Without the crystal, there were no mating Quads in his Homeland. With no mating Quads, there were no children. His race was dying. Without the crystal, there was no hope.
Now, not only had they tracked the crystal here, but they’d also found their mate.
He could hardly believe it was true, but she was here, right in front of his eyes. Their mate. The female that would save not only their Homeland, their Triad, but their entire race. She was precious beyond belief.
If he’d known he might have found her here, of all places, he would have happily lived in this hellshole for the entire year of the search both he and his brothers had embarked on, simply to wait for her and save himself the endless traveling, the endless arriving at intergalactic pit-holes only to find that they were too late, that the energy the tracker had detected from the crystal was only residual. Why it had been stolen, he had no idea, but between the three of them, they were going to find out, and return it to its rightful place in the Ozar Tower back in their Homeland.
“She’s beautiful beyond words,” Klaej said, his voice soft.
“Breathtaking,” Setzan said.
Rujali nodded. “She is ours, brothers.”
“What could she possibly be doing in a place like this?” Klaej asked.
“That is the question. Let us go down and introduce ourselves to our mate, and then we will take her out of this place and put her somewhere much more suitable,” Rujali said.
Tossing his long braids behind his shoulders, he stepped towards his future.
The female seemed to snap out of her trance and staggered away from the group of scaled creatures close behind her. One of them hissed and lashed out at her, sinking his talons into the soft flesh of her shoulder. She screamed as crimson blood poured from between its imbedded claws. Their mate was wounded! Blinding hot rage raced through him, her agony his. A roar erupted from him. He ripped his sword from the sheath at his back, jumping the distance to the ground, and pounded towards his mate. The ground shook as his brothers followed him. He wasted no time and slashed the head from the shoulders of the first scaled creature.
There was a hot flash, and a laser seared his arm, but he didn’t even feel it. Keeping the momentum of the swing, he changed the arc and slashed downwards and severed the creature’s head. Klaej roared behind him, and Rujali spun to face him as several of the scaled-ones bore down on them.
Where the hells had they come from?
Heated laser fire danced around them. Rujali slashed at the closest creature, slicing a green strip of welling blood down its front. Setzan grunted as he impaled another with his short-blade. He sliced upwards, gutting it before it had a chance to topple dead to the ground.
He’d not seen these creatures before in any of his long travels, and he’d been over great distances in the universe. They seemed almost out of place. Just as out of place as their female.
He glanced around to see where she was, his heart lurching when there was no trace of her. “Brothers. She is gone!”
Setzan glanced around with a scowl before roaring his warrior cry and lashing into the fold of scaled-ones that descended on them. Klaej severed the head of one, while Rujali plunged his long sword into the soft underbelly of another.
At a loud clack-hissing sound from one of the creatures, the rest scattered like the cowards they were.
Setzan started to pursue one, but Rujali barked at him, “Leave them. Our mate is more important.”
Setzan gripped his sword tight in his fist. It went against every fiber of their being not to end a fight, yet he managed to turn away, the heat of battle on his face, his features tight and grim.
He lifted his head, scenting the air. “She is bleeding.”
A growl thundered in Rujali’s chest. “And they will pay, brother—we will make sure of it—but she is our priority.”
“This way.” Klaej pushed through the crowd of onlookers.
Setzan snarled at them, and they scurried away like bugs.
While Rujali and his brothers were bigger than most, nothing stood between a Negari and their mate. And they were royalty. The mate-sync was the strongest of them all. Finding her was imperative. If they had to stomp over every species in this space port, they would. It was wise that every being stayed out of their way.
Klaej squatted and swiped his finger on the ground. Rujali saw the Klaej’s fingertip was coated with crimson. Klaej tasted her blood. Rujali knew Klaej’s body would merge with her essence. It would be easier to scent her that way. His brother was known for his tracking skills.
“She is hurt. I can taste her pain. And her fear.” Tension radiated from every pore in his body.
The same tension now rippled through Rujali and Setzan. Triplets were connected that way. What one felt, so did the others, especially with extreme emotions like this. Urgency to find her writhed through Rujali’s veins like a living thing. It was untenable to think that she was hurt and scared in any way.
Rujali pressed his hand to Klaej’s shoulder. “Then lead the way and we will find her.”
Klaej gave a sharp nod. Now was not the time to delay with wasted emotions like fear for the safety of their mate. She was in need, and they would put aside their weaker emotions.
Their mate wouldn’t be lost for long. They would soon have her where she belonged: in their arms and in their bed. Safe. Protected. Cherished.
She didn’t know how important she was to them.
But she would understand soon enough, and she would comply like mates should. It was their duty to protect her, just as it was her duty to submit.
* * *
Riley
Riley held onto consciousness by a thread. It was only sheer stubbornness that kept her on her feet. That and the knowledge that if she showed any weakness at all, she would be at the mercy of the owners of the many pairs of strange eyes that openly darted her way.
If those reptile creatures weren’t still after her, those men who’d put WME wrestlers to shame, would soon follow. She didn’t have the time, nor the energy, to waste. She staggered to a wall and leaned heavily on it. Warm wet heat pulsed between her fingers. She needed to stem the blood from her arm wound, and she needed to hide.
There was a chittering sound and an alien with the head of a praying mantis came her way. Its mandibles clicked and translucent wings rose behind its back.
That thing did not look like good news.
She lurched in the opposite direction and darted into an alley between two walls of sandstone. It was the same material as the ground—tan and gritty. Her entire surroundings seemed to be made of it. It seemed that apart from the space port, the planet was nothing but sand.
Various creatures strolled past the other end of the alley, which appeared to be a bustling street. No better place to become lost in than a sea of… things. There looked to be a range of them. Hopefully she could blend into the crowd.
She approached the end of the alley and peeked around the corner. Various stalls lined the street, offering different wares. Food smells wafted from all directions. Creatures sauntered past the stalls, pausing, looking, and buying. The creatures screeched, clicked, barked, and whistled. Vendors yelled at those passing by to purchase their wares.
She huffed a surprised breath. A market! Either marketplaces were a common occurrence throughout the universe, or her imagination was flatlining in creativity. She was just so damned weary. Every step was such agony, even her brain was having trouble conjuring up material. It was on the verge of total shutdown.
She needed to find a safe place to bunker down and rest for a while. Her muscles shook with fatigue and the coating of sweat on her skin was hot and sticky. Time to rest and then work out what clusterfuck she was in the middle of.
She spied a stall offering garments that fluttered in the breeze. Too many eyes kept coming her way. She needed a camouflage. She put her head down and as she slid past the stall, grabbed a garment and threw it around her shoulders and over her head as though she owned it.
Skin tingling, she forced herself to match the slow pace of the passing crowd so as not to stand out, all the while expecting someone to yell for their stolen garment. She passed more stalls, losing herself between bodies of different heights and shapes—creatures out of nightmares, dreams, and everything in between.
Her mind wanted to force herself into thinking she was dreaming, but the solid ground underfoot, the smells, the heat of the sun—no, make that two suns—beating on the thick, roughly woven material of the coat were too much to ignore.
She stumbled into a doorway, trying to organize her thoughts. She shoved the pain of her throbbing shoulder aside, using everything in her training to compartmentalize so that her mind cleared enough to work out a plan. A sketchy plan, but a plan, nonetheless.
How she wound up here, she had no idea, and that was the most frightening thing of all. The last thing she remembered before her life went to hell was racing along the Erye Highway along the Nullarbor on a reconnaissance mission to find missing SAS captain Vivien Demalzi. Best damn captain in the army, she should never have been disgraced by top brass, in her opinion. Top brass didn’t know shit from clay sometimes. Demalzi was a hero given the rough end of the stick for a mission gone wrong through no fault of her own, but people needed someone to blame and she’d been singled out.
The last thing Riley remembered was watching bright lights in the sky grow even brighter, and then… She shivered, her mind going back to when she’d first woken confused, disoriented, freezing, the world in total chaos. Apart from the freezing part, things hadn’t changed. Only now she hurt like a mother and she still had no answers in sight.
A hulking giant of a creature lumbered close. The being looked more like a lion, with a shaggy mane, flat nose, and rounded eyes. There was a fine layer of fur on its skin, much like a house cat, but that was where the similarity ended. It was dressed in a tanned trench coat and huge boots, and it carried weapons slung over its torso like clothing. Its massive furred paw gripped an evil-looking weapon as big as her leg. The creature stood over two heads taller than her.
She shrank into the doorway, tugged the hood over her face, and tried to make herself small, hoping that it would pass her by.
Two large boots stopped right in front of her. It took her a moment to realize that his grunting was actually him speaking to her. She shook her head, pulling the rim of her hood lower, hoping he would get the hint and go away.
She peeked from beneath the rim, looking for an out. Up ahead, the three men from the craft strode through the crowd. The creatures parted to let them through. Their faces were tight and focused, and they looked at everything and everyone surrounding them. The man with deep emerald green skin changed with splotches of crimson. The designs on his skin shone bright gold in the sunshine. He was beautiful in a harsh, kick-ass way. All three were.
“Magnificent,” was the word her brain supplied—along with the distinct impression that what they looked for so intently was her.
She stifled a shiver. The need to move, to hide, overrode concern for her immediate safety with the lion creature. She ignored the shriek of agony from torn muscles and skin, and darted away before any of them could lay a hand on her.
A large paw brushed past her back. She zigzagged around groups of people, ducking low, and crossed the street. She sidestepped into another alley leading away from the main thoroughfare. The place seemed to be riddled with them.
She wound through a warren of smaller and smaller alleyways, turning left and right without any discernable pattern, until she wasn’t even sure if she could make her way back if she wanted to. Peering over her shoulder intermittently, she verified no one followed.
As she took another turn, her knees wobbled and she stumbled.
She leaned against the rough-hewn wall, panting through the throbbing pain of her shoulder. A trickle of sticky perspiration ran down her forehead and stung her eye. Burning heat welled up from inside her, consuming and sucking what energy remained in her body. She was going to crash, and it was going to be soon.
The top half of her body throbbed in time with each heartbeat. She hadn’t even looked at the mess those talons had made. She didn’t have the energy to do that right now, but she would get to it—right after she passed out.
She’d been injured in Iran, when she’d been on her second tour, in a bid to stop some infighting in a back alley similar to this, but she’d received pain inhibiters almost immediately when a team member had come to her rescue.
This pain was grating, and getting worse. If it kept going like this, she wasn’t going to be able to even think soon.
She spied a door through watery vision and stumbled over to it. She cracked the door open, peering inside. The room beyond seemed to be a living area of some sort, almost homey if she could ignore the not-quite-rightness of the furniture and metallic material of the walls.
She crept inside, closing the door behind her. Quickly and silently, she made her way through the living area and through a meal prep area until she came to another door leading out into a much quieter back alley. So quiet, in fact, no one seemed to be in here with her.
Large, black bins lined the walls, as big as back-alley bins in her home city. The aroma of garbage seemed to be universal. She knew bad smells would be a deterrent to anyone looking for her. She hoped these bins would be a perfect place to hide. She couldn’t risk being found while she slept, not by the reptile creatures, and not by the men looking for her. Why they were so persistent, she couldn’t understand. Not for anything good, if she knew how people worked, and she’d seen them at their very worst.
A flutter in the pit of her stomach was the only warning that she might be wrong.
She stumbled to the closest bin. With her remaining strength, she lifted the lid and, ignoring the waft of rotted food and the scream of white-hot agony in her shoulder, slid under the lip and toppled inside. She surrendered to the blackness before the lid slammed closed.
Chapter Three
Setzan
Setzan stalked close behind his brother, gripping and regripping his sword. If anyone could find a missing person, it was Klaej. After ingesting her blood, Klaej’s body would assimilate with her essence and he’d be able to smell her wherever she might be. He’d be able to detect her when they were close enough, but by the gods, the agony of not being able to find her in this crowded hellshole set his teeth on edge.
That she was also injured and frightened was untenable. His nostril flared as heat seared his bones. His ears twitched with every sound, the light bright enough to sear the back of his skull. His whole body was on full alert. Every sight, every touch, every sound had him twitching with the need to find her. Even the theft of the Ozar Crystal was nothing compared to every second their mate wasn’t close by and in their arms.
“Where can one small female possibly have got to?”
“If anyone has taken her…” Rujali’s words dissolved into a growl.
Species surrounding them scuttled away, their fright clear on their faces. Even the most hardened amongst the crowd gave them a wide berth. They had due cause to be scared. Nobody stood between a Negari and their mate. That was a well-known fact, galaxywide.
That they had just found her yet were unable to hold her and touch her made him bare his teeth at anyone unlucky enough to look at him. From now on, only their mate’s touch could soothe the slow burn than ran through their veins. He felt his brothers’ burn as much as his own.
He clenched his teeth, forcibly stemming his aggression. His baser emotions would do nothing to find their mate.
“If she is taken, they will not get to live a second more from the moment we find them,” Klaej said.
The gold threads in his skin glowed, his skin turning more crimson than emerald. He was usually emerald and was the calmest of all of them. It was his soothing influence that both he and Rujali relied on when emotions ran high.
Each of them balanced the other. Klaej was placid—normally. Rujali
was level-headed, a clear leader, able to cut through the crap and find the best path of action to take.
Setzan was—he didn’t actually know. He was hot-headed in battle, quick to anger, quick to laugh, quick to find fault. He truly didn’t know how that balanced anything out, but he vowed to make amends now, to become a better person for their female. Their mate.
They would protect her with their lives, which brought about the puzzle of why she’d run. Any female who felt the mate-sync came to her mates without question. It was never an issue back in their Homeland.
“Do you think it’s possible she doesn’t know how important she is?” Setzan said.
That she didn’t know was deeply unsettling. Unacceptable.
“Undoubtedly, judging by her fear. I can taste her confusion. Her terror,” Klaej said. His skin bristled with more crimson.
“She also isn’t one of our species,” Rujali shoved a slow-moving Antonine out of the way. The voluminous creature moved away with a gurgling sound, probably not even aware that Rujali had pushed at it. The layers of glutinous fat surrounding its muscle made it slow, but well-protected its innards from projectiles. Its scarred skin told of its many run ins and was most probably employed as a guard of some sort. Most of them were employed in similar roles the universe wide.
“How can our mate be of another species? There has never been an inter-species mate before,” Setzan said.
“The crystal has ever been stolen before either.” Rujali’s frown grew deeper
“No. It hasn’t.”
Rujali’s thoughts churned. Somehow, the crystal had been stolen from its protected position, deep with the Ozar Crystal tower. They only knew of its disappearance when the tower had lost its glow.
“Is the Ozar Crystal still here?’ Rujali asked.
Setzan tugged a crystal chip from his pocket. They’d taken a part of the tower with them, despite it being a travesty to have damaged its crystal walls. It was the only way they could locate the Ozar Crystal that powered it, though.
The Ozar Triad Page 2
