10
Surnen, The Colony
I stormedout of the medical unit, tossing a tray of supplies to the side in my haste. I’d been listening in on the mission to Valuri but focusing on Mikki. I didn’t really give a shit what Giram was doing unless it impacted my mate. Now I knew what an Atlan who let his beast take over felt like. Out of control. Wild. Feral. Insane.
No one should get in my way or I’d rip his head off. My mate was in danger, and I had to get to her. Now.
I’d been hesitant to let Mikki go to Valuri. On a male level I was a selfish bastard. She’d only been mine overnight. I’d had my hands on her for such a short time, my fingers itched to touch her again. My cock was hard with the need to bury deep inside her. My balls were full and aching to empty every drop of cum into her pussy. Mark her. Remind her and everyone else she came upon that she belonged to me. I needed her. Craved her like a drug.
A day ago I hadn’t even known of her existence, but now, my existence revolved around her. The collars would permit nothing less. I wasn’t in love with her, not yet. But she was mine,and I was fiercely possessive. Protective, and yet I’d let her go. Ever since my parents died, I’d closed myself off. My heart. My mind. I’d vowed to never again let another in. I’d followed protocol and put my ass in the testing chair, but hadn’t expected anything, or anyone, to come of it. It had been required. The hope of a match? Slim.
So slim I’d pretty much forgotten the possibility. Until yesterday. Until I’d let myself become weak and vulnerable. But now… hearing that Mikki was in trouble, feeling her every emotion from the fucking bottom of an ocean on another planet? I was wild. What I’d felt for my parents and then their loss was nothing compared to this… this ferocity I had for Mikki.
“Get the fuck out of my way!” I yelled, racing down the corridor. The stripe on the wall changed from green to blue to red, indicating I was making headway across the base to the transport room, yet it felt like I would never get there. Mikki was down there, underwater with a Hive mechanism of some kind. Stuck. Caught.
She was captured by the Hive, in a trap of sorts, even unintentionally. If they got their integrated hands on her…
I listened to the voices of the crew on Valuri through the comms unit embedded next to my NPU. “Someone needs to get out there and help her,” Rachel practically shouted. “Do we have rope?”
“Giram, call on your beast and just pull her away,” I said. He was Atlan. He could just go out there and get her. Surely the water would part for him or something.
“Doctor, I can’t swim and neither can my beast,” Giram admitted. It seemed we had found his weakness.
Gods, mine too. I couldn’t swim either. There was water on Prillon Prime, but it wasn’t used for amusement like on Earth. Water was drunk. Bathed in. Looked at. Prillon Prime’s oceans harbored very dangerous creatures, and I’d never even considered the idea of getting in it.
“I can swim,” Rachel said. “I’ll go get her.”
“I forbid it,” Maxim snapped. “You are not strong enough to pull her from whatever that machine is. If Mikki can’t get herself free, all you’ll do, mate, is get yourself caught as well.”
“Where the fuck are you, Surnen?” Trax shouted. “Fuck, get to transport or I’m leaving without your ass.”
I came upon a sharp turn in the corridor, all but rammed into the wall, then pushed off and pivoted to continue on. “Thirty seconds,” I breathed. “Get the transport ready so it will start as soon as I step onto the pad.”
“Always late. I’ll go now. You catch up.”
“NO!” I bellowed. Warriors even bigger than me stopped in their tracks and pressed themselves against the wall to let me pass. “I must get to her. How could this happen? Protocols were in place.”
“We weren’t expecting the Hive, Doctor. Not on an uninhabited planet like this one,” Giram replied.
“I don’t give a fuck,” I practically growled. “The Hive should always be taken into account. Every scenario, every incident. They should never be taken for granted.”
“I’m caught, but I’m fine, Surnen,” Mikki said. “I’m just hanging out here, waiting.”
Her voice had that sharp bite I was accustomed to, but she wasn’t bickering with me. She was fighting an unknown machine that held her trapped beneath the water. I sensed calmness in her, but fear as well. She had oxygen; her sensors hadn’t indicated otherwise. There was only so much. Her supply of air would run out eventually. And this was her first contact with the Hive, even if only tangentially. This was perhaps worse, for we knew nothing about what they were doing with the planet. Why they were using the water. Where it was going. Where she’d go if she was pulled into the transporter beneath the sea.
“You’re not fine,” I snapped. “You should be here on The Colony in my bed. Tied to it so I know you’re safe.”
“Tied to it?” she snapped. “Is this part of your protocols? Is it tradition to be tied to a bed like that? Because I might need to find a new planet.”
“It should be,” Maxim said, his voice coming through clear but grim and determined. “If you go near that water, mate, that is where you will find yourself as well.”
“Hey!” Rachel replied.
“If it were protocol, you’d be safe right now instead of using up all the reserve oxygen in your suit,” I told Mikki. “You’re below fucking water on a strange planet that has never been visited. There is no protocol for that.”
“I have three hours of oxygen remaining,” Mikki replied. “I have my feet braced. I’m not going into the machine, whatever it is. There’s no fucking way I’m being transported by the Hive.”
Those words only ratcheted up my panic threefold. I knew what it was like to be transported by the Hive.So did every other fighter listening in. “We will get you out of there, and then you are never leaving our quarters again. Never!”