Protected: Alien Mate Index Book 2: (Alien Warrior BBW Paranormal Science fiction Romance) (The Alien Mate Index) (30 page)

Grav gave me a ferocious grin that wasn’t the least bit happy. “See? Told you that you were too good for the likes of me.”

For a moment I didn’t know what to say. He had admitted in the past that he’d done some bad things—and even that he wasn’t sorry for them. But surely he couldn’t be as bad as all that. Could he?

“Was it…did you kill a prison guard?” I asked. “Maybe by accident when you were trying to get out of jail? Maybe trying to get free so you could clear your name?”

Grav gave a short, barking laugh.

“I see you’ve got a pretty little fantasy all worked up about it in your head. Let me set you straight, Leah. Yes, I’ve killed people—plenty of them and yes some of them were guards when I was breaking out of the slam. And I wasn’t shut up in there for no reason or because somebody framed me either—I was locked up for murder. A murder I absolutely committed and wouldn’t hesitate to commit again.”

“I…I…” I didn’t know what to say to that. When he laid the facts out on the table like this—so baldly with no “pretty little fantasies” as he put it to dress them up or make them look better—it was shocking and more than a little scary.

“I…but I thought you were a Protector,” I said at last.

Grav sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“I
am.
I presented myself to the
Mendeket
of the Order of Protection after I got away. At first I just thought it was a place to stay out of sight. The Gold Skins were looking high and low for me. But after he heard my story, the
Mendeket
agreed to take me in and let me train to become a Protector. And that’s what I’ve been ever since.”

After the Mendeket heard my story…
I wished I could hear it—the
whole
story. I felt like there was still something missing. A
lot
missing, actually. Like who had he killed in the first place to be put in jail? And why was he so adamant that he would do it again?

Grav had been watching my face while I thought over his words. Apparently he didn’t see what he wanted because his own face went dark and cold as granite.

“C’mon,” he said shortly. “We still have a job to do.”

“What about the pirates?” I said, glad for the change of subject. “Do you believe he really killed them all? And if so, where’s Teeny?”

“I don’t know,” Grav growled. “But we’re damn sure gonna find out.”

Grav

“It’s true—the Spider’s Web is dead or inactivated these many days.” The T’varri nodded and took another sip of the bright blue Grungian ale I’d bought him. T’varri are straight-forward people so I felt I could trust what he had to say.

“Is that why the Haven is so crowded?” I asked. We were speaking in a private safe room I’d rented at the back of the bar for this exact purpose. It was bare with nothing but a table, two chairs, and a drinking hole with a long straw coming out of it.

It wasn’t exactly the most luxurious accommodations, but I didn’t care—it wasn’t like I expected to be there for long. I wanted to get in and out quickly before the fucking Imperial Guards came back. Just my luck meeting them in a place where I had least expected to—I hoped it took Captain Verrai some time to get his fucking Binding-warrant.

“Probably.” The T’varri nodded. He had the elaborate living tattoos of his kind. They crawled up and down his arms and over his broad back like restless snakes. “Plenty of ring miners in the crowd, waiting to see if it’s really safe to go harvesting the rings again. Of course…” He took another sip of ale through the long straw that led to a hole in the wall. “There’s probably going to be a mad rush now.”

“Why is that?” Leah asked. I’d had to bring her with me into the safe room, even though I disliked letting her be in such close quarters with a T’varri. They’re a race of sexual dominants and anyone with submissive tendencies tends to attract them like Gennian bees to Deloshin honey. Leah was getting better about standing up for herself—case in point, the fight we’d nearly had out in the main part of the bar. But she’d spent years under the thumb of that asshole of a mate of hers and some of her old, meek mannerisms still showed through at times.

The T’varri measured her with his eyes.

“Why is every ring miner this side of the galaxy about to descend on the rings? Because there’s a fortune to be made, of course. And because Verrai and his squad cleaned out the nest of pirates on Chndra.”

“So we heard,” I said. “Just didn’t know if we could believe it.”

“Oh, you can believe it. They brought back footage—saw vids of the bodies myself.” He nodded and took another sip of ale.

“And the Widow?” I asked. “What about her?”

The T’varri shrugged. “Nobody knows. Her control station is quiet—nobody goes in, nobody goes out. That’s why everyone’s been holding back. But now that the Gold Skins proved you can get in and out with no problem—even if you kill the Widow’s pet pirates—I’m thinking a Hell of a lot of miners are about to follow.”

“You could be right.” I knew for sure
I
was going in. Teeny had to be on the small moon, Chndra
somewhere.
The Net being down and Verrai’s squad killing the pirates made my job a hell of a lot easier but it also made me nervous.

It seemed…too easy somehow.

“Wasn’t the head pirate who was killed a, uh, T’varri?” The name sounded exotic on Leah’s tongue. “Like you?” she asked the T’varri timidly. “I mean, did you know him?”

“Who—Arn?” The T’varri laughed, eyeing her again in a way I didn’t like. “That son of a motherless
grondag
had it coming.”

“How so?” Leah asked.

The T’varri frowned. “He wasn’t honorable in his dealings. That’s the problem with pirates—they got no fucking values. Word was, he’d kidnapped an innocent female and was holding her against her will.”

My heart thumped in my chest at the indirect mention of Teeny but I tried to keep my face blank.

“Is that right? Any word on what he did with her?”

He shook his head. “Not that I heard—I only know he took her.” He frowned. “It’s shameful to take a female without a contract like that.”

“A contract?” Leah raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

I cleared my throat. “The T’varri sign a binding and legal contract with a female before they bond her to them. It spells out exactly what they’re willing to do.”

“To do?” Leah frowned.

“Sexually.” The T’varri’s voice dropped a note and he eyed her again, his live tattoos writhing with interest. “We demand that a female submit to us completely but only within the confines of the contract. To take a female without establishing her limits and learning her
sig`nal
is shameful.”

“Seen-yahl? What’s that?” Leah asked.

“When love play grows rough, as it so often does with my kind, the female must have a word they can give that will stop their male from continuing,” he explained. “It keeps things from…going too far.”

“Oh, I see.” Leah’s face got a little paler and she took a step closer to me. “Like a safe word.”

“Enough about that,” I growled. I was tired of discussing the depraved sexual practices of the T’varri and doubly tired of the way this one was eyeing my female, which was definitely how I thought of Leah, even though we weren’t bonded.

“Suit yourself. I was just explaining.” He shrugged and took another drink of the bright blue ale. “So, are you going to the rings? Got a stake in a mining operation? I didn’t think Braxians went in for that kind of thing.”

“Not mining exactly.” I thought about hiring him…and then decided against it. If the pirates were dead—and it seemed certain they were—I would have no need of mercs to watch Leah’s back while I went after them. We could concentrate all our time on the search for Teeny.

“Well, if there’s nothing else, I
do
have a stake to claim.” The T’varri rose, scraping his chair back against the metal floor.

“That’s all,” I said. “Thank you for your candor.” I offered him a warrior’s clasp and after a moment he took it, gripping my forearm tightly.

“May you find what you are seeking,” he said formally. And then, with a look at Leah, “Though it seems to me you’ve already found it.”

“Thanks,” I said shortly, releasing my grip. “May the Goddess go with you.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t have me.” He gave me a dark grin. “But thank you anyway, brother. And thanks for the ale.” He looked like he might say something else to Leah but a look at my face changed his mind. He simply nodded and left.

“Whew…” Leah blew out a breath and looked up at me. “Now what?”

“Now,” I said. “We go find Teeny.”

Leah

“She’s not here. I swear by the Goddess of Mercy I’ve searched every-fuckin’-where I could think of and I can’t find her anywhere,” Grav growled, sounding extremely upset.

I couldn’t blame him. We’d been searching for hours and had turned the pirate’s compound upside down but we hadn’t been able to find Grav’s little ward anywhere.

The compound itself was a large, split-level building set in the middle of a scorching blue desert. There was sand swirled everywhere in drifts and dunes and all of it was different shades of blue from the palest sky-blue to the deepest shade of midnight. I didn’t know how the different shades stayed together instead of mixing to form one single multicolored-hue, but somehow they didn’t.

The different shades swirled around each other without ever mixing, making me think of waves in an ocean or clouds in the sky. Since the sky was a light tan, it made me feel like I was caught in an upside-down beach where everything had been reversed.

Outside, to the right of the compound, the Imperial Guards had stacked the bodies of the pirates they had killed. I tried not to look at the grisly sight but it was hard—my eyes kept wanting to wander back to those bodies stacked like so much cordwood in the shifting blue sands.

Though it couldn’t have been long since they had been killed, the desert was already beginning to dry them out. Some of them even had gray faces and lipless mouths that had drawn back to reveal black gums and yellow teeth.

“Don’t look, darlin’,” Grav muttered, seeing where my gaze was going. “It’s not a sight a female like you oughta have to see.”

“I was just…just thinking that the desert is already drying them out,” I said, my voice coming out slightly sick. “Look—those ones with the gray skin—”

“Those are Biters,” he interrupted me. “They always look like that.” He took a step closer and leaned over, examining the bodies. “Looks like the Gold Skins knew what they were doing—these were shot in the head. It’s the only way to keep a Biter down for good.”

“A Biter is one of the cannibal people you and the Principae—Teeny’s grandfather—were talking about, right?” I asked. “Which of the Twelve Peoples are they?”

“They’re not,” Grav said flatly. “Biters aren’t born—they’re made. The Biter’s Curse is a virus that’s passed in the saliva and blood of one of the infected. When they bite you and the virus gets into your bloodstream, well…” He shook his head.

“There’s no cure?” I asked.

“None. And the Curse rots your brain. Makes you an eating machine and what you want to snack on is other sentient beings.”

“So…they’re some kind of zombies?” I shivered. “That’s awful! But how could the pirates use them as soldiers if they’re so mindless?”

“They can be controlled—usually with impulse collars.” He nodded at one of the Biters. Around his throat a scratched gray metal collar was winking in the pitiless desert sunlight.

“But they’re not the same person they were before they got bitten?” I guessed. “Even with the collar on?”

“Exactly.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Gods, I wish we could find Teeny and make sure she’s all right! Just the thought of one of those Biters going after her…” He glared at the neatly stacked dead bodies, as though he wished he could bring them back to life just to kill them all over again.

“Let’s search inside one more time,” I suggested. “Being out here in the heat is miserable. If Teeny’s still here, she wouldn’t be out in the sun.”

“I hope not.” He made a noise of frustration. “All right—I feel like we really turned the place upside down but we can do one more pass before we move on to scouring the desert.”

“How long will we look?” I asked.

He sighed again. “I want to say until we find Teeny or some trace of her but it could take months to scour this entire moon and it’s not smart to stay that long. We don’t know if the Web is really dead or just out of commission for a while.”

The Web, as far as I could see on the viewscreen of Grav’s shuttle, was a grid of large, dark red spheres spaced at intervals in a mind-bogglingly huge net around the Lavara solar system. It stretched as far as the eye could see—well, as far as
my
eyes could see, anyway.

Grav had told me that when it was operational, red lasers stretched between the balls making a nearly impenetrable blockade that no ship could get through. I had no wish to see it in that state—especially if it was keeping us from getting away. I could understand Grav’s reluctance to stay here longer than we had to. But still—I had a very strong feeling that we needed to find Teeny. And that we
would—
if only we looked in the right place.

“Come on,” I said and went back into the compound again.

Inside it was dark and at least fifteen degrees cooler, which was nice after the sweltering heat of the desert. I already felt like I’d lost ten pounds just from sweating.

The living quarters showed signs of a struggle—furniture knocked over and drinks spilled on the floor. It hadn’t been a very nice place to start with but it was still sobering to see smears of blood on the walls and realize that most of the pirates had probably been shot where they stood and then dragged outside and stacked up. Captain Verrai and his men had been ruthless and extremely thorough.

“Teeny?” I heard Grav calling from the second floor. I’d been up there already—it was made up like a barracks and I guessed that was where most of the pirates had slept. If so, I didn’t envy them—it was much hotter at the top of the house than on the bottom level.

It reminded me of the house I’d lived in with Gerald. During the summer months, there was only so much the AC unit could do to cool the upstairs. Luckily the master bedroom had been located on the bottom floor of the house. Although when it got
really
hot, I always wished I could go sleep in the basement. That was always the coolest spot in the house. The basement…