“And I’ll put you in the brig until you calm down.” He held up his fingers and nearly touched them to my lips when I drew another deep breath to argue. The shock of that almost touch made me pause as he continued. “It’s not just you, but the males as well. They’re practically feral over their desire to claim you. This base is starting to unravel, years of work and discipline are coming apart at the seams, and all because of one unmated female. The first and only mission I allowed you to take ended in disaster. Do you forget so easily?”
“No.” I hadn’t forgotten a single moment of that fiasco. Two Prillon warriors decided they were going to claim me while we were gone. The Atlan and two other Prillon warriors on the mission refused to allow them to approach me. A massive fight had broken out, the Atlan going into beast mode and destroying two small cruisers in the hangar before enough males arrived to break up the fight. And that had nothing to do with the actual fighting we’d been sent off to do. “Just order them to leave me alone.”
“They are not human, Gwendolyn. You cannot expect them to behave as human men would on Earth. They are Coalition warriors, and they are losing control at the idea of you wandering the base unclaimed and unprotected. It goes against our very natures. I won’t have it any longer. I can’t.” He added the last with some finality.
“So you’re just going to let them fight over me? Winner take all?” I asked, stunned.
My stomach turned at the thought. While all four of the males before me were handsome, impressive male specimens, none were the one I would even consider. And he was in the stands. I’d locked eyes with Mak, the hot, brooding Atlan, when I caught a glimpse of him in the crowd. And one glimpse was enough to make my nipples go hard, my pussy clench with eager anticipation of being fucked. By him. Oh yes, he was all intense, alien. Hell, every one of them on the Colony was, but there was something about Mak that set him apart, that made me hot.
“Absolutely not,” the governor said. “I have learned much from my mate.” He turned to look at Rachel, who smiled and walked over to his side. He lifted his arm so she could slide in close to his side, then lowered it to rest across her shoulders, his fingers idly caressing her. “You will choose a mate. There is not a male here who would deny you.”
The crowd roared in approval of that one, and I felt like an insect under a magnifying glass. Every male eye in the crowd was now focused exclusively on me. Shouting at me. Enticing me with flexed muscles or intense gazes. Good god. The governor had just unleashed the Kraken.
“Fine. I’ll choose my own mate.” I nodded once, relieved. “Good. If there’s nothing else, I’ll be going.”
As I took a step toward the door I’d flung open, he called out, “You will choose a mate now. Right now. Before you leave the pit.”
I froze then spun on my heel. “Now?”
“Now,” he repeated. “You need a mate, to be claimed and marked so that the rest of the males know whom you belong to—”
“Whom I belong to?” I said, but he continued as if not hearing.
“—and will no longer find the need to fight in the mess hall, the outer courtyard or here in the pits.”
“Are you serious?”
He gave one decisive nod. “Very. Choose a mate or one will be chosen for you.”
“That’s right. You will do as the governor says. Maybe then you’ll be too busy to completely destroy our personal quarters,” Tyran cut in, now standing beside Kristin. She rolled her eyes at her mate and then winked at me.
“Now,” the governor said again, exerting his authority and using the example of my destruction of someone’s living space as another reason for his haste. He raised his hand to silence the crowd and the volume went from melee to library in a matter of seconds, every male there watching me with hope in his eyes.
I glanced quickly into the stands. Found Makarios. Looked away.
Every male but one.
Damn. Makarios was scowling, his arms crossed over his chest, his face an unreadable slab of stone. He could have been watching paint dry. “But—”
“If you are mated, then you will no longer be a source of such disruption. You will be put back on active duty and allowed to go on missions,” he added.
I bit my lip at that statement. At the fucking dangling carrot.
I angled my head down, stared at him through my lashes. Okay, I’d bite. “Let me repeat that just so we’re clear. I find myself a mate and I can go on missions again, even to fight the Hive.”
“That’s correct.”
He wouldn’t have tossed it out there if it weren’t true. He was the governor, for Pete’s sake. And, he’d said it in front of lots of people. Witnesses. He couldn’t back out now.
I couldn’t stay here on the Colony, grounded, for another day. The opportunity was too great. I just needed a mate. What did it matter? We could fuck and have fun and then I could go off on missions. Do my own thing. No connection except a good time. Any one of these males would be good in bed. But there was one who made me eager to get there. And now.
Even better, it was well known that he didn’t want a mate at all. I did not need an overly protective, possessive alpha male bossing me around, thinking I belonged to him. I needed freedom, and a smoking hot tumble in the sheets.
Refusing to glance up into the stands, I focused my thoughts on the one who made me hot, who could make my time between missions filled with orgasms. The idea… and the thought of Mak’s hands on me, his cock in me, was making me burn up with lust.
His eyes, light and piercing, would hold mine as he thrust into me. His skin was tanned, his jaw strong. With hair a little too long to be considered military cut, he stood out from the others. Even in the standard Coalition uniform, he stood out in a crowd. Taller than the other Atlans, he was a silent, sulking giant and I wanted to get under his skin and find out what made him tick. What made him hot. What made him burn.
There was nothing about him that overtly confirmed the rumor that he wasn’t Coalition military, that he wasn’t a fighter at all. But I believed the gossip. And those in the know said he was a rebel and smuggler from Rogue 5. That he broke laws as easily as he could crack skulls. That his code of honor and loyalty belonged to his Legion on that ruled part of the rebel moon above the planet Hyperion. That he was different. Unique. Alone in the galaxy. One of a kind.