Razor's Traitorous Heart: The Alliance Book 2 (10 page)

“Jason, please… warn Destin,” she whispered,
ignoring Razor.

“Twelve hours, Kali,” Razor murmured as he
carried her back through the reception area, down the corridor and
out the back door of the old hotel. “It is all I can give him,
fi’ta
. I have my duties. I am… sorry.”

Kali turned her head into his shoulder and
closed her eyes as he approached the Skid that was slowly
descending toward them. God, she was so tired. So, very, very
tired. She would fight him, but she needed a few minutes first to
rebuild her strength.

She breathed deeply, unaware that her body
was already shutting down in response to the warm arms surrounding
her. It was as if her body knew she was safe while her mind fought
against it. Her thoughts drifted as she breathed in the soothing
scent of the male holding her. Images flashed through her mind like
a kaleidoscope, turning and changing.

Images of her mom, tired, but always
cheerful from a long day at the restaurant, flowed like a vivid
movie behind her closed eyes. Carla Parks stopped by the small,
shabby apartment they lived in so she could check on Kali and
Destin for a couple of hours before she left for her second job at
the local corner store. Kali and Destin running. Her mom would
listen as she and Destin told her about their daily adventures.
Carla was an innate free spirit who saw nothing wrong with allowing
Kali and Destin to run through the streets as children, laughing
along with them as they learned how wonderful it was to be free to
run and discover new adventures.

A single tear escaped as she remembered
coming home from visiting a friend when she was seventeen. There
were half a dozen police cars outside the small convenience store
where her mom worked nights. She remembered Destin turning when she
called out his name. She had been surprised that he was home from
his college classes so early.

“Momma,” she murmured restless. “Why?
Why?”

Two young boys, one the same age as her and
the other two years younger sat in the back of one of the patrol
cars. She remembered glancing at them before turning back to Destin
when he called out to her.

“She’s gone,” Destin’s strained voice
explained. “She was handing them the money from the register when
someone came in. The gun went off. The police said she died
instantly.”

“No!” Pain swept through her as the memories
held her imprisoned in their sticky web. She turned back and stared
at the two boys. She knew one of them. “Randy, why? You knew her.
Why?”

She could see Randy’s blank eyes staring
back at her as if it was yesterday before he turned his head and
sunk down in the back of the car, ignoring her. The images turned
and twisted again as Destin lead her away from the scene.

Now, her world was dissolving around her
again. She cried out, reaching for Destin but he continued to walk
away from her as if he couldn’t hear her pleas for him to come
back. She was sitting on the roof of their apartment building
watching as the skies filled with alien spaceships. They didn’t own
a television, it was an expensive luxury that her mom could never
afford, so she hadn’t known what was happening at first.

People filled the streets as news of the
‘invasion’ as it was being broadcast spread. From high above
Chicago, she had watched as day turned to night and the city became
an inferno as panic spread and the worst of human nature erupted
like a festering wound. She stayed on the roof, packing only the
necessities that she could carry in her backpack and a small box
containing the few trinkets of her mother’s life. That was where
Destin found her three days later. It had taken him that long to
make it from the city college downtown to the government housing
where she lived. In two short months, her life had changed
forever.

Kali shivered and stirred as a light rain
began to fall. The icy moisture woke her from her restless
exhaustion. She tried to move, but found she was trapped against a
hard, muscled body. One arm was wrapped protectively around her
while the other held the grip of the Skid. She gasped and struggled
to sit up as she became aware of what was happening.

“Careful,” Razor cautioned in her ear.

“Where are we? Where are you taking me?” She
asked nervously, pushing her damp hair out of her eyes.

She gripped the arm around her waist tightly
as they wove between the buildings. The cold rain was helping to
clear her mind. She recognized that they were flying over a section
of the southern part of the city. She looked down, but she could
see very little in the darkness.

“Back to the base that has been set up for
the Trivator forces in this area,” he replied.

Kali shivered as some of the rainwater
seeped under her shirt and down her back. She moaned as the water
touched the deep cut in her right shoulder. She leaned forward and
bit her lip as a wave of dizziness swept over her. The arm around
her tightened, pulling her back against the warm body behind her.
She shivered again, but this time for a different reason. Razor’s
warm lips were pressed against the side of her neck as if he were
trying to comfort her.

“I have contacted my personal healer. He
will be waiting to care for you when we arrive,” he informed her in
a husky voice against her ear. “It won’t be long now.”

“I want to go home,” she muttered. “Doc can
stitch me up.”

“No,” he replied.

Kali stiffened before forcing her body to
relax. There was nothing she could do at this moment. If she were
to fight, she would kill them both. For a brief second, she
considered that as an option before shaking her head in disgust.
Killing him wouldn’t stop the plans to destroy the city. Besides,
she wasn’t in any hurry to die either. No, the best plan was to
play along with him and the minute the opportunity to escape
presented itself, she would be a distant memory.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have
serious social issues?” She asked with a tired sigh. “Bossing
people around, kidnapping me and trying to kill one of my friends,
not to mention threatening my brother, after I saved your life
isn’t winning any brownie points with me,” she added dryly.

A deep rumble and the sound of masculine
laughter ricochet
ed
through her like a
speeding bullet making her want to squirm when she felt an
unfamiliar heat low in her belly. She snorted her displeasure even
as she snuggled closer to his warmer body. She grimaced as she put
pressure on the cut on her back. At least being half frozen was
beginning to dull the pain.

“We are almost there,” he murmured.

“Yippee,” she snorted grumpily.

She closed her eyes when he chuckled again
in that damn sexy voice of his. Maybe she could just push him off
the damn air bike. That would solve at least one of her
problems.

“I can walk, damn it,” Kali growled in a
slightly slurred voice. She blinked several times as rain blurred
her vision and glared up at the stubborn facial lines of the male
carrying her. “I’ve got a cut, not a broken leg.”

Razor’s mouth tightened. She had more than a
cut, it was a bloody slice half the length of his arm and at least
a quarter inch deep. From the shivers wracking her body, it was
more than the cold affecting her as well. She was beginning to go
into shock from blood loss. Her face was white and her eyes, while
angry, were wide with a glaze to them.

He cursed himself for not checking her over
before he carried her away. His main focus was to get her to a
place where he could protect her. He did not want to take a chance
of anyone else surprising him.

Or give her a chance to escape before I
could claim her,
he silently admitted to himself.

“Razor, you are hurt?” Cutter asked, jogging
out from under the overhang to them. “I was informed you requested
Patch to transfer down to the planet.”

“It is for my female,” Razor stated bluntly.
“Is he here?”

“There is a super-cell developing. The
transport is just landing, but it wasn’t a smooth flight. He isn’t
very happy with you. You know how he hates transporting down as it
is,” Cutter said, looking at Kali with a speculative look. “So,
this is the female that saved your life when the human transport
crashed.”

“Yes, she is my
Amate
,” Razor replied
sharply. “She is to be protected at all cost.”

“I’m not a mutt,” she snapped before she
turned to the other male in the hopes of getting some help. “Tell
him to let me go. He has no right taking me from my home.”

Cutter’s eyes glittered with amusement at
her stubborn tone. “
Amate
. You are his
Amate
. That
means you belong to him. I’m afraid he wouldn’t listen me, little
warrior.”

“I don’t belong to anyone.” She muttered
before exhaustion and the loss of blood became too much for her to
fight against. “Bloody hell, does he boss everyone around? I just
want to go home. I need to warn Destin,” she whispered in a barely
audible voice.

*.*.*

Razor felt the change in Kali as her head
fell back against the crook of his arm. Her face twisted in pain as
the movement put pressure on her wound. Her eyes were closed, and
though she tried to hide it, he could see the tears of pain
blending with the rain.

He strode under the covered walkway, picking
up speed as she became more lethargic. He cradled her head when it
rolled to the side. A muttered exclamation drew his attention. He
knew what Patch must be thinking from the accusing look of
disapproval on his face.

“I didn’t do this,” he snapped with an
unfamiliar need to defend himself. “She jumped off a building and
crashed through a window.”

Patch’s eyebrow rose and his mouth tightened
into a flat line. He ran his hand over her throat, counting before
he gently lifted one of her eyelids. Turning, he barked out a
series of sharp commands to two men standing to the left of
him.

“Why would she jump off a building?” Patch
snapped out as he pushed through the door following one of the men.
“And how far did she fall?”

“She didn’t fall,” Razor responded, ignoring
Patch’s first question. “She grabbed a cable and tried to swing to
the roof of a building across from the one we were on. It wasn’t
long enough and she crashed through a window two floors below. It
was a horizontal impact, not vertical.”

“Again,” Patch said, nodding to the bed in
the makeshift medical room. “Why would she jump off a
building?”

Razor tenderly laid Kali down on her side on
the bed. A guttural curse in his native language ripped from his
throat when he saw the actual wound across her back and shoulder.
He stepped around to the other side when Patch pushed him aside so
he could see it.

He ran trembling fingers along her pale
cheek. “She was trying to get away from me,” he finally admitted in
a low voice.

Patch paused for a fraction of a second. His
gaze narrowed in on the trembling in Razor’s hand as he touched the
human female. Pressing the sedative injector against her neck, he
depressed the button. Once he was confident she was asleep and
would not feel what he was about to do, he reached for a pair of
shears to cut away her torn and bloody shirt.

“Now that I find that hard to believe. I
don’t think I’ve ever met a female that resisted your attentions
before,” Patch replied calmly as he opened the back of her shirt.
“I need a cleanser and a sealer.”

Razor listened as Patch ordered one of the
resident medics to get him the items he needed. He continued to
stroke Kali’s hair and face as his friend and personal healer cared
for her. He stared down at her face. This was the first time he had
really seen her up close in the light. She was even more beautiful,
more exotic, than he remembered.

“She almost died twice tonight,” he
murmured, touching the corner of her lips. “Several human males
opened fire on her the first time.”

Patch continued cleansing the wound. He
pulled several small slivers of broken glass from the jagged edge.
The wound was a good fifteen centimeters in length. While it wasn’t
deep all the way across, at least half of it was six millimeters in
depth.

“Did you kill the males?” Patch asked as he
applied another layer of cleanser to the wound to protect it from
infection and to help reduce scarring. “Is that why you were on the
building?”

“She did. She flipped over a burnt transport
like it was a toy and made a clean kill-shot to the head,” Razor
replied with a touch of pride and admiration. “She takes too many
chances with her life.”

Patch raised his eyes to Razor’s for a brief
moment before returning to the process of sealing Kali’s
torn
flesh. Fresh blood ran in thin
rivulets
, staining the pristine sheet
beneath her body. There was something strange about the way Razor
was reacting to this female. He was acting like she was his…

“I have claimed her as my
Amate
. I
need you to mark us,” Razor murmured, curling his fingers in her
short hair. “She is going to fight me, but she is mine.”

Patch’s lips twitched in amusement.
“Shouldn’t you wait until she wakes? You know you could be
committing yourself to a long, lonely and possibly very frustrating
life if she refuses you.”

Razor’s lips twitched as well when he
thought of the battle he was likely to have on his hands when Kali
was feeling better. His body warmed and his damn cock hardened at
the thought. He tenderly picked up her hand and turned it. A dark
frown creased his brow when he saw her ravaged palm.

“It will be an exciting and rewarding life.
It is a Trivator warrior’s dream. One I can honestly say I never
thought I would experience,” he countered. “Her hands are damaged
as well.”