Chapter Two
Captain Hunt Treval, The Colony, Base 3, New Arrivals Processing Room
Impatience clawed through me, making me twist in my seat. Across the table, our four newest arrivals stared at me with a mixture of rage and despair. They attempted to mask their pain, but the anger? The anger was clear in the tense lines of their bodies, the grim set of their lips, the complete lack of humor in their gazes. They were warriors of the Coalition Fleet, had survived capture and torture at the hands of our enemy, the Hive, and now they were here.
No one ever wanted to be here.
The fury was something warriors were all too familiar with. And those sent to the Colony had more reason to rage than most. I knew. We all knew. We were outcasts. Abandoned. Rejected by the people we’d fought to protect after suffering agonizing torture and experimentation at the hands of our enemies. We survived, some of us barely, but we were no longer wanted. And that was difficult to accept. Arriving at the Colony was proof of that rejection, just as the changes to our bodies were proof that we would never again be whole.
Anger masked a good many other emotions, but especially pain. As warriors, we were the strongest, toughest fuckers in the universe. We didn’t do heartbreak. Most of those who’d come through this room in the last two years—since I’d been put in charge of acclimating new arrivals—would prefer torture to tears. These four, it would seem, were no exception.
“I wish to return to my home planet.” The large Atlan Warlord, a giant fighter named Rezz, glared at me from his seat. His dinner-plate-sized hands clenched and unclenched on the arms of his chair and I glanced into the corner of the room where my second, Captain Tyran, stood with both an ion blaster and tranquilizer gun at the ready. I met his dark gaze, just for a moment, a question in my eyes.
Tyran nodded, the movement nearly imperceptible. He was ready to shoot. Not that he would need the weapons, even on a beast. The Hive had enhanced Tyran’s bones and every major muscle group in his body. He was strong, stronger than any living creature I’d seen, including an Atlan in full beast mode. When Tyran and I had been captured together, we’d been friends. After what they’d done to us, I knew there was no other I would trust with a mate, and I’d asked him to be my second.
Needing each other’s trust in battle was over. Sharing a mate would hopefully be our future and even more important than anything else we’d done.
When the first mate had been assigned to someone on the Colony, a woman from Earth named Rachel, I’d been skeptical. But watching as she’d held one of us as he died in her arms had changed my mind about the Interstellar Brides Program. About having a mate. I’d wanted a female’s gentle hands to caress my flesh, to look upon me with something other than fear. Gods, I wanted that badly, but assumed being exiled to the Colony meant that pleasure would never be mine, that I’d never be granted a mate, never share a hot, willing female with Tyran.
But Rachel’s arrival changed everything. Eager, I’d been tested the next day, Tyran the day after. And now, we simply waited and tried not to hope. Hope was painful, filling my chest with an emptiness no amount of drinking or work could fill. Every time I saw Rachel—Lady Rone—with her mates, Governor Maxim and Captain Ryston, that hope grew worse.
I’d learned hope was a dangerous thing. Some was required to survive, but too much and disappointment would be cruel. It was a precarious balance I’d lived with since my own arrival on this planet.
But it had been weeks since my testing, since Tyran’s. Hundreds of warriors on the Colony had been tested and no new brides had arrived. Those of us trapped here began to give up on being matched once again. Hope waned. Anger was better. And work.
I had three Coalition warriors before me, and one bone-chilling Hunter from Everis, who, even now, sat separated and distant from the others. From the looks in their eyes, they had zero hope and that was why Tyran kept his hand cautiously hovering over his ion pistol as he stood near the door.
The Hunter, Kiel, had been rescued from a separate section of the Hive building, a section reserved for breeding. He looked harmless enough, his dark hair and pale skin more like a warrior from Earth or Trion. But he was far from human, the Hunter’s skills of his people frightening and unexplainable. They were like phantoms who could see into the darkness of space. Nothing and no one could hide from them.
Kiel was our first Hunter, and I wasn’t quite sure yet what we were going to do with him.
None but myself and Governor Rone knew the complete contents of these men’s files, but I shuddered to think what the proud and deadly Hunter had endured. The Everians were the Fleet’s deadliest assassins, spies and trackers. They made up a large portion of the Coalition Fleet’s Intelligence Core, and the Hive, when they captured a Hunter, were absolutely merciless. I was shocked the Hunter had survived.
Kiel of Everis must have a will of iron. Unbreakable. Which was helpful in battle, but not here. I needed these men to work as a team, integrate into our society. Gain some hope that, while their old lives were over, new ones could be forged. It was my job, my duty, to make sure they did.
These men needed work, purpose, a place to live and a new group of brothers-in-arms to help them cope with their new lives.
The Colony wasn’t a home, not for any of us. Even with the governor’s mate here, it wasn’t enough. This place was a prison, our last stop, and we all knew it. Someday, with mates and children, it could become a home for all of us. Until then…
“None of us are going home, Warlord.” I pointed to my right eye, pulled up the sleeve to reveal my left arm and hand and the metallic hue just beneath the surface of the flesh on my exposed arm. I never wore my armor for these meetings, instead opting for a short-sleeved civilian tunic and pants to remind these warriors that I was not fighting them. I was not the enemy. I, too, had battled, been taken prisoner. Tortured. Escaped. Survived. Lived.
Rezz’s eyes darted to my arm then lingered on the hand-sewn decoration lining the seams, noticed the green mating collar I wore around my neck, and his frown deepened. That lingering stare, and the disdainful snarl on his lip at the sight of my collar, didn’t improve my mood. I’d been wearing it for three months, since the day I’d gone through the bride testing protocols. Wearing it to encourage others to be tested, to show them I had hope she would come. That I was already hers, wherever in the universe she was. As my hope waned, the presence of the collar became the source of jokes at mealtimes, the others sneering at my optimism. Some even doubted I’d actually been tested.
I didn’t care what those fuckers thought. I had that damn hope. I was determined to be stronger than they. I refused to believe this lonely life was my destiny. I refused to take it off. She would come. Someday.
“I will not remain here, a prisoner,” Rezz insisted.
“You aren’t a prisoner, Warlord.” I sighed and leaned back in my chair, prepared for the worst. Twice in the last ten years a beast had arrived and lost control. A fact not lost on myself or any other Colony officer watching the exchange. Tyran was not the only security in the room. Three warriors per new arrival was my preference. Today, we fell well short. Counting Tyran, there were only seven guards—and none of them were Atlan. If Warlord Rezzer lost his temper and went into Beast mode, even with Tyran’s strength, we’d most likely have to kill the Atlan. An action I would prefer to avoid.
Once, the thought of executing the beast would have sent me into a spiral of anguish and self-hatred. Regret. Frustration and a sense of betrayal. But he wasn’t just dealing with being on the Colony, his beast was, too. It was an internal battle of wills and I had yet to know who would win with Warlord Rezzer.
I knew how he felt. Trapped. Escape one prison to arrive at another. I’d been on the other side of this table with Tyran beside me three years ago. And just before that, we’d spent three agonizing days in the hands of the Hive Integration Units before the Coalition ReCon team got us out of there. We’d been lucky. Salvageable. Although it hadn’t felt like luck at the time.
Now, the only emotion flowing through me, as I watched Rezz fight for control, was resignation. He would either control himself, or he would not. There was no half-measure.
And he wasn’t wrong. Although technically, this wasn’t a prison, none of us would go home. Ever. And although the common perception on the Coalition Worlds was that the warriors of the Colony were contaminated with Hive technology and not fit to re-enter society in their home planets, the truth was worse—but easier to accept.
The Coalition Fleet couldn’t stop Hive command communications on a broad scale. Every warrior here had imbedded Hive tech that couldn’t be removed, not if we wanted to stay alive. We were only safe on the Colony because we were so deep inside Coalition space that the Hive couldn’t reach us to fuck with our minds or control us like puppets. There were a few with experimental implants being tested. We were testing a new scanning and interference frequency generator. And Lady Rone, an expert scientist in brain and body chemistry, was helping us test new ways to strengthen our bodies against Hive attack.