by Mina Carter
Alien Commander’s Mate
Warriors of the Lathar
Mina Carter
New York Times & USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Copyright © 2018 by Mina Carter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Read an excerpt from BONDED TO THE ALIEN CENTURION…
Also by Mina Carter
About the Author
1
Those bastard aliens had taken everything from her. Everything.
Amanda Kallson looked around the remains of her home in horror. Where before it had been a neat little three-bed detached, tastefully if modestly decorated, now it was little more than the shell of a house. The walls and roof were still intact, mostly, but that was about it.
Once she’d stepped through the front door, any illusion of normality was shattered. Like her furniture. She’d walked forward, picking her way through the destruction and debris, silent as a ghost. Unfortunately, Roger, who had accompanied her back from her appointment with the doctor, wasn’t as quiet.
“My god, Mandy, this place is a mess. You got insurance, right? Please tell me you got insurance?”
She winced as he shortened her name. No matter how many times she’d told him she didn’t like it shortened that way, he still insisted on calling her Mandy. She looked down at the frying pan she’d picked up from the ruins of the kitchen and studied it idly. Would a judge let her off for mitigating circumstances?
“Well you see, Your Honor… he kept calling me Mandy and he never put a new toilet roll on the holder in the bathroom…”
She sighed as she dropped the pan, listening to the dull clang as it hit the floor. The handle broke off and the round pan part rolled away. Great. Just fucking great.
“Insurance is the least of my problems at the moment, Roger,” she heard herself say dully as she stood in the doorway to what had been Lizzie’s room. The whole house was destroyed but it seemed this room had taken the brunt of it. The walls were riddled with what looked like massive bullet holes and scorch marks, like the mother of all battles had raged in here. But they weren’t bullet holes, they were blaster marks…
Terran forces didn’t use blasters. Aliens used blasters.
Lizzie’s bed was empty. It was the only thing in the room that was untouched, an oasis of normalcy in all the destruction. As soon as she’d opened the front door and seen the devastation, she’d raced through here, her heart stopping until she’d seen the bed.
Whole. Unharmed. No blood on it.
They’d taken Lizzie. Probably Jac as well. Guilt hit her hard and fast. They’d come for Lizzie. She just knew it. They had her sister and wouldn’t let Jess go, so why wouldn’t they want Lizzie? Jac had gotten caught up in the crossfire and it was all Amanda’s fault.
She looked around, picking up on dark patches in the carpet where something heavy had lain. Oh shit, what if Jac had been hurt... killed? Large, dark patches that her mind shied away from. It was blood, she knew it was, but in amounts that meant whoever had… died. There was simply too much blood for anything else.
“How can you be so blasé about insurance, Mandy?” Roger demanded, grabbing her upper arm and spinning her around. “Your home is destroyed, and you have nowhere to live. You’ll move in with Mother and me, of course, at least until after the wedding. Then we’ll get a place of our own. If you have sufficient insurance on this place.”
He broke off, peering myopically down at her. She was forced to grit her teeth to stop her temper boiling over. She and Roger had been very casually dating for a couple of months now—very casually—but it seemed he had a very different idea of where they were headed.
“Wait? Married?” She looked up at him in shock as her brain caught up with what he was saying. At first she’d been pissed at his assumption that she’d move in with him and his mother…
“Well… yes. I mean, I assumed that was where we were heading,” he flushed, blustering. “Why would we be having s-e-x otherwise?”
She was forced to bite back her sigh as he spelled out the word sex, as though it were something dirty. She knew he was a little straight-laced but this was something else.
“Well… because it’s fun? For stress relief?” she tried a joke, but it fell flat against his confused expression. “Oh god, Roger, please don’t tell me you’re serious?”
“Deadly.” His expression was firm and he let go of her arm to kneel down. Thanks to his dodgy left knee—twisted playing badminton, he’d said—it took him a while but then there he was, reaching into his pocket.
“Please, Roger, don’t,” she begged, desperate to stop him making a fool of himself. There was no way she was going to say yes.
Although, tall, broad-shouldered and still with a full head of blond hair, Roger was the typical mother’s boy. He’d never moved away from home and only ever had one serious girlfriend before her. Sandra—who he often referred to as Sandy—had been killed in a car accident when they were both twenty. He’d apparently been heartbroken, only venturing onto the dating scene again a few years ago.
Given he was nearly fifty-five, that was one hell of a recovery period. But… Amanda suspected that had far more to do with his mother, keeping him tied to the apron strings and convincing him that Sandy had been the one true love of his life.
Bull and shit. The old bat was just a controlling old crone and there was no way Amanda was moving in with her. Ever.
“Amanda Kallson, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” Roger beamed as he opened the small box he’d pulled from his pocket.
Her face set as she automatically looked at the ring within. She recognized it, of course. She’d seen it often enough on the “shrine” to Sandy Rogers his mother had erected in the spare bedroom.
“You’re proposing to me with your dead girlfriend’s ring?” she asked, her throat tight, not with the joy one normally expected to be the reaction to a proposal, but with anger. “Really?”
Roger blinked, a purple flush starting to creep in from the edges of his face. “It’s the thought that counts, Amanda,” he said stiffly as he got to his feet. “I didn’t think you were such a shallow creature that you’d expect me to spend extra money when I have a perfectly good ring already.”
He reached for her hand, pulling the ring from the box and trying to slide it onto her finger. She recoiled, slapping at his hands to make him release her and stepping back.
“Fuck’s sake Roger, if you don’t realize what’s wrong with that, there’s no point in me telling you!” Her voice rose, coming perilously close to harpy level. “And while we’re on the subject, how about the inappropriateness of proposing when my home has just been destroyed and my daughter kidnapped! You remember her, don’t you?” she snapped when Roger blinked, his gaze suddenly going to the bed behind Amanda. “Yeah, the one who was ill!”
Roger’s expression shifted, unable to meet her gaze like a naughty little schoolboy.
“What?” she demanded, shoving her hands on her hips.
He shrugged. “Well, it’s perhaps for the best. Mother suggested that it would be best to send her away. Somewhere they could—”
“Don’t you say another word.” She h
adn’t thought she could possibly get angrier than she was. But she could. Her fury turned white-hot and for a moment she wished the aliens were still around to blast his damn fool head off.
“Leave,” she ordered. “Now. Before I do something I’ll regret.”
Roger opened and closed his mouth like a guppy. He didn’t seem to know what to say. Finally he looked down at the ring in his hand. “So you’re saying no?”
“Get that man a fucking medal!” she cried, throwing her hands up toward the heavens. “No, Roger, I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man on Earth. Now get the fuck out of my house. I don’t want to see you ever again. EVER!”
To Roger’s credit, he left without saying a word. It was probably survival instinct, she mused idly, taking a few steps backward to sit down on the bed. Even the most self-absorbed male often knew when a woman was on the edge. Often they then made a snip about whether she was on her period or not. The judge probably saw a lot of those cases as well...
They’d taken her children. Jess and Lizzie were both gone.
She closed her eyes, a tear tracking down her cheek as pain ate away at her, leaving a ragged hole in her chest. What did she do now? How did she get her kids back? The aliens weren’t even supposed to be down here on the surface. They were supposed to still be talking with the government up in space... but some of them had obviously been down here and stolen her daughter.
Again.
She drew a shuddering breath and tilted her face up toward the sky.
“I know I don’t talk to you much,” she whispered. “And I’m not even sure if you’re real or... yeah, you know. But I’m desperate. They’ve got my girls, the Lathar... do you even have like jurisdiction over aliens as well? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore apart from the fact I’ll do anything to get them back. Please... help me and I’ll do anything you want or need. Missionary for the rest of my life in the outer colonies? You got it. Just please... help me...”
Her voice trailed off on the whispered plea as more tears coursed down her cheeks and she listened with her eyes closed. Nothing. Silence. She sighed. Of course it wouldn’t work. God, if he existed, had probably stopped listening to her years ago. She hadn’t been to church since she was a kid, and while she’d tried to live a good life, she was obviously as wicked as they came if she was being punished this way.
“Fucking typical!” she muttered and then her throat began to tickle.
Wrapping her arms around her chest, she tried to breathe in shallow pants, attempting not to cough. But it was no good, the pressure built up and then it happened. The coughs racked her small frame, tearing at her lungs and almost cracking her ribs.
New tears streaked down her face as she coughed. It was agony, each expansion of her ribs more painful than the last. Doc Chambers said she just had a virus and her body would heal itself in time. She shuddered weakly as the fit ended. Doc Chambers was a hippie-asshole. She knew there was something wrong, something really wrong deep inside... something that meant she didn’t have a lot of time to find her kids.
“Please...” she whispered on a whim. There were other gods out there, right? “If anyone is listening, I’ll do anything...”
* * *
Fenriis had never heard the sound of a woman’s tears. It was both the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard and the most terrible. It sounded like her heart was breaking.
He hadn’t intended to reveal himself. His plan had been to drop in, check that the Kallson woman was alive, unharmed and being cared for by someone. So when he’d heard voices he’d concealed himself quickly. Not sure if he’d meet with resistance, he’d chosen to wear body armor just in case. A sound move since his armor’s refractive camouflage and the shadows of the ruined building had allowed the two humans to walk right past him.
But he hadn’t seen them. He’d been turned away from the door in the room he’d been in and although the camouflage was good, it wasn’t perfect. Human eyes were like those of the Lathar... those of an apex predator, drawn to movement. He’d remained stock-still, unable to see but able to hear everything that occurred between the humans.
A man and a woman... a couple, he’d realized quickly when the male had asked the female to become his wife. His mate, he quickly translated from human to Lathar. Then he winced at the female’s reaction. Yeah, he wasn’t the best with females, given the Lathar no longer had any, but even he knew... draanth, any male of any species with anything approaching common sense would have realized... that proposing to a female with anything of a previous partner's was a bad idea. Like really bad. Apocalyptically bad.
He’d thought the female was about to eviscerate the male at that point, using just the iciness of her voice. He’d kept his chuckle to himself at the male’s clueless response. Human males were dense. The realization made him feel a little less guilty about stealing their women away. The draanthic didn’t deserve them anyway. Latharian males made far better mates.
The male had stormed off in a huff, leaving the female alone in the ruins of her dwelling. Fenriis should have left. He knew he should have left. Despite the emperor’s shadow ordering him to pick up the Kallson woman, his standing orders were from the emperor. He was to do nothing that would jeopardize the upcoming negotiations. Kidnapping a human woman... definitely a problem. Just checking she was okay? Yeah, that fell within his duty of care. Latharian warriors had destroyed her home. It was only right that he check in and make sure she was okay. Make sure none of the assholes were still lingering around to cause problems.
So he moved forward stealthily, still concealed by what remained of a doorway, stopping dead when he heard her whispering. What was she doing? It sounded like she was... praying?
“...I’m not even sure if you’re real... I’m desperate. They’ve got my girls...I’ll do anything to get them back. Please... I’ll do anything you want... help me...”
He froze in place as the sound of a vicious coughing fit ripped through her. Sneaking a look around the doorframe, he sucked in a hard breath. The tiniest woman he’d ever seen was all but doubled over on the bed, coughing. He couldn’t see her face the way she was sitting but... draanth, he hadn’t realized human women were that tiny. He would be a lumbering brute next to her.
And that cough... he frowned again, concern rolling through him. That cough didn’t sound good. It sounded deep and painful. Why hadn’t the human healers dealt with that before now? It ripped at his heart to listen to her struggle for breath as the fit ended.
“Please...” she whispered, her voice weak as she sat up. “If anyone is listening, I’ll do anything...”
That did it. Fenriis stepped from the door almost before his decision registered. Her eyes were still closed so she didn’t pick up on the movement. Stopping a few steps away from her, he deactivated the camouflage on his armor.
It was a bad idea. He knew it was a bad idea, but his higher reasoning was not involved here. His instincts had kicked in and all he could see was the tiny little woman sitting in front of him, every primal male urge he had telling him to grab her, throw her over his shoulder and take her back to his ship.
And all that before he’d see her face.
“Anything?” he demanded, the word rougher and coarser than he’d meant it to be.
At the sound of his voice, her head whipped up and she looked at him with utter surprise on her face. A beautiful heart-shaped face with large dark eyes that seemed to see down to his very soul. He froze, hard and ready in an instant, his cock throbbing against the inside of his armor. He instantly discovered that combat armor was not the most comfortable thing to be wearing with a raging hard-on.
He’d heard of the human women, of course, what warrior in the empire hadn’t? But no one had said how beautiful they were. No wonder the warriors at court were dropping like fucking flies.
“Who ar—” Her gaze dropped to his body armor and the pulse rifle slung across his back. Her eyes widened, her face suddenly pale.
“You’r
e one of them!” Instead of the fright he’d expected, or for her to make a run for it, instead, the tiny human launched herself at him.
“Youfuckingbastard, yougivemygirlsback!” she hissed, her arms and legs flailing wildly as she attacked him.
He grunted in surprise as he was forced to counter a surprisingly well-coordinated flurry of blows. Of course, there was no way she could actually hurt him, even if he hadn’t had his armor on—but someone, somewhere had taught her to fight.
He blocked most of her blows and then clocked the winces each time she struck his armor and felt a shit because she was hurting herself. Moving with the speed that had earned him a ferocious reputation first on the battlefield and then as a war commander, he ducked the next attack, used her own momentum to swing her around and then came up behind her. It was the work of a second to wrap her up in his arms, yanking her back against his broad, hard chest.
But, instead of admitting she was beaten like a sensible person, she just yelled at him more and arched her back, trying to slam the back of her skull into his nose. He sighed, lifting her off her feet so she couldn’t get leverage. His plan worked. Until she started to kick him.
“Getoffmeyoualienbastard!” she shrieked, but he could hear the tears in her voice. It wasn’t just frustration... she was heartbroken. Over her children, he realized, processing her earlier words.
“Calm down,” he ordered softly as he held her tightly. “I’m not going to hurt you, but you are going to hurt yourself if you carry on.”
She spat something unintelligible at him and struggled like a wild thing. Eventually, though, her frantic movement sparked another coughing fit and she couldn’t fight him. He loosened his grip, holding her gently and frowning at the vicious spasms that rocked her tiny frame. Finally, she rested back against his chest, her energy spent.
