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  She made the door, ricocheting off the doorframe and managing to get it half shut. But the huge alien was faster than she’d thought, shoving a big foot through the gap before she could close it. She screamed again as he shoved and sent her sprawling backward.

  Her butt hit the floor, hard enough to make her yelp, but she didn’t have the luxury of time to rub her bruised ass. Not bothering to get to her feet, she scrambled over the floor toward the shower stall. So the door was glass, but if she could get in there, at least this asshole would have to cut himself to pieces to try and get her out.

  Her screams echoed off the tiled walls, nearly deafening her, but she didn’t let up. She managed to get half in the shower stall before a hard hand closed around her ankle.

  “Oh no you don’t,” he hissed and flipped her over.

  “Fuck you!”

  She kicked him. In the face. Hard.

  Her heel impacted his nose. Blood splattered over the pristine floor. He fell back on his ass, his expression one of sheer surprise, giving Randy enough time to scramble, crablike into the shower stall.

  Before she could shut the door, though, he’d recovered.

  “Come here, little female,” he grunted, slamming the door open so hard it cracked down the center. Before she could cover her head to protect herself in case it shattered, he’d yanked her out of the cubicle and over his shoulder.

  “Hey! Asshole! Put me the fuck down!” she yelled, struggling until she realized how tall he was. She froze as he spun for the door. A drop from this height could easily break her neck. But she kept on swearing and yelling as he strode from the room.

  “Help me! Someone please help me!” she begged the alien warriors they passed, hoping one of them spoke English. “Get Riis! RIIS! HELP!”

  6

  “Commander. A moment of your time?”

  Danaar looked up as Riis spoke, his expression grim and forbidding. Since he looked that way even on a good day, Riis didn’t think anything of it. Danaar was the sort of male who looked like he was ready to fall out with his own finger-ends most of the time.

  “Of course, warrior.” The commander straightened up, flicking his still-long hair back over his shoulder. His position as commander of the war group was acting, pending the return of their commander Fenriis.

  If he didn’t return, or Danaar was awarded the position of commander permanently, his hair would be cut, his honor braids shorn off and put away. From that point onward, he would not collect personal honors but honor for the empire and for Liaanas, the goddess of war.

  But for now, his hair was still long, a fact Riis ignored as he looked at his superior officer.

  “I have a confession to make.”

  Danaar clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Never start a negotiation from a position of weakness, warrior. You know better than that. Rethink and rephrase.”

  Riis froze for a moment and then nodded, appreciating the warning. But that was the K’Vass through and through. Unlike other clans who fielded mindless warriors, the K’Vass treated their own, even now the quesen, as potential commanders from the beginning.

  “Very well. I saw an opportunity and took it.”

  Danaar nodded in approval, folding arms thickly corded with muscle over his broad chest. “Better. What opportunity did you take?”

  Rather than answer, Riis simply peeled the leather cuff back from his wrist. Danaar’s frown as he looked down turned to one of wide-eyed surprise.

  “Draanth me.” His gaze shot up to meet Riis’s. “You found a female. Where?”

  “The shuttle inside the ventral exhaust vent.”

  Riis folded his cuff back down to cover the marks. He still couldn’t believe his luck. First in finding his little human, then getting her to accept his claim, and finally that she’d called bonding marks from his skin.

  “We only found one of the flight crew. I went back to check because it bothered me. There were two in the other shuttles. Why only one in the ventral shuttle? It didn’t make sense. Everyone else said the pilot had to have been in the team we caught but I wanted to be sure.”

  “Attention to detail,” Danaar rumbled in approval. “Sardaan said you were one to watch. What happened then?”

  A rush of pleasure went through Riis at praise from such a senior warrior, but he kept his expression neutral. “I went back and sure enough, the pilot’s harness was too small for any of the males we’d captured. I realized the female had to be hiding somewhere…” He paused in his story for a second. “My family are from the Veraleesian forests, adapted for hunting there.”

  Danaar nodded in understanding, saving Riis the necessity of explaining how he’d known how to track the little human.

  “She was in the storage bins beneath the seats. I wouldn’t have thought to check there normally, given the size of the space, but human females are so tiny…”

  “They are indeed.”

  Danaar’s expression unfocused for a moment, his thoughts obviously elsewhere. Perhaps on the female he’d been taken with, now imprisoned by her own kind. Riis couldn’t understand that. To incarcerate a fertile female… Did humanity have so many that they could afford to throw them away like that?

  “We could go and get her,” Riis said suddenly, and Danaar’s head shot up, his brows snapping together. “Your female, I mean. She shouldn’t be a prisoner. You would have my support, for what it’s worth, if you decided to go and get her.”

  “And defy the emperor’s orders?” Danaar’s voice was low. “Be careful what you say, warrior. Lest you find yourself on a path that ends up in dishonor.”

  Riis just shrugged. “Some things are worth the risk, Commander.”

  Danaar just inclined his head. “We were talking about your female. I take it you found her and she accepted your claim. I am assuming since you are standing here talking to me, you did not—”

  “No!” Riis’s denial was swift and forceful as he realized what Danaar was hinting at. That he’d forced Randy to accept him. He felt sick at the very idea. “I would never force any female. Ever. Especially not with things standing as they are. If she had not wanted me, had not accepted my claim happily… I would have brought her directly to you.”

  Again he got the rumble of approval from the big commander.

  “Good. I would not have liked to think of you lacking in honor that way. Very well. Fetch your female so I may talk to her and ratify your bonding. Unless you wish to wait for our return and for the emperor to officiate?”

  For a moment Riis couldn’t answer. He hadn’t even considered the fact that the emperor himself would want to perform the bonding ceremony. Not for him. While he wasn’t quesen, he wasn’t first born either. Just… average… somewhere in the middle. He’d had to fight for everything his entire life, so the idea that the simple fact a female had called his mating marks would bring him to the attention of the emperor… it was mind-blowing.

  Before he could answer the doors to the bridge slid open and a scream rent the air. Riis spun on his heel instantly, everything in him responding to the sound. The scream of his female, currently being carried onto the bridge by Rohn K’Saan.

  “RIIS!” she yelled, the panic in her voice setting the fury that surged through him from inferno to white hot.

  “Put. Her. Down.”

  He didn’t roar or bellow. He wasn’t loud. Instead, his voice cut through the air of the bridge like an ice whip. Rohn froze, like a deearin in the headlights. The woman across his shoulder was ignored as their gazes locked. He was ready to fight, the minute shifting of his big frame telling Riis everything he needed to know about Rohn’s state of mind. Rohn was a K’Saan and dangerous with it. All of the emperor’s line were. Older than Riis by a decade, he had years of training and experience.

  But Riis didn’t care. The draanthic had touched his female. He would pay in blood and pain.

  “This male took a female that didn’t belong to him,” Rohn said aloud, for all the bridge to hear. “He kept her in his qu
arters, out of sight, when we all should have been told about her… given a chance to court her.”

  “Put her DOWN. She’s mine,” Riis growled, shucking his jacket off. Gasps echoed around the bridge as his wrists were revealed. The dark marks that had encircled his wrists now extended halfway up his forearms. The sign of a strong bond.

  Rohn’s eyes narrowed. “Make me.”

  He turned sideways, Randy still over the shoulder furthest from Riis. He paused, not attacking the bigger male right away. He couldn’t, not without risking hurting Randy. Mutters from the other males around the room broke the silence. No one was happy about the female being put in danger.

  Finally, a warrior from the back stepped forward, his expression hard and uncompromising. Reven K’Vass—a highly decorated and experienced warrior none of them would dare cross. Not even Rohn.

  “She is too delicate and easily injured,” he said in a deep voice, taking Randy from the K’Saan warrior. “If she’s hurt, you’ll have more than her mate to deal with.”

  “Her mate?” Rohn snorted. “We’ll see about that. I call for a choosing match.”

  “Are you blind? He has mating marks!” Danaar surged forward. “The gods have already bound them together.”

  “Marks don’t mean trall if he’s dead,” Rohn snarled, casting Reven a sharp look as he pulled Randy away from the center of the bridge. “Then she’ll be mine.”

  “Over my dead body,” Riis snarled, pacing around the bigger warrior. While he wasn’t tall himself, he was just as broad as Rohn, and his smaller stature should give him an advantage.

  It had to… because there was no way he was letting Rohn kill him and take his mate. He’d tear the other male apart with his bare hands if he had to.

  Even if he had to fight and kill every male on the bridge… the ship. Randy was his.

  If Randy had thought the big guy was scary, being wrestled from him by another guy scared her even more. There were too many of them, grim-faced as they crowded the bridge. But they weren’t looking at her. Instead, they were looking at the situation unfolding in the center of the room.

  Riis faced off against the alien who had taken her, spitting something in a language she didn’t understand.

  “Riis!” she shouted, fighting to get free and run to him. But the hands holding her hardened and she looked up into the face of the alien who held her.

  “Taar el anot firgiia,” he said, in what she assumed he thought was a reassuring voice.

  It wasn’t. It was like rocks tumbling over other rocks and getting in a fight as they all crashed down the side of a mountain. A low rumble that terrified her. He frowned as she shrank from him, at the limits of her endurance. Shivers racked her but not of the good kind. She wanted Riis and to go back to their room so she could forget all of this had happened.

  “It okay. I promise.” The big alien’s speech was halting, as though the words were unfamiliar in his mouth. “Riis… good warrior? Strong.” He nodded, as though she would believe him just because he said it was so.

  It shouldn’t have, but his words about her man… that he was strong, that others had faith in him… did reassure her. Especially when she saw the same strength of resolve in the faces of the other men in the room, their attention on the two warriors in the center.

  She turned in the big alien’s hold, his strong arm a hard band just under her breasts keeping her captive against his steel-like frame. Her expression tightened with worry as she watched Riis and the other man circling each other. Panic tried to claw its way up into her throat, her heart thundering in her chest like a thousand fighters launching for battle.

  The asshole alien launched himself forward and she squeaked, clutching at her captor’s arm. He was bigger than Riis and the fear he’d hurt her lover almost stalled her heart right there in her chest. But before the sound had escaped her throat, Riis had moved faster than she’d ever seen anyone move.

  The punch his opponent had thrown never landed, Riis twisting somehow and sliding under his arm to land two solid blows on his side. The bigger guy just grunted, wheeling away to come back at Riis with a hard kick. And then she lost sight of the individual kicks and punches as the two aliens fought.

  It took her breath away. She’d seen fights before. Been involved in more than a few herself, most notably the one that had gotten her the shipping orders back to Earth. So she was well used to the ferocity and speed of a good sparring match or vicious brawl. But this was something else entirely.

  The two alien men went at each other like the fate of entire worlds depended on the outcome, not pulling any punches or holding anything back. She flinched as Riis took a heavy right hook across his jaw. The sound of a fist hitting flesh made her wince. The cry was torn from her lips as she tried to surge forward, sure he was unconscious as he sprawled over the deck.

  The need to get between him and the asshole beating on him obliterated everything else, even common sense. There was no way she could survive in a fight with a Latharian. They were titans of men with a viciousness she could never hope to match and a ferocity that took her breath away. But if all she had to protect the man she loved was her own body, as fragile as it was compared to theirs, then that’s what she’d do.

  She loved him.

  That thought hit her like a barrage of missiles from a canon array. Somewhere along the line she’d fallen so hard and fast for her sexy alien that she couldn’t comprehend a life without him.

  Screams filled the air, ones she belatedly realized were hers, and she fought the alien holding her, desperate to get free.

  “No!” The arm around her waist tightened, the alien holding her hauling her off her feet against him to stop her trying to escape.

  The big asshole alien stomped toward where Riis was slowly getting to his feet, shaking his head as though dazed.

  “Nonononono, get up!” she yelled at him, tears in her eyes. The other guy was going to kill him and she couldn’t do anything about it. But, in trying to hold her still, her captor had left her arms free. He might have been much bigger than she was, but she’d learned during her time with Riis that Latharian men were built exactly the same as human ones.

  Dropping her weight, she feigned passing out, sagging limply in his hold. He muttered something she didn’t understand, presumably a curse from its explosive nature, and started to scoop her up into his arms. The instant she was horizontal to the floor, she lashed out with her elbow and nailed him right in the balls.

  He gasped in pain and for an instant guilt washed through her. Then she landed heavily on the floor and forgot all about it in the flare of pain that washed through her back. Shoving that aside, she snatched the blade from her captor’s thigh and launched herself into the middle of the room to save Riis.

  7

  Riis had hit the deck hard and stayed down. Not because he was badly injured, as he was making out, but because he wanted Rohn to come to him. For a few heart-stopping seconds, he wasn’t sure his ruse would work. Surely Rohn, a male who had trained with the most dangerous warrior in the empire, his cousin the emperor himself, would see right through such a simple trick?

  He held his breath, convinced that Rohn would hang back and make Riis come to him. He could hear Randy screaming in the background and his fury increased at the panic and fear he heard in her voice. He didn’t give a trall what Rohn’s bloodline was. He would pay for scaring Randy.

  He was almost ready to give up on his little subterfuge and launch himself across the gap that separated him from his opponent. Already his mind, shaped by years of combat training and battles, had formed a strategy to bring the bigger warrior down. Two slices to the legs from the blade still sheathed on his thigh to cut the male’s ability to move and bring him to his knees then a finishing blow to the jaw and Rohn should be out for the count, if not done permanently.

  The fact he was considering killing a member of his own kind over a female didn’t faze Riis one iota. She might be human, but she was his to protect. The gods ha
d chosen him for her for a reason.

  But he didn’t need his plan. Rather than hang back as he’d expected, Rohn chuckled and moved in for the kill. For a moment Riis didn’t move, hardly able to believe the bigger warrior had fallen for the child’s trick. But the instant Rohn’s hand landed on his shoulder, Riis exploded into movement.

  Launching himself upward, he climbed up and wrapped himself around the bigger warrior like a youngling faced with his first errvashi tree. Semi-sentient and predatory, it took nerves of steel and a healthy dose of craziness to climb them. But it was a mark of honor to the younglings who lived in the Veraleesian forests.

  Only those who’d managed to scale the biggest of them all were allowed to wear the blooms they plucked there in their collars. Riis had a collection, one for each journey up, in his trunk in his quarters. Saved for when his braids would join them.

  Now he used all that knowledge and experience of dodging the deadly whip-branches as he wrapped Rohn up and then threw his weight to the side to bring the bigger warrior down. Rohn fought, and fought hard, but as soon as Riis had him wrapped up, it was a done deal.

  Flipping himself over onto his back, he dragged Rohn over like an upturned turlaton. His legs wrapped and locked around the other male’s waist, Riis arched backward. Arm locked tight around Rohn’s throat, he cut the male’s air off. For long seconds, Rohn struggled but it was pointless and they both knew it. But the K’Saan had too much pride to tap out.

  Riis growled and tightened his grip. Rohn slumped in his hold, but Riis kept the pressure up a few seconds longer. Just enough to make sure Rohn really was unconscious. He wasn’t a green warrior. Just because Rohn had been stupid enough to fall for a child’s bluff didn’t mean Riis was.

  Finally, sure his opponent was done, he let go and shoved the male off him. As he rolled to his feet, he found Randy hurtling toward him, blade in hand. Behind her, Reven was doubled over, fighting for breath and clutching at his crotch.