He grunted at my words but turned and walked away, most likely heading toward the transport room to greet his new bride.
I watched him go, my gut churning with conflicting instincts. Stay. Follow him. Let him go. Claim the female and demand my place as his second.
Nothing was easy. Nothing could be done without fighting someone, whether it was Karter, the I.C. or myself.
A few months ago, my superior officers at Core Command had been sitting around with huge smiles on their faces, congratulating each other and patting themselves on the back. A Nexus unit had been taken down, the first, but not by a member of the Intelligence Core, or by a fleet commander, but by a human cyborg female sent to The Colony, and by her new mate, a brute who, technically, wasn’t even part of the Coalition, a Forsian from Rogue 5, a bastard the size of an Atlan and twice as mean.
How those two had taken down the Nexus was still a matter of debate. The female and her mate had stolen a ship soon after and disappeared, leaving a group of dead Hive Soldiers, a dead Hive Integration Unit, and the body of the Nexus himself rotting in a cave beneath Colony Base 3.
Dissecting the Nexus had earned us a deeper understanding of how their biology was formed. Prior to that, only one other Nexus unit had been killed, again by a human female, Captain Megan Simmons, and her mate, Nyko, an Atlan with a mean streak and a bad attitude. Before the I.C. even knew the captain had been successful in acquiring a neural transmission junction from the spine of the Nexus unit on Latiri 4, the Hive had removed their dead.
We had the Nexus’ helmet, and the disgusting wormlike neural unit—still squirming and searching for brains—somewhere on ice in the vaults at Core Command. Doctor Helion and the rest of the I.C. science teams had spent countless hours trying to understand the Hive physiology, with little luck.
It seemed the Nexus and the rest of the Hive we battled were completely different. The Hive soldiers were biological hijackings, bodies of conquered people they’d taken form other worlds and contaminated with their synthetic technology.
But the Nexus themselves were a different species entirely, something we’d never seen before.
The body from The Colony had given them more information, but still not enough.
And now this.
Two battlegroups destroyed in less than two weeks. At this rate, the Hive would overrun the entire Coalition Fleet in a matter of weeks.
The I.C. was currently hunting for the Forsian and his female. They were the only warriors known to have successfully tracked and killed a Nexus unit. They had answers we needed, but they had vanished, and Governor Maxim of Base 3 claimed not to know much. But then, he was Prillon, with a human mate of his own, and she had been as tight-lipped as her two mates.
I’d met Earth females, Captain Megan Simmons among them. They were tough and liked to keep their secrets. If Governor Maxim claimed not to know how the human female—now cyborg—had tracked the Nexus unit, I believed him.
Damn stubborn females. She most likely needed a good spanking and a good fucking, in that order. But to do that, I’d have to get past the Forsian monster who’d claimed her for his own.
Damn near impossible, even if the I.C. knew where to find them.
Still, a tempting prospect. Human females were all softness and curves, usually with a feisty mouth to go with them. Everything I wanted in a female, and I’d admired the few I’d run into.
I wondered if Karter’s mate would have soft, dark skin like Megan, or be a light brown color more like I.C. Commander Chloe Phan? Perhaps she’d be fair and golden like Kira, the bride I’d met on The Colony, mated to the Warlord Anghar, or fair of skin but dark haired like Governor Maxim’s female, Rachel.
I’d spent several weeks on The Colony and my admiration for Earth females had only grown from interest to obsession. I wanted one for myself.
The Hive’s interest in The Colony had been our main focus the last few months, until the Hyrad had been destroyed, and now the Varsten. The Hive had a new weapon, a game-changing, win the war and wipe out the entire Interstellar Coalition, weapon.
I’d been sent here to find out what it was and how it worked, so we could stop it. All I’d done so far was get good warriors killed.
I needed that probe. And I prayed to the gods there was valuable information contained on its database, something we could use to counter or destroy their new weapon.
If not, we were doomed. And so were my old friend and his new bride.
That was not acceptable to me. Knowing his bride would be arriving from Earth made me doubly determined to protect them both. No doubt she would be soft and curvy, sassy and submissive. Perfect. Matched to Makaed Karter, she could be nothing less.
And I would have been his second, the pledge made years ago when we’d been not yet twenty, running the corridors of the battleship, playing at war. Karter and I had been closer than brothers then. We’d longed to attend the Coalition Academy, to test our mettle. Wet behind the ears and so fucking young. We’d both excelled, worked our way up the ranks until we earned our own commands.
And now Karter had a whole fucking battlegroup answering to him. He was known. Very known in the Coalition. Infamous. Then there was me, his best friend. I’d hit captain, then taken a sharp left at I.C., worked my up to commander, and there had been no path back.
My superiors had faked my death and erased my records in case the Hive ever caught me. Obviously, I wasn’t dead, but in the eyes of the Coalition, I’d been lost in a battle five years earlier. Body taken by the Hive, destination unknown. Plausible, since that was what happened to almost every fighter lost on Latiri 4 if they were not lucky enough to be retrieved by one of our own.
No one questioned my death. No one missed me. And so I fought, in my own stealth way, in a way few had. I didn’t exist. I could blend in, become whatever my superiors wanted. Mission after mission. And since I was already dead, they didn’t have to worry if something ever happened to me. I didn’t kid myself. I wasn’t irreplaceable. I was valuable, but that was it.
And now, holy fuck. Now, seeing K
arter, those five years were blown. I existed again. Someone knew me. Knew everything important about me. I hadn’t cared for so long, but seeing my friend made the need to… belong, rush back. And when he’d discovered he’d been matched, that his mate was arriving here, on this wreck, I had a purpose again. Something more than battling a never-ending enemy.