3
Lily, Moon Base Arturri, Mission Briefing Room
Exhausted wasthe right word for my state of being.
Sated.
Sore.
Happy.
Those were all brilliant words. As was nervous.
Nervous. There was a word. I was walking into a roomful of alien warriors from another planet who expected me to be one of them.
I was a librarian. A brilliant librarian, but still, I’d spent more time with books than with people. Any more than two or three people in a room was a rock concert as far as I was concerned.
So, of course there was standing room only in the briefing room, except for the two conspicuously empty seats in the front row. Which was just bloody brilliant if I wanted to be stared at, inspected and watched by every single person in the room.
Cue the drumroll please. Here is the freak from Earth. Oh, and if her hair is a mess, she’s wearing no makeup, and she looks like she had no sleep because her new pair bond spent the entire night literally fucking every single functional brain cell out of her body? Please do the polite thing and pretend not to notice.
Meanwhile I would try like hell to pretend that did not accurately sum up my life for the last twenty-four hours.
“Welcome back, Darius.” A tall, stunning redheaded female placed her hand on Darius’s shoulder as he led the way around the front of the room so we could wind our way to our chairs.
“Thanks, Bantia. Ulixes.” Darius inclined his chin to a tall, gorgeously dark male who stood next to her. They both wore Elite Starfighter uniforms exactly like the ones Darius and I were now wearing.
I heard Darius’s name more than a dozen times as those gathered quietly welcomed him back into the fold.
But welcome back? As in, Darius was here before? Had he been a Titan?
Who was his partner? His pair-bonded mate? And where was she now?
Had he gotten tired of her and dumped her for me? Was that a possible outcome for us as well? Sorry, Lily, you don’t meet my expectations. Moving on…
The thought made me shudder, not with fear but with dread. Failing to meet expectations was one of my specialties. Just ask my mother.
Maybe his last pair bond was dead. Not saying that was a better outcome, but there was a small part of me that would rather just cease to exist than go through the humiliation of failing at being a Starfighter in real life. Failing Darius. Not being good enough. I’d had enough of that in my life, thank you very much.
Swallowing my nerves, I tried to focus on the here and now. This was an important meeting. All the Starfighter Titans were here. Two generals were here. I was an important person now. I had a job to do. A job that mattered.
Just like in the game, this was just my next mission with Darius. But this was even better. Real Darius. With real hands and real lips and those dark bedroom eyes making me feel like he was going to pounce and devour me.
I wanted more of that. And if I had to climb into a machine and go kick some ass to get more, that’s what I would do. I had squeezed myself into the surprisingly flattering Elite Starfighter uniform with the silver swirl insignia on the chest. That design matched the dark swirl of the cipher implant site on my neck. And that matched Darius’s mark, the Elite Starfighter mark everyone in the room seemed to carry.
According to what Darius had told me on the short walk to the meeting, there were Titan teams stationed on the Arturri moon base as well as General Jennix, commander of the Elite Starfighter mission control specialists. General Aryk and the Elite Starfighter pilots were reportedly running IPBM—Interplanetary Ballistic Missile—patrols as well as helping root out pockets of Dark Fleet resistance on the colony planet of Xenon.
Darius held out my seat and then settled beside me, glaring at anyone who looked like they were even thinking about talking to either one of us.
What was his problem? Was this supposed to be his version of acting protective? Because as far as I was concerned, he was being disrespectful and rude to everyone in the room but me. Flattering, in a dysfunctional way, but he appeared to have the manners of a randy goat. I could just hear my mother’s scandalized gasp of disapproval all the way from Earth.
“What is your problem?” I whispered. “Stop glaring at everyone.”
“There is no problem.” Darius answered me, but his gaze continued to scan the room for something. Assassins? Someone he owed money? I had no idea what the hell was going on.
“Take your seats and quiet down.” Bantia’s voice carried well, and there was no doubting the respect shown her by everyone in the room. “General Romulus is waiting to give us a mission briefing from his location onboard the Battleship Resolution.”
They dimmed the lights, and I leaned in closer to Darius so I could whisper in his ear. “And welcome back? What did she mean, welcome back?”