by Carven, Anna
“Holy shit,” Emmett managed to blurt, before he was yanked back by a powerful arm.
Even Emmett, who was as strong as an ox and scared of practically nobody, was no match for these powerful, terrifying aliens.
“Move,” a cold voice ordered, and one of the Kordolians dropped to a crouch and applied some sort of strange black patch to Ikriss’s chest.
To her intense relief, the bleeding stopped almost immediately.
Sienna stared at Ikriss’s face. The strange disguise glasses were gone, lying somewhere in the total dumpster fire of destruction that was her kitchen.
His stern silver features were tight and drawn. His skin looked a shade paler, and his eyes fluttered rapidly, his long white lashes parting to reveal a glimpse of amber.
In the background, two of the warriors were restraining the mysterious attacker, who wore a strange skintight suit made from shimmering material that changed color with the light and shadows. A shattered white mask covered half his face, and through the cracks, Sienna could see pale alien skin—a shade somewhere between silver and white.
What the hell was he?
The Kordolians sure seemed to recognize him.
Bastard.
He could die and go to hell a thousand times over for all she cared.
She would kill him herself if she could.
“Ikriss…” she whispered in shock, trying to make sense of what she’d just witnessed… and what the hell was happening right now.
What just happened?
It had been a sudden explosion of violence.
Ikriss had turned into an impossible blur, wielding dark blades and plasma as he fought an unseen opponent.
She’d seen it with her very own eyes…
His strength.
His viciousness.
He was capable of such astounding brutality. It both frightened her and warmed her fucked up heart.
She didn’t know if the enemy was dead or alive.
She didn’t know if Ikriss would survive.
“Out of the way, humans,” one of the obsidian-armored Kordolians snapped, grabbing Sienna by her shoulder, forcefully yanking her backward…
Then the alien froze.
Everyone froze.
Ikriss’s eyes snapped open.
He snarled in Kordolian, his voice taut with barely contained rage, his gaze searing.
Sienna had no idea what he was saying, but his tone of voice made it clear that this was a warning—and an order.
Holy crap.
She’d never heard him sound so dangerous before.
Impossibly, the dozen or so big, scary Kordolians that had them surrounded gave almost imperceptible nods.
Respectful nods.
Clearly, they were trained to follow Ikriss’s commands without question. It was almost as if they were a little afraid of the guy.
How far up the chain of command was he?
Ikriss took a deep, shuddering breath and turned his head, locking eyes with her.
He was a fucking mess. Dark blood—his own or his attacker’s?—was splattered across his face. It had soaked through his dark blue sweater and trousers, turning them pitch black. His lips were parted in a grimace that was half pain and half pure destruction.
He looked like he wanted to completely annihilate whatever dark corner of the Universe the assailant had escaped from.
But his eyes were clear, and they were fixed only upon her, and for a moment, Sienna couldn’t care less about the destruction or the mess or the black blood staining her hands or the fact that she was only half dressed, her upper body exposed to reveal her bare skin and lacy black bra.
She couldn’t bring herself to face poor Emmett and Cleo, who were standing off to one side, looking completely shellshocked.
She didn’t care that they were surrounded by a team of heavily armed Kordolian warriors that may or may not be hostile.
In that moment, there was only her and Ikriss.
He might be badly injured, but his eyes were ablaze, consuming her with devastating intensity.
As if she already belonged to him.
What the hell?
Suddenly, she felt warm all over. Arousal flickered between her legs, and instantly, she became annoyed with herself, because that was the last thing she should be feeling when Ikriss was lying there on her kitchen floor with half his chest ripped apart.
Because he’d been protecting her.
He mouthed something to her in a strange alien language, his lips shaping the words into pointed arrows.
An electric ripple coursed down her spine.
You’re mine, he seemed to be saying.
Sienna’s breath caught. She opened her mouth to say something—she didn’t quite know what—but then Ikriss abruptly looked away, breaking the insane spell he’d just cast over her.
Am I going crazy?
Ikriss snapped a series of harsh commands to his soldiers in that strange, lyrical tongue of his and then closed his eyes.
His breathing slowed.
The tension flowed out of his body.
The warrior who had patched his chest said something in rapid-fire Kordolian, his voice tinged with alarm.
One of the Kordolians reached her side and loomed over her, scrutinizing her through an impenetrable black visor. “Ah, shit,” he said in Universal. “Looks like the Commander’s taken a liking to you, human. You’re going to have to come with us.”
“Where?” she blurted, her voice a cracked whisper.
“Where else? Back to our station,” the warrior said impassively. “We’re pretty good at keeping the savages out, but this one,” he glanced at the fallen assassin, “well, he’s one of us, unfortunately. It’s the only reason he was able to break through.” He uttered a soft, vicious curse in Kordolian. “Hey, we tried to play nice, but this is gonna blow it all apart.”
Sienna stared at the Kordolians in shock, taking in their cold black visages and swift, silent movements. They closed ranks around Ikriss, who was now completely unconscious.
Carefully, reverently, they lifted up his injured body and whisked him away through the back entrance. Another warrior grabbed the half-masked assailant—who was now unconscious and firmly restrained, his wrists and ankles bound by weird seamless black cuffs—and dragged him away unceremoniously by the legs, leaving a vicious trail of black blood smeared across the polished concrete floor.
Bile rose in Sienna’s throat. From outside, strange mechanical sounds reached her ears. She caught a flash of eerie blue light reflected against the brick walls. Now there were other sounds too; sirens in the distance, humans shouting, boots on hard pavement, drones whizzing past.
Around half a dozen invaders remained in her kitchen. Two of them were scanning the area with strange curved handheld devices—all black, of course. They exchanged words in Kordolian, echoing commands and orders.
Ikriss’s orders.
Her head spun.
She didn’t understand any of it.
Sienna turned and met wide brown eyes—Cleo’s.
“You really weren’t joking when you said you were abducted by aliens, were you?” her friend said dryly.
Sienna managed a weak laugh. They were here now… right in the middle of her city, and everything was in tatters. It was just so ludicrous. She felt as if she were in some wild, crazy dream, and she hadn’t yet decided if it were a nightmare or a brilliant fantasy. “Why the hell would I joke about something like that?”
“Jesus, Sienna,” Emmett shook his head in disbelief. “Next time you’re expecting killers for breakfast, tell them to knock first.”
“Sorry,” she mouthed, suddenly feeling guilty that she’d completely upended her friends’ lives.
Two of the Kordolians stalked over to them; dark, phantomlike, utterly menacing. For the first time, Sienna realized how big and scary their guns were, and how very long their blades were. Why hadn’t she noticed these details before? This time, their presence felt different, somehow. There was a cold, dange
rous edge to them that she hadn’t experienced before.
One of the warriors gestured coldly toward Emmett and Cleo. “You two. Go out front to the seating room and remain there while we secure the area.”
“You know what?” Cleo said softly, and Sienna wondered how the hell she had the presence of mind to appear so calm amidst all the destruction. “Why don’t the three of us just pack up for the day and go home so you can all do whatever you need to do without us getting in the way?”
“Quiet, human,” the Kordolian snapped. “Go and sit in the front room and do not cause trouble, or we will have to restrain you.”
“Like hell you’re going to lock any of us up,” Sienna snapped, glaring at the warriors. She wasn’t scared of any of them. She’d already been to hell and back, and there was no way she was going to let these Kordolians traumatize her friends. “This is my shop, and these are my people. I trust them one-hundred percent. You’re wasting your time holding us here. They have nothing to do with any of this. There’s no reason not to let them go.”
The Kordolians let out derisive snorts.
Sienna glowered. “We’re the last people who would try and make trouble for you. Especially when…” he’s in such a bad way.
She swallowed a tight lump in the back of her throat. What would happen to Ikriss now? Would she ever see him again?
Damn you, Ikriss. Coming in here with your weird disguises and intentions and dangerous secrets and violence.
Saving my ass once again…
The lump in her throat grew bigger.
She wanted to go to him; she wanted to know that he would survive.
But first she had to make sure Emmett and Cleo would be safe.
One of the aliens clamped down on her bare shoulder with hard armor-gloved fingers, causing her to jump. “You are not to make trouble for us. The Commander wants you back on the ship. You are under our protection now.”
“And if I said I didn’t want to go?” Although she desperately wanted to go to Ikriss, she couldn’t help but put up some semblance of resistance.
The alien let out a cold, sharp-edged chuckle. “But you already know you don’t have any choice in this matter. Those were his orders, and one does not simply question a Kordolian High Commander. Do not make this difficult for yourself, human.”
Ikriss’s orders…
Cleo and Emmett were staring at her as if she’d grown a third eye.
“If you people are taking her, then I’m going too,” Cleo said determinedly.
“No,” Sienna snapped. This is my shit. I’m not dragging either of you into any of it. She glanced down the hall toward the back entrance, past the drying smears of black blood and the shattered crockery and the discarded heavy cast-iron frying pan, which Ikriss had picked up with ridiculous ease, wielding it as if it were as light as a baseball bat.
Outside, she saw moving shadows and strange flickering lights.
The Enforcers and the ambulance Cleo had called weren’t coming.
All her customers were gone.
Ikriss was gone.
She had to see him again. She didn’t know whether he was going to live or die, but for reasons she couldn’t explain, he exerted a pull on her, like gravity; like the sun toward the Earth.
And he had taken an interest in her. An intense interest. The memory of his stare sent a jolt of anticipation right through her.
He had to live.
He had to.
In this crazy new reality, he was the only power she had.
“All right then, let’s go,” she growled, looking at each of the Kordolians in turn, staring right through their menacing black visors. “You want me to go quietly? Fine. I have two conditions. One, you take care of my people. Two, you let me see him as soon as he’s able. If you fuck around with us, I’ll raise hell, I swear.”
The Kordolians exchanged a look, speaking softly to each other in their native tongue.
“You will be a worthy mate for the boss,” one of them murmured.
Mate? What the hell? Her heart did a somersault. She couldn’t bring herself to deny it. A thousand dizzying possibilities opened up in front of her.“W-why do you say that?”
“Those things you asked for? For us to protect your people and bring you to him? Those were his orders, too.”
“Just pray to the Goddess that he survives,” the second warrior growled. “Because if we lose our Commander, we will turn each Sector in this cursed Universe into another level of the Nine fucking Hells.” He lapsed into his dark-yet-melodic language, uttering some deathly serious vow that she could never hope to understand.
Stars. Were the Kordolians so on-edge that this could push them back into their old ruthless ways?
“Don’t you dare say that,” Sienna snapped. “Do not underestimate your commander. He isn’t going to die. He’s tougher than that.” She said it out of hope more than anything else, but it seemed to be the right thing to say, because the Kordolian warriors grunted and nodded in approval.
“The human knows better than us,” one of them said wryly.
Sienna glared at the Kordolians, dread and hope twisting in her chest like writhing serpents.
She could only hope that her gut feeling about Ikriss turned out to be true.
.
Chapter Twelve
They escorted Sienna out into the back alley, past her artificially heated and humidified vert-gardens; past the trash-bots and recycling drones and security nodes, which were beeping like crazy.
A faint hum captured her attention. Shielding her eyes, she looked up between the buildings and saw the dark outline of a hovering Kordolian ship.
A thin, flexible ladder dropped from a hatch in the vessel’s dark belly. Without warning, one of the warriors grabbed her, putting his arm around her waist, gripping the ladder with his other hand.
“Don’t fight,” he growled as the ship rose, lifting them up into the air, the ladder swaying between the ancient brick walls as it retracted into the ship.
She didn’t even get the chance to let out a decent scream.
Suddenly, they were clear of the buildings and the rooftops, and Sienna could see her neighborhood below; the painted white roof of her restaurant’s building, the swarming traffic in the streets, the snow-covered pavement… and crowds of people amassing at the entrance to her restaurant.
Oh my god.
Menacing dark figures stalked along the sidewalk where she and Ikriss had stood not too long ago. The Kordolians were holding the crowd of humans at bay, like wolves amongst a flock of sheep.
But there was something strange about this crowd. The people simmered with tension, and it felt like they could erupt at any moment. Some were shouting. Some raised their fists in anger. Someone lit a smoke-flare. Enforcement vehicles and drones appeared, and she caught sight of several uniformed Enforcers stepping out of an armored hover-car.
Another hover-car swept in from above, this one black and unmarked and sinister looking, as it was fully decked out in armor-plate. It landed beside the Enforcement vehicle. A crew of six heavily armored humans disembarked from the armored flyer and marched toward the Kordolians, wielding strange looking black guns.
Sienna couldn’t see any sort of identification patches on their uniforms, which was weird, considering that Federation law made it mandatory for all Enforcers to display their ID numbers.
Who the hell are those guys?
The crowd seethed. More Kordolians appeared; she could tell them apart by the way they moved; fluidly, gracefully, like leonine predators.
A chill coursed through her, and it wasn’t related to the menacing sight of the Kordolians. The icy wind swirled around them. Suddenly, she remembered that she was wearing barely anything.
She was a fucking mess.
But in the midst of all the confusion, it somehow occurred to her that the Kordolians down there were being terribly restrained, considering what they were really capable of.
People surged forward. The sinis
ter human mercenaries, warriors, soldiers—whatever the fuck they were—disappeared into the crowd.
Sirens blared. The flying traffic above scattered in all directions, and she tensed as she witnessed several close calls between drones and cars.
It was utter chaos.
And she was being taken further and further away from it all, up into the dark winter sky.
“Don’t kill them.” Her voice rose to a shout above the roar of the wind. “Don’t harm my people. Don’t hurt the people in the crowd. They don’t really know what they’re doing… what they’re really dealing with. You have to make sure my people are safe. You have to. I’ll never forgive any of you if you fuck this up.”
I’ll never forgive him.
I don’t want him to die.
Her thoughts and emotions were a swirl of confusion and contradictions.
Her Kordolian guards said nothing. Concealed by their pitch-black armor, they were faceless and impenetrable and alien.
She was alone again.
The snow started to fall. Held tightly in a cold, hard stranger’s arms, all she could do was freeze in fear as they were pulled up into the dark, gaping maw of the alien ship.
Why did everything on Earth feel so fragile all of a sudden, like the fabric of human existence could be torn apart as easily as gossamer?
Chapter Thirteen
The pain was everywhere. It was in his skull and in his back. It was in his arms and his legs and in his face. It stabbed right through the bases of his horn-buds.
But most of all, it was in his chest, twisting around his heart like a thorny vine, viciously digging in its poisonous thorns.
He opened his eyes…
And saw blue.
His entire body was encased in blissful, soothing coldness.
He was in a stasis tank.
Ah, shit.
Memories flooded back, hitting him like a bolt of searing plasma.
Sienna… the Silent One…
Kaiin’s Hells.
Rage coursed through him.
He’d come so close to losing her, but somehow, he’d fought off the deadly assassin, a Silent One that was capable of using qim, the forbidden ancient technique that granted the user temporary invisibility.
