his enemy to turn them into a friend.

Not every head had to be sliced off a body. It was a phrase he repeated to his brother almost daily as Clavas’s excitement for war had been present in him from an early age.

His brother was always the brave one, fearlessly steering himself into hopeless situations and fighting until he was the victor. That determination would only land Clavas in greater trouble with his captors. The longer his brother remained with the Heronas, the more Plutonian secrets they would be able to extract and the closer Clavas—and the world he knew—would come to an end.

I must save my brother.

Stark resolution rose in him as Korben stood and took a determined step toward the stage. Two Rulari guards dragged the pale human away while another pair kept the second in their grips.

The human female was a delicate creature. Her wrists and ankles could do very little damage and yet she bucked like a wilderoniz,her chest heaving and her brown eyes wide.

Korben raised his interface to flash his gold coins. Others in the crowd raised their interface as well.

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