Alien Warrior's Wife: Sci-fi Alien Military Romance (Brion Brides Book 2) (5 page)

Urenya didn’t start to protest that, because it would have been suggesting she wasn’t aware at all times of what she was doing with her patients, and besides, yes, her hands didn’t necessarily need to go up that high but…

And well, he’s huge.

Ah, yes. That too. She hadn’t actually been out to do anything inappropriate, she’d merely wanted to touch more of that solid, steel-like body in front of her. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t clearly been enjoying it. No, she’d brushed against his cock entirely by accident because she simply hadn’t thought it could, well, reach that far.

While it wasn’t the main reason she’d said no, a good amount of it was a fair certainty Narath would rip her in two.

So why couldn’t she still get the lovable giant out of her mind?

At the moment possibly because he was suddenly standing right in front of her, leaning on his battle spear, tall and strong and dressed for battle. The valor squares pulsing in his neck cast his features in an odd light, bringing the green of his eyes even more to the fore. His short black hair framed his face to make the whole picture even more enticing. Her mouth watered despite herself. A part of her that had been sleeping for a long time wondered if she might still take the risk of being split apart.

“The commander needs us on the surface,” Narath said, his voice deep and heavy already from the thought of the upcoming fight.

Urenya hoped she managed to hide her shiver.

“He tasked me to bring you to him. Promising to, and I quote, kill me with his bare hands if I let something happen to you.”

Urenya smiled. Wasn’t their commander, a man from whom more enemies ran than faced him, a sweetheart after all?

The
Triumphant
loomed over a world called TD-17 for short, Target Destination 17 in their official records. The Brions knew fairly little of the planet itself, except that the Galactic Union didn’t like it. The Union had tried to make contact with the species living on the planet but to no avail.

Urneya wasn’t sure whether they were incapable of communication or unwilling to communicate. It seemed the Union didn’t know either, but what they did know was the species clearly didn’t like them. The GU couldn’t just ignore a possible threat, taking into consideration they’d found out about the strange Atherins, as they were called, when the creatures had attacked one of the Palian worlds. That happened to the Union occasionally, Urenya knew. Not all the species in the galaxy were willing to share the stars with others. Compared to them, the Brions seemed like the lesser of two evils.

The GU had thought it a perfect opportunity for the Brions to demonstrate they could play with others and do what they did best in the meantime. Also something that happened a lot, which worked well for both parties. The Union got rid of its enemies without bloodying its hands, especially the Palians who hated resorting to violence, and the Brions got to battle for a righteous cause.

The commander had kept Urenya safely aboard the
Triumphant
so far, and judging by the bodies she was sent – both Atherin and Brion – Urenya understood why. The Atherins were a roughly humanoid species, the expression borrowed from the Terrans but for the way their skin morphed. It gained density, making it difficult to pierce with even the most well-aimed blow, but fortunately Brion battle spears were built to endure almost anything. It was understandable why the Union didn’t want to deal with the Atherins themselves.

So the Atherins were hard to fight even when you saw them, since morphing was so fast and so natural to them, while the Brions were not entirely sure yet they understood all the ways the aliens
could
morph. They knew they could grow their skin thicker or more dexterous. Problems arose from that they could also make it blend into the background, giving them the perfect camouflage. They’d lost quite a few lives to the simple misfortune of a warrior literally stepping on an Atherin and finding himself stabbed to death by what he thought was the ground. Brion senses were very keen, but TD-17 required being on the edge from the second you landed.

The commander was calling Urenya to heal those who had been wounded too deeply to transport safely, especially under fire from the Atherin ships, none of which luckily had the might to match the
Triumphant
. They could, however, pick off smaller vessels, which they did. So it was better to bring her down in a heavily guarded shuttle than risk sending all the wounded up to her.

Urenya’s heart was pounding out of her chest as she sat in the shuttle. Not because she was afraid of dying. It wasn’t the way the Brions thought. She simply had no desire to die
yet
and not in the least in the way she’d seen warriors die to the Atherins. They didn’t need weapons when they could make their own skin hard enough to use their nails and hands as death-bringers. Urenya shuddered, finding Narath’s hand around her the next moment. It was steady and strong, and above all, made her feel safer. She leaned into it without thinking, although she had been resolved to keep away mere hours ago.

She felt him tense at that, but she couldn’t pull away. It felt so right to be nestled in his arms. When he bent down to press his head against hers, she almost sighed of happiness, an emotion she hadn’t thought possible to just come out of nowhere, but there she was. On her way to a planet where every step could be her last, but at least she got to feel this before her possible doom – Narath strong and powerful at her back, holding her gently against him, so silent she could hear him breathing quietly, his head buried into her hair.

“Don’t worry,” he said at last. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Probably thinking that had been too emotional, he added,

“I mean, you heard what the Commander said. It wouldn’t be any fun to live through the Atherins and then get killed by him.”

Urenya smiled, believing him. The damned ride down to the surface was so short when it felt like a little moment in time she wouldn’t have minded staying in.

The doors opened, and she set her foot on TD-17’s surface. In truth, she was very shocked it didn’t try to kill her. Narath looked at her with such an indescribable smile it steeled her heart to keep going, knowing he’d be there to keep her safe from all harm.
 

CHAPTER FOUR

Narath

It was a terrible thing, really.

At the moment when Narath most had to pay attention to his surroundings – not for his own life alone, but for Urenya’s as well – he was tempted to simply stare at her. The moment in the shuttle had not been a good idea. It calmed her down, but it definitely didn’t help with his ever-present longing for her. She’d fit into his embrace as perfectly as he’d thought she would. Like she was made to be there.

Shaking his mind clear, he focused on their surroundings. The place they’d chosen for landing was as safe as it could be, a place where they’d walked around for hours, but considering reports from the other cites, even that was no guarantee. The Atherins were clever, and it seemed as though as individuals they had no sense of self-preservation. Some of them had waited very patiently for a long time to strike at their leaders when they’d almost felt safe. So there was no excuse for sloppiness now, not when he had Urenya to protect.

He looked at her walking beside him, beautiful in her easy calm. The first burst of fear had passed with setting foot on the planet’s ground and now she was walking more freely. Lightly, as if her feet hardly touched the surface. The flowing robes around her really made it look like she was floating. Even sunlight came through the heavy clouds that usually cast the whole place in gloomy darkness to make her shine in its rays.

Narath almost walked into the commander, who gave him his best look of complete fury. If he hadn’t known him for years and hadn’t caught on to the twinkle in his eye, Narath would have surely counted himself dead by that point.

“Nothing gets past my best, does it,” Diego Grothan said.

“General,” he said stubbornly. “I have brought Urenya to you, as you commanded.”

The commander gave him one of his rare smirks.

“So I see.”

Nothing more followed, because while it was true Narath hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off Urenya for very long, he had only allowed himself those glimpses when absolutely certain it was safe to stare. He wouldn’t have risked her life, nor his own. What kind of an image would it have been to steal another glimpse at his little beauty to see her die in the next? No. He wanted to keep looking at her, alive and well, basking in the warm light that gave the whole situation a deceptively safe feel. Even then, both him and the commander were constantly aware of every moment, every sound, every object that seemed as though it shouldn’t be moving.

“Urenya,” the commander said. “I’ll send you a bit further away from the landing site. Do what you can, but don’t linger. It isn’t safe. I’ll send a unit with you and Narath, but they must return too. You’re a healer. I’m sure you’ll be able to make the calls.”

He had half-expected her to shrink back from such a cold approach to the lives of warriors, but Urenya simply nodded. Maybe he had underestimated her. Urenya was a Brion too, after all, and knew that getting killed was considered a natural death for a Brion warrior.

They set off in the direction of one of the battle fields where the fighting seemed to have ended. They’d gone over the ground there with heat sensors and motion detectors and devices that picked up sounds from orbit, just to make sure. And still, despite everything, they couldn’t be certain. Apparently one of the ways the Atherins could morph their skin removed the heat signature. They made almost no sound, up to the point where the warriors had asked their scientists whether it was possible for a humanoid species not to breathe. As for motion, well… a species that could basically change itself into a rock didn’t have that concern.

And there were many rocks around. The surface of TD-17 seemed to be covered in nothing but, only at closer inspection one came to see that the huge mountains were actually hive cities. Just as themselves, the Atherins camouflaged their homes, making them almost indistinguishable from just a huge collection of rocks. The commander had said it was a pity such a species was so unreasonable. He admired their tactics. His warriors agreed. It was no shame for the Brions to admire an enemy, even if they’d spilled Brion blood.

Urenya now had a fierce determination in her eyes. She needed only a passing look towards someone to see if they were worth her time. Some she just shook her head at. Those warriors were dead already, even with all the skills she possessed. They would make up their own mind as to how to die. Some she knelt down beside and looked over quickly. The tools she had with her gave off eerie sounds, sometimes sounding like a heartbeat, at other moments simply seeming to growl. She left some of the unit accompanying them behind if she thought they could handle the care themselves and went on to those who needed a specialist.

He saw her save many lives and had to admire the way she knew at once who she could help. There were a few he would have thought fine, but Urenya saw a wound that was already too far gone. And there were those who seemed to have bled out, but she said a blood transfusion would help in no time.

He was amazed. So amazed he nearly let her die.

The Atherin was lying
beneath
a Brion warrior, and that saved Urenya’s life, in truth. He caught the motion that shouldn’t have been there in a fraction of a second, but the Atherin was quick too. His hand, with horribly sharp long nails at the end of each finger, thrust from the warrior’s side straight at Urenya’s heart – so they knew to target healers – and even as Narath pulled her away, it sliced her outer robe. If the warrior had been in a slightly different position, the Aherin only a bit taller… Narath howled in fury. He put Urenya down as gently as he could, even as the rage took over in his blood. Ripping the now dead warrior off the Atherin, he jammed his spear through the creature’s stomach. That was what he was good at. Brion spears could be trusted not to break against anything the Atherins could come up with, there were limits to what living tissue could do, after all. And he had the strength to make sure he didn’t just graze the surface.

The Atherin died, croaking something he didn’t understand, and when he turned, Urenya was gone.

Fear gripped his heart for the first time he could remember. It was not an emotion a Brion warrior felt. Yet there it was, cold and sharp in contrast to his burning blood. And there was something else, new and unfamiliar, gripping his heart in a way that felt like someone was drawing all air from his lungs. He looked around wildly, searching for Urenya, searching for something to kill if the cruel terrain didn’t give her back at once.

Then he saw her, dragged away by the Atherins, fighting them off with a medical tool that functioned as a rapier but was oh so slim. He saw it break just as he watched, but by that point he was already moving.

Narath had always been told he moved like an avalanche. He was big, so it took time for him to get moving, but when the momentum kicked in there was little that could stand in his way. The ground around the battlefield was unchecked, but that didn’t come even close to stopping him. Teeth bared in fury he’d never felt before, he ran faster than he ever had, maddening rage boosting his speed even further, valor squares sending out bursts of light and a dark sound as they usually did in battle to attract the enemy to him – the Brions sought challenge, they didn’t run from it. The Atherins were damnably fast, he’d only turned his back to Urenya for a moment. A moment that might now cost him her life, his…