Lurching to my feet, I headed for the entrance, toward light, away from the physical struggle as the two large, powerful creatures lunged and hit one another. Somehow, the beast was fighting for our lives and keeping track of me at the same time. He yelled as I neared the mouth of the cave. “Stay! Hive! Too many.”
I’d been on the battlefield with Atlan Warlords before, and was used to their beasts’ simple, clipped way of speaking. I got the point. Hive outside the cave, and not just the trio of Nexus. If an Atlan beast said there were too many, that meant lots and lots of Hive.
I had no doubt we were in trouble here. I’d been out there with my team before the Nexus group made contact. I hadn’t known the other Coalition fighters long, volunteers from all over the universe. We’d only been training together for a few days. But still, seeing them all dead on the ground outside had been hard. How had I been the only one to survive? Was it because the Nexus leader truly did want to connect with the implant in my mind, take over my thoughts and emotions, make me disappear into him? Was this thing in my head that important? Seeing the Hive swarm and envelop the entirety of the Coalition forces on the ground had been so damn hard to watch. We were losing this planet, at least at the moment.
I’d had my own mission, though, and because of it, I was trapped behind enemy lines. This beast, the one that loomed so large inside the cave, was trapped with me.
More in control now, I turned to find the beast still grappling with the Nexus creature. The thing was not as tall or muscled as the beast, but the Hive used microscopic implants to increase strength and speed to superhuman levels. And this one was special. Very, very special.
I wasn’t at all sure the beast was going to be able to beat him. They struggled, the beast’s muscles bulging like I’d never seen before, but he could not gain the upper hand. And there was no way I was going to be alone in this cave with that thing again. My head would start buzzing and I’d be screwed, completely under that monster’s control.
Pulling the ion blaster from my thigh, I yelled at the beast, “Throw him at the wall. I’ll blast him!”
I didn’t know his name, had no idea which Atlan warrior h
e was beneath his helmet. There were several hundred in my battle group and I didn’t recognize all of them in beast mode. In addition, the armor obscured his features even more, but it didn’t matter. He was on my side, and I needed him to kill that blue bastard. I had no doubt he was a bossy, arrogant, macho-man like all the rest of them. But we either worked together, or we both died.
He heard me. A second later, he literally picked the Nexus up off the ground and threw him into the wall of the cave.
The Nexus hit with a loud crash of his silver armor, but he didn’t fall. Not like I’d hoped. He twisted in midair and landed on his feet in a crouch like a fucking cat.
He stared at me, and the strange buzzing started in my head again.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Taking aim, I fired, hitting him square in the chest before I could think otherwise.
The blast barely fazed him, but I kept at it, hitting him in dead center again and again. I wasn’t really doing much, other than keeping him from attacking the beast.
The creature took a step toward me, but a larger blast came from the side, striking the Nexus in the head.
He fell to his knees and a thrill went through me as I shot him again. The monster’s weapon, bigger than mine, was still aimed at it as he approached the creature from the side, both of us firing as quickly as our weapons would arm. I gave a passing thought to the tech buried in his head, but I didn’t care. None of it would matter if I didn’t make it out of this cave alive. Helion would just have to deal with some fried circuits.
After several more shots, the Nexus stared up at me, a look eerily like pleading on his strange blue face as the bottomless darkness of his eyes filled in.
Watching it die was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. I ignored the beast, who continued to fire, and watched with sick fascination as the nothingness of his eyes changed and became something. Dark gray and opaque, solid, real, the dull color reminded me of an unwashed blackboard smeared with chalk.
It tipped forward onto the hard ground of the cave.
When he stopped breathing, and the buzzing in my head faded to empty silence, I knelt beside him. The beast prowled, but I held up my hand to stay him. I didn’t want him to pull this creature’s head from its body. I needed it intact. No. Not me. Helion needed it intact, or at least part of it. The neural transmission juncture. The jar handle attached to the base of his spine. I just wanted to finish this damn mission, get the fuck off this planet and out of this war. A cherry on the sundae of my life would be to find a man to have hot, crazy monkey-sex with for the rest of my life. That wasn’t too much to ask, right? And according to Doctor Moor, I would have a mate waiting for me once I finished this.
I was done. God, I was so done. I hoped the doctor had found a match for me, because my fighting and spying days were over. I just couldn’t keep doing this. I felt like my mind was about to shatter into so many pieces I’d never be able to put myself back together again.
Was this PTSD? My oldest brother had been diagnosed with that right before I left home two years ago. He was a SEAL, same as my other brother and my dad before them. My dad died when I was nine, but that didn’t stop my brothers. You were nothing in my family if you weren’t a SEAL, and my mother had never forgiven me for being born female. So I joined the Air Force instead, ended up in military intelligence. And when that wasn’t enough, I had to get away, to prove myself.
So I did one better than all the dicks with pricks in my family tree and joined the Coalition Fleet. My unique skills and training caught the eye of their intelligence branch, along with my training in electronic weapons systems, and I’d jumped at the chance to make a real difference. Which put me here, in a cave. Trapped. Light years away from any SEAL. But three feet from an Atlan beast.
The blue-skinned bastard on the floor of this cave was my ultimate prize, the fucking Holy Grail in this war, and I wasn’t about to lose my shit now. Beast or no beast.
Kneeling, I tried to push the Nexus onto his side so I could access his spine, but he must have weighed four hundred pounds. I couldn’t even budge his legs. Fucking implants.
“Help me. I need to get him onto his side.” I looked up at the Atlan and nearly stopped breathing. There was no sign of non-beast counterpart behind his eyes. He was all wild animal, and his complete attention was not on the creature we’d just killed.
It was on me.
Mating Fever.
I’d seen it before, and my traitorous body, still high on adrenaline and fear, channeled the last few hours of aggression and terror into the one area I’d been hoping to devote a lot more time to in the near future…lust.
In the near future didn’t mean in the next few minutes. It meant after I’d been released from service and been matched to my mate from the brides program.