Tempted By the Alien Mercenary (Monster Mercenary Mates #7)

Chapter 1

The Sineater

My body shook with a fine tremor as I sat at the large table inside Asmoded’s ready room.

Waiting, creating an ambush, patience, those were my virtues, if I had any.

Val was sliding restlessly over my body, coiling and writhing across my skin in hunger.

She was whining in the back of my head about her empty stomach, not with words but with sharp, hard feelings.

Val never spoke, and I wasn’t sure if that was normal for a symbiont or if she was an outlier in that too.

It didn’t matter. In the Zeta Quadrant, we were unique, there was no one to judge us and no one to ask for help.

After centuries together, she should have grown, but her size had always stayed the same.

Enough to shield my body, enough to heal me, enough to be a fighting familiar at my side, but never more.

I tried to soothe her, but it was impossible; she ached, so I ached with her.

Hunger gnawed at the pit of my stomach, even though I’d eaten breakfast not long ago.

Brace should have been a source for Val too, but now that he had Ruby and his son, Mateo…

nothing. Just sickly sweet, vomit-inducing happiness and love.

I didn’t want to think it, because the thought was terrifying, but lately it seemed to me that Val was not just stagnant in her growth, but shrinking.

There wasn’t enough food for her; everyone was too stinking happy.

My favorite meals—her favorite meals—had all dried up.

I didn’t want to leave the ship, but it was beginning to feel like my only option.

For twenty years, I’d lived and breathed the Varakartoom, served Asmoded, who was perhaps the only male in the entire universe I’d call a friend.

I didn’t want to leave, but to keep Val alive, I must.

Her feelings turned sharp with regret, a softness that did not often accompany her presence.

She felt guilty for doing this to me, for forcing me to leave a place we’d both called home.

Yet her drive for survival was stronger.

My loyalty to her would always win out; I assured her of this.

When I took the oath as a Son of Ragnar and bonded with her, I swore to always keep her safe the same way she would protect me.

I might be a nasty, dark-tempered Sineater, but I was no oath-breaker.

“We can’t search every solar system with three suns and a small water planet, there are dozens just like that.

” Aramon shrugged and held out his hands as if that made his point stronger.

Like me, he was restless. Unlike me, he did not try to hide any of it.

He bounced his leg up and down in his seat, his eyes glowing huge in his skullish face.

None of his energy was dark, though; it was all excitement that tasted like ash in my mouth.

Next to him, Solear was sitting quietly—and entirely out of character, pre-Lyra—also calmly.

No restless energy, no desperate sense of feeling trapped, just attentiveness.

He was a changed male, one who, even when he struggled, did not taste good or feed Val enough to see her through the day.

Mates, it was better when the captain banned them from the ship entirely.

“Not dozens,” Jaxin huffed with a laugh he shouldn’t be able to feel.

That one had been useless to me from day one.

Rummicaron repressed all their feelings, but the dark ones most often still surfaced.

It was like Jaxin lived to be contrary; everything was opposite with him.

Cheerful, outgoing, levelheaded. Useless.

“There’s only a handful, and some can be excluded by logic.

” Well, at least he resembled a Rummicaron in that way, logic was his favorite tactic.

Unless he was leaping from a ship to save his beloved Laser Cannon Bex.

Asmoded sat at the head of the table, his long tail coiled around the base of his chair, arms crossed over his armor-clad chest. Golden eyes gleamed with sharp intelligence, his expression unreadable.

From him, I got nothing at all, and Val whined louder in my head.

“We are not searching every planet, but narrowing it down to five means we should be able to figure it out. Pull up the data again, Solear.”

At the center of the table, the holographic display flared to life, and in a row, five different solar systems were displayed.

They all looked similar, and though I wanted an answer to this as badly as Asmoded did, I had no clue.

A sharpness like needles and pain spiked through the back of my brain.

I winced but hid it, cursing under my breath at Val.

Everything between us always ached, like we weren’t joined right and each touch was friction.

This was the worst brush in quite some time, though, as if we were breaking apart worse now that she couldn’t feed enough.

Then I saw what she’d wanted me to see: the third solar system, twirling merrily at the center of the display.

Three suns, like all of them, but each with a distinct hue—green, red, and purple.

There were a dozen planets in this system, too, unlike the other options, which only had a handful.

One was a water planet, highlighted to make its third position from the purple sun obvious. I recognized that place.

Straightening, I caught the attention of everyone at the table.

Flack, the Sune male who’d been forced to take the seat closest to me, actually flinched away.

Everyone collectively held their breath, and small hints of unease and fear curled through the room.

Val stretched around me, eagerly devouring those little tidbits, but it wasn’t enough, it was never enough.

“That one, it’s on the edge of the Zeta Quadrant, but there’s Kertinal and Rummicaron territory bordering it.

I passed it three centuries ago when I first arrived. ”

There was a long silence as everyone digested what I’d just said, and I felt my gut roil with anger and unease.

Most of that was Val, she didn’t trust anyone she hadn’t known for at least fifteen years.

She trusted Asmoded, like I did; Jaxin and the twins came close, and that was it.

I turned my eyes to the captain and waited, wondering what he’d do.

We did not always agree on things, but that didn’t mean we had trouble working together.

I still felt a hint of guilt each time I laid eyes on his mate, because I’d made a terribly selfish choice that had seen her harmed once.

“And why does that make you think that’s the right one?

Three centuries is a long time. Jalima was not alive then to have built a stronghold there.

” Asmoded drawled, his words laced with soft hisses on the sibilant syllables.

He flicked his hands over the controls, and the holo display changed, the four other options dropped away, and the one I’d singled out enlarged so we could all get a better look at it.

“Because,” I said, “there’s no better planet for a stronghold than one with a giant ‘keep out’ sign like that one.

” I reached out to tap the holo display, my arm not quite long enough, so Val stretched along my fingers like liquid silver to finish the task.

We might rub each other the wrong way, but she always instinctively knew what I needed of her.

The one flick of the button was enough to pull up the information on the planet: a giant red cross above it, followed by skull symbols from a dozen different species.

There were warnings from the Rummicaron government to stay out, followed by even more dire warnings from the Kertinal Empire.

Any species even remotely in the vicinity had taken the time to contribute its own: stay away, death inevitable.

“It’s a water world,” I said, “and whatever lives beneath the waves is so deadly, it puts the Shade Stalkers of Xio’s jungles to shame.

If I were Jalima, I’d build a bastion on one of the few stretches of land.

It’s perfect.” Honestly, it was perfect.

If I didn’t need to keep Val alive by leeching dark feelings from the living, I would have built a home there and lived happily all alone.

Nobody to bother me, no one to annoy me with their sickly happiness and their gushy warm feelings. Jalima had it all figured out.

For a moment, everyone was silent again as eyes roved over the scrolling data.

Asmoded didn’t take long to come to some kind of conclusion, but he gave the others a little longer.

Predictably, Aramon just got excited reading that many death warnings, as if that promised to be fun rather than dangerous.

Jaxin was much more serious, shaking his head like he thought nothing in the quadrant could convince him to go there. That would be the smart thing to do.

“If this is the location, and it does seem a likely candidate, we can’t risk going there,” the captain announced.

He turned to Mitnick, our communication specialist, and, like me, a very unique character in the quadrant.

There were no known living Mithrakon anywhere, though he was not the first I’d met.

Not from the Alpha Quadrant either, but more prevalent in its dark sectors.

“Mitnick, get a hold of any travel data in that solar system. I want to know who came and went despite those warnings.”