Page 18 of Loved By the Alien King
I grinned because I couldn’t help it. Let him see what his ex-wife was doing to me.
Then the three of us—a force to be reckoned with against Earth Space Fleet—snapped as though we were forged from the same fire.
Pete raised his pole over Mike’s head and broke the invisible barrier between us. The Killian fired an arrow into one officer’s hand and skewered it to the wooden crate behind him. Pete lunged his pole forward into the other officer’s barrel chest, stumbling him into the passed-out female behind him, and knocked him over.
At the same time, I slammed my shoulder into a distracted Mike while kicking his feet out from under him. He landed hard on his back, and I was instantly in his face, my knees locked around his arms and torso so he couldn’t get any bright ideas.
“You do know this isn’t over, don’t you?” Pure hatred flared brightly in the cold depths of his eyes, and I had to wonder if he’d ever looked at Nera like that.
If he’d ever lost his temper for being shown how pathetic of an excuse for a man he was.
I slipped the edge of my machete down his cheek deep enough to draw blood. “That’s for Nera, you fuxxing plague. You touch her again, look at her wrong, or even speak her name without the reverence she deserves, I will gut you. I will leave you alive while you watch your insides spill.”
Slowly, I traced the machete down his neck and chest and stopped it just over his belly button with a sharp dig. Just enough to make my point crystal clear.
He gasped and clenched up beneath me.
“Do you understand me?” I demanded.
He didn’t answer.
Next to me, his pole aimed at the neck of the defenseless officer he’d tripped, Pete laughed nervously. “I mean,Iunderstand, and I’m not even in your shoes, man.”
The Killian released an arrow from my right that sailed across the room, a clear threat to anyone who dared move toward us. “Nera’s ex?”
I was not at all surprised that big brain of his had put those particular pieces together so quickly.
“Nera’s ex,” I confirmed and leaped to my feet to go.
“Have a nice night, Nera’s ex.” He leaned down to pat Mike on the cheek as he followed me toward the door.
“Do your friends know what you are?” Mike bellowed behind us.
I kept going, faster now, the open door summoning me closer. Pete and the Killian’s feet shuffled just behind me.
Panic swirled sharp barbs through my veins, but I tried to harden myself against the feeling. So what if Mike told the truth about me? I could brush it off as lies or the insane ramblings of a jealous ex.
Right?
Maybe if it was just Pete, but the Killian was too damn smart for his own good.
Almost there. Almost to the door, which I could slam on Mike and everything that he knew about me.
I closed my fingers around the door’s edge, rushed out of the way of Pete and the Killian who were hot on my heels.
“That you’re a goddamn filthy F—” Mike shouted.
I shoved hard against the door, the loud boom drowning him out. Trapping him. Swallowing his voice. Containing the truth.
For now.
But when I turned to face the Killian, questions brimmed in his perceptive green eyes.
Chapter nine
Nera
Iwokegraduallyfroma dead sleep, the kind where you’re not sure exactly who you are or where you are. Which was fine. I didn’t want to remember anyway.
