Alien Sentinel's Mate

by Mina Carter

  Planet killer. Seren’s words played over and over in her mind. They’ve finally grown some balls and are trying to wipe us out.

  Oh shit. It was bad enough to lose someone to a storm or an accident, but if this was deliberate? If this was a weapon that had been turned on the Vorr…

  She had reached a small corridor at the back of the screened-off areas. The draft was gone, which confused her until she spotted the rain on the floor. There was no skylight or window, and as far as she knew, no one else was back here.

  Which meant there had to be a door.

  Hands flat against the wall, she searched for it and found a flat panel, a square depression a millimeter or so different to the rest of the wall. With how dark it was back here, it would be easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there.

  Instinct made her press it, even though she had no desire to head out into the storm. The door slid open onto a small veranda, the roof of the hall extending into an overhang. The instant the door cracked open, the icy fingers of the storm reached inside, whipping up the edges of her clothing.

  “Holy shit,” she hissed, shivering.

  She was about to slap the panel to shut it again when she spotted movement in the field at the back of the long hall. Her blood ran cold as she recognized the tiny figure battling against the elements.

  Tarveth.

  The door slid shut behind her as she launched herself out into the storm after him. She knew she should tell someone what she was doing but there was no time. The storm had turned lethal in a heartbeat and visibility was already terrible. The only reason she’d even seen the little boy was because she’d caught the movement of his jacket being whipped about by the wind.

  “Tarveth!” she bellowed, her voice stolen by the howling of the storm as she ran. The wind attacked her from all angles, the rain driving like needles into every inch of exposed skin. She gritted her teeth and pushed forward, trying to keep low to the ground. It was harder to knock her over that way. At least, that was the theory…

  In practice, the driving wind and rain kept knocking her down like a set of skittles, her feet slipping and sliding on mud as slick as an ice rink.

  “Tarveth!” she bellowed as loudly as she could, hoping beyond hope that the youngster could hear her. What the hell was he doing out here on his own? Her hair whipped over her face, half of it ending up in her mouth as she shouted again. She shoved it out of the way, ducking as a flying bush, ripped out at the roots, almost took her head off.

  Where was he? She stumbled forward, trying to see through the rain, but she could barely see her hand in front of her face. Something caught at her ankles and slammed into her knees, a cry of pain torn from her lips as she pitched forward into the mud.

  “Gracie! Gracie!”

  The small, panicked voice reached her ears and she lifted her head, squinting as the rain tried to blind her. Tarveth huddled under a rock not far away, his arms wrapped about his little goat.

  Fuck, he’d come out to save Talli. Of all the damn fool things to do.

  Tarveth waved his arm, signaling frantically for her to join him under cover. She hauled herself up, trying to ignore the cold and wet attempting to steal all her strength. She’d barely gotten to her knees when a bolt of scarlet slammed into the ground next to her.

  She’d never moved as fast in all her life. Not even when she and Cam had almost been caught liberating some vodka from the officers’ mess during training. She all but flew across the expanse of mud between her and Tarveth, cramming her larger body into the small space with the boy and his goat.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, her teeth chattering so hard she was surprised they didn’t break off.

  He nodded, but his response was cut off as three more bolts of lightning hit mere feet from them. So close that she felt the heat against her back as she curled up to protect the boy.

  She clenched her jaw, looking out. Three scorched and charred mud circles overlapped each other. Her heart pounded. That was close. Too close. It was almost like the lightning knew where they were. The only reason they weren’t dead was because of the rock outcrop. She’d fallen over some of the smaller rocks, which was the only reason she’d found Tarveth. If she’d been even a foot or two the other way, she’d have walked right on past him and right into the deadly net of the red lightning. She shook her head, wiping rain from her eyes as she analyzed their situation.

  And they were fucked.

  The storm raged around them, so thick that even without the lightning trying to kill them they’d be in trouble. She’d gotten turned around when she’d fallen so she had no idea which way the long hall was.

  Her breathing caught. No one knew they were out here. No one knew where to look for them. If they managed to get a gap in the storm, they were leaving for a ship. A ship whose location she didn’t know. Her jaw tightened and she leaned out to scan the sky above.

  She only just managed to duck back into shelter before a streak of red took her head off. Shitshitshit. They couldn’t move. They just had to hope someone noticed they were missing, that Seren would realize she wasn’t there and come to find her. Find his mate.

  His mate who had lied to him about everything. Even her own name. Although, she reasoned, she was Gracie Shardlow now. Her training had broken her down, and when given the opportunity, she’d become someone new. Someone she liked.

  Her breath caught on a sob as she pulled Tarveth closer. The little boy was shivering badly, Talli’s warm, furry weight between them keeping them both from freezing to death.

  Please, Seren, she whispered silently. Please…

  She wanted him back, here with her, holding her close as he kissed the breath from her and pinning her down as he took her hard and fast, then slowly and gently.

  She loved him. Loved everything about him, especially now he’d shed his disguise and was the proud and ruthless Vorr rather than the toe-the-line Latharian warrior. Here he was a prince… pride filled her. Her husband was descended from emperors.

  She’d never thought she’d ever fall in love. Especially not with such a ruthless and dominant man. And she craved that… heat flaring across her cheeks. It drew a deep sense of unidentified shame deep within as instinct and need fought with her training. She shouldn’t need a man. Not that way. Not in any way. It flew in the face of all her previously held convictions about being independent and not needing a man.

  But… she blinked, looking out into the storm and not seeing it. There was a difference between not needing a man and wanting a man. Wanting him.

  And she wanted Seren. Wanted him with every cell in her body, every ounce of her being. She bit back a bitter laugh as a tear tracked down her cheek. She’d fallen in love, but it looked like she’d never get to tell him that.

  Really sucked to be her.

  “What do you mean you can’t find Tarveth?”

  Seren froze at the look on Pentar’s face, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew the boy had made it in from the storm. Gracie had been carrying him and he’d shoved both of them through the doors ahead of him before Tecc had…

  “I dunno.” Pentar shrugged. “I was getting a pack together and then realized he was gone. I thought he were with that lady o’ yours ’cause he likes her, but he ain’t in your rooms either.”

  “Trall.” Seren pushed a hand through his hair to shove it back off his face and kept his expression as neutral as he could.

  It wasn’t Pentar’s fault. The old-timer was usually the one to look after Tarveth because the boy’s father had died six months after his birth, but it wasn’t through any real feeling or desire to. He was just the only one of them too old to work or train, so he was around to keep an eye on the youngster.

  “Seren,” Cade butted in, the tablet still in his hand. “Looks like we might get a gap in the storm in about twenty minutes. It’s small but if we run, we should just be able to make it to the Skev.”

  Seren frowned as he looked at the information on the screen Cade w
as showing him. The two weather fronts circled like sukazin about to do battle but he could see the clear patch Cade had spotted. It would still be dangerous, and they were cutting it close, but the younger Vorr was right. They should just make it.

  “Okay, good. Let everyone know.” He turned to Pentar. “Gracie might know where Tarveth is. Ask her to make sure he stays with her.”

  The old-timer shook his head. “Can’t find the lady either.”

  The pit dropped out of Seren’s stomach and he turned back to Pentar from where he’d been about to walk away with Cade. “What did you say?”

  Pentar folded his arms over his chest. “The female is gone too. Ain’t no one in your quarters. Not that I can see.”

  He turned and ran.

  “Gracie!” Seren shouted, already halfway across the hall to the khaaitan’s quarters. His heart pounded in his ears, his blood like ice in his veins. Pentar was mistaken. She had to be there. There was nowhere else for her to be.

  “Gracie! Where are you, kelarris?” he called out, striding into his rooms.

  The still, empty air, devoid of life, made his heart stall. He stood in the middle of the room, his gaze wild as he scanned the room.

  She wouldn’t have gone out into the storm. She was too sensible for that… surely? His throat tightened. They’d argued. He’d told her she was his, that there was no escape from him. He still didn’t understand humans, but he knew one thing… they didn’t like having their choices taken away from them.

  He closed his eyes and swallowed. Hard. What if he’d upset her so much that she’d rather leave and face the lethal storm than stay with him?

  “She’s not been gone long,” Cade said behind him, his voice a deep rumble. A deep intake of breath told Seren his brother was scenting, the more sensitive nose of the Vorrtan able to pick up trace scents far more easily than he could.

  “This way.”

  He followed Cade out of the room and into the small passageway at the back. It had originally been used by servants who tended the khaaitan and his family and had never been changed even though it had been many years since any servants were here.

  He knew where Cade was headed before he started to slow. A single door was back here, one he thought had been deactivated long ago. If she’d gone out into the storm…

  He slapped his hand on the plate, causing the door to slide aside. The barrage of wind made them stumble back, and they protected their faces as it tore at their hair and clothes.

  “Trall, she can’t have gone out in that!” Cade shouted over the storm.

  Seren narrowed his eyes. She had gone out there. He had no idea how he knew that, but he knew. But she was an intelligent female, and she wouldn’t have gone out there without a very good reason.

  If she’d seen Tarveth in trouble… No matter who she was, and how much she’d lied to him, he knew one thing for certain. She would not allow a child to come to harm, not when she could save them.

  He grabbed at Cade’s wrist so he could see the weather sensor array data. Shit. That window would be here in minutes. Trall. There wasn’t enough time to search for her and get the rest of the clan to the ship.

  He moved before he was conscious of making a decision, clapping his hand on Cade’s shoulder.

  “Get the rest to the ship,” he shouted over the storm. “I’ll catch up.”

  Cade’s sharp look clearly said he doubted both Seren’s choices and his sanity right now, but no Vorr would question the khaaitan… make that ex-khaaitan since he’d just handed over that responsibility to Cade. But even that made sense. If he wanted Gracie, his mate, then he couldn’t be Vorr.

  The humans had only ever seen Lathar. She thought he was Lathar, just a different version. She had no clue what the Vorr really were. But if he was no longer khaaitan, it was no longer an issue. He would live his life out as Lathar and be happy, as long as he had her at his side.

  Before he could step out of the door, Cade grabbed his wrist. For the first time Seren realized his brother was as tall as him, responsibility etching lines at the corners of his mouth.

  “Make sure you reach us in time,” he ordered, his voice only just audible over the storm. “If you die, I’ll find a healer and bring you back, just so I can kill you myself. Okay?”

  Seren chuckled and nodded. “Your word is my command.” He winked and then stepped out into the storm.

  17

  They were too late.

  Risyn’s expression tightened as he looked at the planet on the view screen at the front of the raider’s bridge. He didn’t need the scans Berrick had shoved into the command stream to know Quveth and everyone on it was in trouble. Two huge weather systems were warring with each other, and ground zero was a small area on the northern continent.

  “Any life signs on the planet?” he asked, his commands in the stream rather than disturbing the silence of the bridge. It was one of the things that unnerved others about the B’Kaar, the way they could operate in complete silence, and he saw no reason to change it for one AI who could access the datastreams as easily as they could.

  “Multiple life signs at coordinates…” Berrick replied, his voice trailing off as a data packet delivered the coordinates directly to the ke’lath data node in Risyn’s brain. A small nudge and he opened a map of the northern continent and then narrowed it down to the area where the life signs were showing.

  “There’s a settlement,” he commented. “It’s smaller than I expected.”

  “The Vorr’s presence has substantially diminished over the years,” Miisan said, a frown on her face as she studied the screen in front of them.

  Rare amusement rolled through him as he noted the irregular pattern of her avatar’s simulated breathing. Of the two of them, she would appear more lifelike to the casual observer, even though she was anything but.

  “How diminished?” he asked, answering her aloud when she refused to answer his ping in the stream.

  “Just this planet now with a listed settlement. Less than fifty individuals. Seventeen planets listed to the Vorr clan but most as uninhabitable.”

  Shock rolled through Risyn. He’d known few of the Vorr bloodline were left, but he hadn’t thought they were on the verge of dying out. Although, without females of their own, the entire Lathar as a species was in danger of dying out, which meant any male with a mate match, Vorr or not, was valuable and couldn’t be risked.

  “Can we shut it down?” He directed the question at Miisan.

  “What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” she snapped. “This system is older than anything I’ve ever worked on. My authorization codes aren’t working.”

  “Sitek, link with the AI,” he ordered, “and try a brute force attack. Are there any launch capable ships on the surface?” he asked, directing his comment to his command crew.

  Berrick, lounging in the second officer’s chair next to Risyn’s own, shook his head. “Nothing with engines spooled up and that secondary storm is about it hit. It’s a level nine event. A planet killer.”

  Risyn nodded, his jaw clenching. Even if they had a ship big enough to get them all up off the surface, it wouldn’t matter now. “Will our shields hold?”

  There was a point-four-second delay, which meant that Berrick had run the query multiple times.

  “Yes. But not for long. I’d advise that all aboard suit up.”

  “Noted. Direct all power to the shields and charge the hull armor,” he ordered. “Then take us down.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Risyn’s expression didn’t change as the ship plunged through the upper atmosphere. The only reaction he gave was to activate the mag-boots of his suit. That way if the turbulence got too great, he would remain in place.

  In the stream, his crew pinged online, all of them registering as linked to their suits. Good, that meant if the ship needed an extra boost, he could take life support offline to all but a small area and divert that power to the armoring.

  He kept his thoughts to himself a
s they drove down into the storm, the black and red clouds on the view screen triggering the emergency lighting on the bridge. Instantly alarms started to blare as they entered a vertical dive, the quickest possible route to their target.

  “Start scanning for life signs, and bring us down as close as possible. And see if you can find Seren K’Vass and the human female, Gracie Shardlow,” he said, naming the only two samples they had.

  How a Vorr had the K’Vass name he couldn’t guess, but given they were matched, they had to be the priority. Or rather, the female did. They had males aplenty and there would be another match if necessary. Perhaps even a B’Kaar. Sliding a sideways glance at Miisan, he kept that thought to himself. There was no saying how the AI would take to any suggestion not to try too hard to find Seren.

  The ship was pummeled as they dove through the storm, so fast that the clouds were a blur and rain drove against the view screen. He almost expected to feel the wind against his face even though the shields kept them well protected. He was grateful for this fact when, a second later, a bolt of electric fire slammed into the front of the ship, and a scarlet spiderweb flared over the screen.

  “Shields?” he barked.

  “Drop of fifteen percent but holding,” a voice replied from the left of the bridge. “Energy allocation system is operating at full efficiency. As long as we don’t spend too long here we should be good.”

  He nodded. It was as good as they were going to get.

  “Bringing us up on the coordinates now,” Berrick said, his voice smooth as he piloted the big raider down into the lower layers of the storm. They dropped out from under the clouds to a scene of devastation. The settlement they’d been expecting was in ruins, buildings charred and smoldering from repeated lightning strikes, the fires only burning for seconds before the rain put them out.

  The center part of the village wasn’t being bombarded anymore as the lighting focused itself at the other side.

  “That has to be where they are. Take us in closer.”