Chapter Six
Kiel
My mate decided that the best way to discover the truth was to do interviews with the warriors living on the Colony. To get information from those that lived here. It seemed reasonable, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care that a planet halfway across the galaxy learned the truth about us. I had no opinion, as the only thing I cared about was keeping her with me. It was my job as her mate to keep her safe and happy. Nothing more. Maxim and Prime Nial could deal with Earth.
Maxim had agreed to petition the Prime to allow an exception to be made for Lindsey. Thank the gods, because I could not give her up. Every instinct, every cell in my body was utterly and completely hers. Just the thought of being separated from her in less than a day made me angry.
“Let’s set up the camera and mic over there.” Lindsey pointed to the end of a dining hall table in the main meal room. While each person’s quarters had a food unit, it was recommended—and observed—that everyone ate together. Since we all came from being held captive by the Hive, it was important for everyone to bond, to create a new bond, a new family of sorts.
The space was bright with light from the two suns shining through the wall of windows. It was a welcoming spot, intended to pull people together, to see their new world in all its rugged beauty through the glass.
I didn’t have as difficult a time as some did, trying to assimilate. But then, I understood the promise, how family and community worked. Hunters from Everis weren’t the best trackers because we didn’t understand how people worked, how they thought and felt, what they wanted.
No, we were the best because we did understand, and used the very emotional need for connection or recognition to good use. Even now, a handful of warriors lingered in the large room, clearly off duty at the moment, playing a game of chance with cards and numbered stones. Two were Prillon warriors I recognized, Captains Marz and Trax. An Atlan sat opposite them, Warlord Rezzer, whom I would owe a lifelong debt for protecting my mate in the fighting pits until I could arrive. Holding her own amongst the warriors, and the final player, was another human female. Kristin. She was small, but opposite my mate in every other way.
Lindsey had long golden hair, Kristin’s was of a similar color, but short, shorter even than Rezzer’s. Kristin was voluptuous with large breasts and full lips. Lindsey was lean, with small breasts, a muscular abdomen and a curved ass so perfect I couldn’t keep my hands off her. Like Lindsey, Kristin was from Earth. Unlike Lindsey, she’d volunteered to be a bride and eagerly mated to Tyran and Hunt upon her arrival. She wasn’t going home. This was her home now.
The group seated here, waiting for us, were my friends. My investigation team. The group I worked with on a daily basis to find Krael. My fellow Hunters, or as close as I was going to find on a planet where I was the only one of my kind.
I was the only one from Everis. The only one with a strange mark on my palm that had pulsed and come to life, that was pushing me to claim Lindsey and fighting with every atom of my being to keep her with me.
Isolation. Loneliness. I was no stranger to the darkness of true separation. I’d been so alone for a very long time. From the time I joined the Elite Hunters unit, to my confinement and torture with the Hive. And finally, here. The Colony. A prison without bars. A lifelong death sentence, especially if Lindsey returned to Earth.
Not happening.
I had refused the Interstellar Brides testing protocols, not wanting to hope. Not daring to hope.
But fate had dropped my marked mate right into my lap. I knew she wanted to leave me, she’d made that blatantly clear. Why, I had yet to discover. But it wasn’t because her body was cold to my touch. I saw need in her eyes when she looked at me, felt her pleasure when she came all over my cock. But with the need was also regret. Not for our connection, but for something else. Something I would discover.
My mate had secrets, but if she thought to walk away and keep those truths from me, she was sorely mistaken.
I was an Elite Hunter. There was nowhere in this universe she could go that I could not find her. Her scent was part of my cells, now. The sound of her voice the reason my heart beat. I could not lose her.
I wanted to toss her over my shoulder again and carry her off to my quarters, lock her in with me and never let her go. But that would not give me the answers I needed. She would not say, so I had to use my Hunter senses and discover the truth other ways.
I set down the recording equipment on the edge of a table and walked to the nearby table where my friends played their game.
Clearly, they were bored out of their minds, waiting for me as I neglected my duties to our people so I could play escort to a woman who couldn’t wait to leave me.
“Kiel?” Lindsey’s voice made me turn.
“Yes, mate?”
“Stop calling me that.” Her hands were on her hips, her head tilted to the side as she scolded me. It was adorable. Perfect. So very Lindsey that I couldn’t help but smile. Yes, the need to carry her off was strong.
“Never.”
She blew her bangs out of her eyes and sighed. “Fine. Whatever. I’m all set up. Are you sure they’re going to come?”
I nodded, turning to look at Kristin where she sat with her legs crossed in front of her on top of the table. She was too small to sit in the chairs, and she hated being so much shorter than everyone else. “Kristin? How many humans are on Base 3?”
She tossed a card into the middle of the table and raised her gaze to me. “Five since Brooks.”
Behind me, Lindsey sighed. “Just five? Really? That’s it?”
Kristin’s gaze shifted to my mate, and the look in her eyes was neither welcoming nor hostile. Blank. Carefully blank. “There were six, before Brooks died. Eight, if you count me and Rachel.”
Kristin unfolded her legs and walked over to Lindsey, standing eye-to-eye with my mate. “Where are you from?”