“Go,” she said, patting him in the center of his chest. “Can you even fly after you've been drinking?”
“I’ll need a scrubber.”
She’d need one, as well. Once in medical, she’d take a course to remove intoxicants from her system and then change into her nursing scrubs. “Be safe.”
Another hug, this one more crushing, more final. “Be safe, sister of my heart.”
“Stop it. You’re going to make me cry and then all the nurses will make fun of me.” She smiled thinly, trying to play off her statement as a joke but they both knew she spoke true.
“I think I need a new scar,” he said, gesturing to his chin. “Maybe here. Terran chicks dig scars.”
Daisy knew what Vox was doing, making her laugh to avoid tears. They would, most likely, not see each other until the all-clear sounded and then he would be gone to his new deployment. This was the moment for goodbyes. “Get your pretty face out of here and go blow up enemy craft.”
“Can’t argue with a direct command like that,” he said, snapping his feet together and giving her a salute.
Then he left, heading down a corridor toward the shuttle bay.
Daisy shivered, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. Medical wasn’t far. Above, through the glass dome, small explosions of missiles struck the base’s shields. The shielding would hold for several rounds of volleys.
The occupants of the dome moved efficiently and calmly. Even though the Suhlik had not attacked the SCLB in over five years, they were prepared. Civilians practiced heading to the shelters once a month. Emergency personnel, such as herself, were chosen based on their demonstrated ability to stay calm under pressure. The Mahdfel and human soldiers were professionals. No one should panic. Nothing was amiss.
Daisy took the most direct route to medical.
The medical bay wasn’t a single location but a cluster of buildings housed in a separate dome, arranged around a green space. Emergency medical was housed in a secondary dome with direct shuttle access to accept the incoming wounded. She could cut through the medical dome with its green lawns, and she normally did on a regular work day, or she could save a few minutes and go the back way through the underground service tunnels.
Daisy clattered down the metal stairs. Above surface, SCLB was functional but not aesthetically pleasing. Human and Mahfel design collided in the most boring fashion. Everything was white or grey. That’s what happens when you design by committee: no one is happy but no one can complain. At least SCLB had plenty of green spaces to relieve the monotony of endless grey corridors. Above ground was, at best, functional and inoffensive. Boring.
Below ground was worse. Service tunnels housed pipes and conduits, necessary to maintain the base and life support. Necessary didn’t have to mean pretty, it mean bare bones: exposed pipes, plain concrete, and skeleton stairs that always unnerved Daisy. You shouldn’t be able to see through the grating on the tread. You just shouldn’t.
This particular service tunnel, while warm with steam and illuminated with a sulfurous yellow light from the industrial light fixture, came up right next to the emergency medical bay.
Daisy picked up her dress and ran.
“Female, why are you not in a shelter?”
A loud male voice made her pause. The pronunciation was ever so slightly off. Alien. Some hot-headed warrior intended to shove her in a shelter because she was “someone’s female.” Happened every drill.
Daisy spun toward the sound of the voice, ready to tell the alien warrior off. Words dried up in her mouth as she took in the male.
Big, that was her first thought. Really big. The shadows gathered to him, even in the sulfurous lighting. His deep aubergine complexion was the perfect shade to blend into the dark. Horns curled aggressively from his forehead, coming to a wickedly sharp point. Daisy had the overwhelming urge to run a finger along those horns and test their sensitivity. Theoretically she knew the horns were sensitive but touching a male’s horns was an intimate activity. She never touched any male’s horns, not even Vox’s, but she needed to touch his.
He strode toward her, long legs eating up the distance between them.
He wasn’t handsome, not by any stretch of the imagination. His features were far too sharp. Lips too thin. Chin too hard. Stars, he was compelling. He practically radiated danger and dominance.
She wanted to run her hands over him, explore the broad splendor of his chest, ripples of his abs and strength of his thighs. She just wanted to lick him all over like he was giant purple lollipop.
Stars, that sounded like a good idea.
Excitement fluttered in her chest. Working side by side with alien males for more than two years and not a single one had ever turned her head. Well… she enjoyed the eye candy but none had ever made her weak in the knees. Literally weak in the knees. She needed to sit.
Daisy leaned a shoulder against the wall.
“Are you injured, female?”
“No, I’m fine,” Daisy said.
The male came forward and reached for her. Daisy evaded. “Listen,” she said, “I need to get to emergency medical.”
“You are injured.” His eyes narrowed as if he visually tried to confirm her injuries.
“I’m not injured. I need to report to my station. You know, to do my job.” Speaking of which, why wasn’t this warrior at his station?
“You should be in a shelter with the other Terrans.”
Not this garbage again. “Look, I’m a combat nurse. See.” She thrust her wrist comm toward him. “That’s my assignment. Let me do my job.”
His hand wrapped around her wrist, warm and surprisingly soft. Shouldn’t a warrior have hardened, calloused hands? And why, oh why, did she need to have his warm hands all over her. His thumb brushed against the tender skin of her inner wrist. His eyes held hers, dark and turbulent. “You are too precious to be risked. Allow me to bring you to a shelter.”
For a moment, she was tempted. Going with him seemed like a good idea. A fun idea. And she’d been drinking at the Harvest Festival Ball. She was hardly fit for duty. Her supervisor would understand if she was too incapacitated to make it to emergency medical.
She blinked to clear her head. No. She was a professional, not a giggling school girl ready to go make out with the hot guy while the base was under attack. Plus, if they lingered too long, they risked being sealed into the tunnels.
She yanked her hand away. “No. I need to report to my station.”
He moved to grab her arm. Asking nicely was over, apparently.
Daisy darted away, running up the stairs. The ground shuddered. She clung to the railing but kept climbing. The shielding was down. How were the shields down so quickly? Those things could take a pounding for hours, or so the orientation video had claimed.
The stairs spilled into a nondescript corridor. Grey, of course. Another ground shake. For the first time, Daisy regretted her heels. Keeping her footing in the ridiculous shoes was a challenge she did not need at the moment.
She glanced at the ceiling. It appeared stable. Rationally she knew the domes covering the base were highly resistant to direct hits and the base had fail safes to protect against a breach. Corridors would seal themselves off, isolating the rip or tear, if such an unlikely thing were to happen.
She took a deep breath. Calm. Cool. Collected. She chanted her mantra. The base was safe. Safer than anything on Earth. Safer than the little wooden house her family had lived in during the initial Suhlik invasion. Safer than the bombed out church basement they had squatted in. There was no safer place to be than on the moon.
She rounded the corner. Not much farther now. The dark warrior continued to chase her. He could easily run her down, tackle her, and carry her kicking and screaming into a shelter. He didn’t want her frightened, she reasoned, so he followed at a distance. It didn’t matter. She was nearly there. Once in emergency medical, he wouldn’t be able to remove her.
One more set of doors and she’d be there. The doors sli
de open as Daisy approached, only to reveal a corridor full of Suhlik. Tall, gorgeous, deadly Suhlik.
What. The. Hell.
Daisy skidded to a stop. Collectively, their golden, ethereally beautiful faces turned toward her. Their eyes were so large, so intriguing. No being had the right to be that pretty. Or that dangerous. She wanted to lay down at their feet, let them tear out her throat with their two rows of teeth.
The dark warrior shoved Daisy behind him. He growled at the Suhlik warriors. They responded in kind. This made no sense. The Suhlik should not be here, in Earth space or on the moon. Too many sophisticated defense systems were in place to allow a raiding party to just casually stroll into the lunar base. And why hadn’t the shields held?
“What are those lizards doing here?”
“Female,” the Mahdfel warned.
Yeah, yeah. She didn’t like the derogatory word either but if you couldn’t use it when you were moments away from being gutted by a beautiful space lizard, when could you?
The Suhlik hissed. Her implanted chip was slow to translate but she didn’t need it to know it meant nothing good. Then the Suhlik moved as one and rushed toward them.
Her dark warrior pulled her toward him. Then he did the unexpected. They moved toward the wall.
Into the wall.
Through the wall.
The world went fuzzy at the edges—just like when she used a teleporter and was being scattered to the stars. Only this time, she went sideways through a wall instead of across space. Her stomach decided that now was the time for somersaults and then her head hit something solid. Hard.
Darkness.
Mylomon
Events failed to comply with his plan.
He followed his mate to insure her safety—no other reason. When the alarm first sounded, he hesitated, torn between assuring his mate’s safety and continuing to track the traitor. His hesitation caused the mission to fail and allowed the traitor to slip away in the chaos. He spoke to his mate—unscripted, unprepared and against the plan. His only consolation was that her body responded to his: elevated heart rate, raised body temperature, dilated pupils, tightening nipples. She even licked her lips as her hungry gaze admired his form. Running through the bowels of the base might explain the heart rate and body temperature but not the lip licking. The lip licking was all for him.
Then she ran head first into a cluster of Suhlik warriors.
Suhlik. The idea of that filth daring to set foot on a Mahdfel controlled base enraged him on many levels. He cursed inferior Terran designs, the traitor that lowered the shields, and the lack of hellstone in the structure of the base. No hellstone? What were the Terrans thinking? Hellstone’s unique chemical property prevented teleportation.
The Terrans utilized teleportation technology every day. They knew the Suhlik had the same tech. Why had they failed to add hellstone to the domes, walls and very foundation of the base?
Terrans never listened. They blathered on about budgets and probability and look where it got them: a moon base filled with Suhlik.
His female failed to listen to him, as well. If she had, she would have been safely below ground in a shelter with the rest of the Terran civilians. No. Why should one single thing go smoothly? Better to continue the string of calamity, which he did with a less-than-perfect teleport. Faced with charging Suhlik, his first instinct was to greet his opponent with a smile in battle, but he had to think of his mate. He had to protect her. Terrans were soft skinned and fragile. Terran females were particularly small. Delicate. He could not allow his delicate Terran female to be injured, so he wrapped his arms around her and shifted through the wall.
Teleporting a second person required perfect clarity and concentration. He had neither. The shift was flawed and she injured her head. He injured her with his sloppiness. Unacceptable.
Overhead lighting flickered on and he surveyed their new environment. They were in some kind of a room. Terran sized furniture cluttered the space, giving the room the tedious look of an administrator’s office. The thin door was not designed to withstand enemy fire. This was an unacceptable location. His unconscious mate would not be safe here.
He would find an acceptable location and guard her until she woke.
He lifted his mate and slung her across his shoulders. She weighed next to nothing. A light floral scent emanated from her golden hair. He wanted to bury his nose in it and breath it in but now was not the time. Suhlik were infiltrating the base. A traitor had lowered the shields and allowed them in. His mate was injured. No, it was definitely not a good time to contemplate flowers and his female’s delicious scent.
Mylomon jogged into the hall. His mate wanted to go to the medical bay. He would bring her there. Several warriors would guard the medical facility. She would be safe and a medic could look at her head.
The door at the end of the corridor would not open. Safety protocols had put barricades in place to isolate the intruders. He could teleport through the barrier, bringing his mate along but he was reluctant. He could not risk losing his concentration and injuring his mate again. He would find another way.
Mylomon backtracked and took a different path. This corridor branched into several but lead him away from the medical facilities. The fire of plasma rifles sounded in the distance. The ground shook from missile strikes but the dome continued to hold. Lights flickered but the dome still held. He was glad his mate remained unconscious. She did not have to worry about sudden atmospheric loss.
He rounded another corner, displeased with the growing distance between him and his target location. He had memorized the layout of the base but the rerouting made it difficult to get his bearings. All he knew was where he was not.
The corridor emptied out into a larger common space. Warriors clashed with Suhlik, as they should. His brothers fought well, defending their homes and their own mates. It was an impressive sight, part of him yearned to join the fray, but it was not the way forward.
Mylomon moved to retrace his steps. A Suhlik male blocked his exit. Three more joined their comrade.
He tilted his head to one side. Only four. He calculated the odds. He was faster and more vicious, just as the Suhlik had made him. But his mate’s life depended on him. He could not leave her unguarded, not for a single moment.
Footsteps. More Suhlik approached. Options dwindling, Mylomon pulled his mate down from his shoulders and held her to his chest. The more of her that touched him, the easier the teleport.
The Suhlik closest to him raised a weapon. The plasma rifled hummed as it prepared a charge.
Mylomon sank through the floor, into the unknown, clutching his mate.
Chapter Three
Daisy
A thumping headache woke her. She was on her back on a cold, hard surface. The floor, her sluggish brain supplied. If the needling pain behind her eyes had been a tad less excruciating, she might be upset to find herself on the floor.
Daisy rolled to her side and pushed herself off the floor. Memories filtered in. The ball. She drank but not excessively, not near enough to warrant this level of headache. Alarms. Suhlik. Right. The base was under attack. Then there was that obnoxious warrior who insisted she go to a shelter when she needed to report to the emergency medical bay. What a jerk.
First, assess the situation.
She was in the dark. On a floor. Her eyes gradually adjusted. Emergency lighting provided the barest of illumination: a stripe on the floor leading to a door and dim recessed lighting that cast just enough light to not run into furniture. Speaking of furniture, there was a table in the center of the room that reminded her of a surgery platform. The light gleamed off metal panels that were built into the wall, each panel a perfect square. She recognized the room as the auxiliary morgue, to be used in the event of catastrophic casualties from an attack or if a disease outbreak swamped the medical bay. This was not an approved shelter. No one came here.
She shivered from the cold. No one was meant to shelter here. Life support was minimal an
d the temperature remained cold, to preserve the… She swallowed, refusing to finish the thought. Calm, cool and coping, she repeated in her head. She was above a freak out. She was a nurse with combat experience. She’d been soaked in the blood of wounded human soldiers and alien warriors.
An unused, empty morgue would not frighten her.
She listened. No sounds. No alarms. No voices. Not even another person breathing, just the regular white noise of the base—generators, ventilation system—that she normally filtered into the background. She was alone in the dark.
“You are awake,” an unfamiliar voice in the dark said.
Daisy yelped in surprise, her heart pounding. “What the hell is going on? Who are you? Where am I?” Her words came out in a jumble. Not the cool, calm demeanor she wanted to project. Taking a deep breath, she faced the direction of the voice and tried again. “Can you tell me what’s happening and why my head is pounding like a jackhammer?”
A Mahdfel male leaned forward.
Daisy scrambled backwards.
Faint lighting illuminated his dark purple complexion, casting half his face into shadow. Every line on his face was harsh and cruel. His horns curled out aggressively from his forehead. His eyes gleamed with… expectation? It was hard to read his face in the poor lighting. She recognized him as the warrior who prevented her from reporting to her post.
He frowned at the way she flinched backwards. He squatted on his heels, as if trying to make his bulk smaller and less threatening.
Daisy took a deep, calming breath. She didn’t know he was cruel. That was fear talking, not reason. “Sorry, you surprised me.”
He grunted.
“Big talker, huh?”
“What is there to discuss? I surprised you. That was not my intention but it happened.”
Understatement of the year. Something half-remembered tickled at her. “Did you— Did you go through a wall?”
He was slow to answer, which lead Daisy to think yes. Yes he did smash through a wall like the Hulk or the Kool-Aid Man. Her head certainly felt like they smashed through a wall. She rubbed her forehead, letting her cold hand sooth her aching head. “I think I hit my head when you knocked down that wall. Where are we?”
Mylomon: Warlord Brides (Warriors of Sangrin Book 3) Page 2
