Page 42 of The Alien Warrior's Vow

Lans roared. The anger he’d held back during Na’vak’s interrogation begged to be unleashed. He dove eagerly into the battle, grabbing two Heronas guards that were bearing down on a zapten’s back.

He ripped them off the machine and stomped his foot into the first one’s chest while gripping the other by the neck and squeezing tightly. Spinning into a high kick, he brought his heel down on the Heronas and crushed his head.

As he fought, he thought of Eema. Her soft, pale skin. Her beautiful eyes that threatened to drown him every time he gazed into them. Her sweet pink lips. Her slender hands. Her lithe, graceful body. He imagined her under Na’vak’s hands. Under Na’vak’s body.

“Ah!” Lans slashed a Heronas’s neck.

Blood spurted everywhere.

The battle was vicious and thick. Heronas guards continued to pour from every corner of the battlefield. He slayed the enemies that came into his path, imagining that they were an immediate threat to Eema’s life.

No one will touch her.

He stabbed a Heronas, withdrew the dagger and broke the arm of another.

No one will harm her.

He roared again, spreading his arms wide.

Blood oozed down his face.

His blood?

The Heronas’s?

It mattered not.

He tore through the Heronas with his every breath, seeing nothing but a red haze and feeling nothing but the protective thrumming in his heras.

Protect Eema.

All who stood in the path of this objective would fall.

He would not let another that he loved die because of his incompetence.

He would not allow…

An object whittled in the air behind him as he was fighting off three Heronas at once. He felt the sting but did not pay it any mind. Adrenaline kept him moving and he stabbed another Heronas guard without stopping.

“Lans!” A familiar voice shouted over the clank of zapten feet and the clash of metal. “Lans!”

Korben? Why would he call so urgently in the middle of a battle?

Lans felt something wet trickling down his side. He glanced slowly at the blood and saw a wicked Heronas arrow pierced through his chest and out the other side.

His eyes widened slowly.

The adrenaline subsided to allow pain to rush in.

His body started sinking to the ground seconds before it all went black.

Fourteen

Emma

“Why are Heronas guards…”she grunted, “so heavy?” Emma gripped the left arm of one of the guards as she dragged him into the room.

“Can you guys keep it down,” Simone asked from her comfy perch at the alien desk.

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