Chapter 8
Thrusters thunder through the transport as I ride with the other males out of the hangar of our staging complex in space and into the stars, headed for the Alien Bride Race. I made it, just barely. The Star Slasher burned up a fuel cell that will need replacement, but I’ll deal with that later.
It isn’t the way I thought my life would turn out. When Azrim and I were younger, we had planned to fight alongside one another until the end of our days. Then he met Jezza.
My dedication to my brother wouldn’t let me break up our team, even when he prioritized her. As he should have.
Thinking back, I can’t tell if his emotional distance from me since he met her was because of something I did or simply due to a lack of ability to manage splitting his care, so his female became the only thing he could focus on. I just felt increasingly alone.
Now, I face the real possibility that this is my new future, and I’ll have to endure it without him. If he doesn’t accept her, or she doesn’t accept him.
We can raise Rhysan. At least he will be with family. Maybe Azrim will come around. I hope he does.
I lean against the hull and soak in the coldness of it, wishing it could help calm the blood in my veins. It’s pulsing with a fire I haven’t felt in years. I’m headed to the race to find a mate. It hadn’t really seemed possible until I stepped onto the transport headed for Earth’s moon.
“Shit, dawg,” a voice says to my left. “Rejected too?”
A male Mindoran with scars across his face and a more silvery skin tone than most of our kind grins, exposing a chipped tooth.
“They took my nephew. My brother’s mate died during the last battle.”
“Fuck. Don’t tell me. I already know what happened.
” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck.
“My sister’s mate died. His pack tried to bond her to someone else since he didn’t have a brother.
A real asshole she didn’t want. She and her pups are back with our pack now.
But I’ve been kicked out for breaking tradition. ”
“From your family pack?” I ask.
“Yeah. Bullshit, right?”
“You’re welcome to join ours. We’re starting a rebel pack.” I rest a hand on his shoulder. “Zorin. My brother is currently Night Stalking. I am still working on bringing him in. Hoping a mate will allow me to bring my nephew home.”
He rumbles a low note as his mouth curls. His hand finds my shoulder. “Carnas. Let’s see how this race goes. If you take my mate, I’m out.”
I chuckle. “You take mine, I’ll chip that other tooth.”
Carnas lifts a lip in a playful snarl. “Good luck. Cravnars have extra strong teeth. Took a Novark’s pneumatic starjet torque wrench to break off a piece. Thought he was going to torture me by pulling them. I made sure he tasted his own blood before he died.”
“Military?”
“Shadow ops.”
“Haunts, Slayers, or Shredders?”
His pale silver eyes shine. “What do you think?”
“Shredders. Haunts don’t usually get their paws that dirty. You can’t be a Slayer.”
He tilts his head. “You’re a Slayer.”
“We are.”
“Pack?”
“Aegeris.”
His posture quirks a little. Carnas’ attention darts around the ship at the other males. “I thought they were all…”
“Dead?” I nod to myself. “Yeah. Most do.”
“Your pack sacrificed itself to keep Mindor safe many years ago, when the Nebs first invaded to steal females.”
The space between my brows pulses with a headache every time I’m reminded of that day. “I remember. You don’t need to tell me.”
“Sorry.” He lightly backhands me in the chest. “Fuck it. Take my female. I’d do anything to call myself a pack mate of an Aegeris.
If anyone can crack my teeth, it’s you. It would be an honor to join a family that understands my dedication to our kind but isn’t closed minded enough to pretend like monsters don’t exist.”
“They do,” I say.
“Ha. Yeah. Us.” Carnas snickers. He’s a broad-shouldered Mindor, like Azrim, but a bit thicker like he eats much better. “Hey, can I ask you one more question?”
I study the stars through the nearby window. We’re about fifteen minutes outside of lunar orbit. “Sure.”
“What happened to the last ship of empire soldiers all those years back?” Carnas steadies himself on a nearby post as the ship jolts out of hyperspeed. “Word got around that the ship was in orbit. Your pack took out the ground troops, but what made the Nebulous leave?”
I look down at my boots. “They took Azrim and me.”
“To the ship in orbit?”
“Yes.”
He shakes his head like he doesn’t understand.
“They did not expect juveniles to have such...bloodlust.” Even as I study Carnas’ face, I replay the memories of my claws slashing open Neb soldiers, Azrim’s teeth tearing the enemy apart, the flashes of gunfire, and the bullets cutting through us.
That was the day we discovered our ability to steal light and turn it into crushing power.
The escape pod had no symbols we knew. Azrim protected me with a Neb rifle as I tracked the patterns and got the pod door shut. The pod was destroyed on impact. How we lived, I still don’t know.
“You two…”
I glance away. “Every day is the same battle now.”
“True, but you lived up to your pack name at a young age.” He pounds his clawed fist to his chest. “My allegiance is to you, Zorin of Aegeris, if you accept me.”
I’m worried now that I’ve made a mistake coming here. There’s no guarantee that my female will be safe. She is going to have to be stronger than most, familiar with war, and with being on her own while we fight. Those things are the opposite of what we promise to be to the humans who race.
“Let’s see how this week goes,” I reply. “I just need to get through this and back to our world, so we can return to the fight. The portal sightings have grown concerning.”
“You’ve had them in your district, too?” he asks.
The other males move toward the cargo doors. Blue light from the lunar shield filters through the windows.
“Yes.” My attention is on the other Mindorans that cluster up on the far side of the cargo hold. None of them are marked the way Carnas and I are. They’re bluer in their short-coat upright forms, and likely allies of the Luna Pack.
“Traditionalists,” he mutters. “Met a few of them before we left.”
“Packs?”
Carnas grumbles. “Durmor, Odus, Lapisla, Kyan, Labrado, and a few from Luna.”
Luna is the oldest and biggest pack. They outnumber all of our combined modern packs alone. “Great.”
“Humans are on our side.”
I sigh. “I know. But I’m tired of Lunas pretending the war isn’t their problem. They’re more than willing to let us all die for them. When we’re gone, I fear they won’t have the teeth to confront the shadows.”
“Then we must find a way to show them the truth.”
I grumble and cross my arms. “Good luck with that.”
“You’ve given up?” he asks.
I move toward the doors. “We never stopped fighting, Carnas. We just stopped having hope. That’s what happens when you sacrifice for your species, and they reject you for it.
“I will fight for our kind, but I will not defend a pack of sniffer snappers that think we’re the ravagers, when they’re the ones blinded to the truth by their beliefs, and that’s what’s destroying the world. It’s time I put my family first.”
He sucks on his chipped tooth. “Agreed. And I’m hoping for a thick one. Dark hair. Red banded. You?”
“I’m open. I’ll take anyone who will take me and my proposition.”
“Right.” He pats me hard on the back. “Good luck with that.”
It’s a long shot, and he clearly thinks so, too.
I peer out the door as the Thorians ahead of us turn around.
“Mindorans…” A brutish male in furs reminiscent of our Shifter coats looks us over with his buddy in leather armor decked in talons not unlike our claws. “Good fighting recently. May we have peace, brothers?”
Carnas rumbles in disgust as he sighs.
“In matters of mates and war, yes,” I reply. “But if I find out any of your armor is made of Mindoran flesh or claw, I will skin you and wear your hide as my own.”
The Thorians grin slowly. The largest nods. “Scarred ones are not traditionalists. Good to know.”
He and his friend jump, leaving Carnas and me to look out at the race grounds far below us.
“Why do you want a mate?” I ask him.
Carnas’ irises shift into predatory diamonds as he scans the women. “Because I am tired of being alone, of feeling directionless.” He glances at me. “You are not shifting?”
“I haven’t shifted in months.”
He cocks his head. “You have forgotten your own needs. You require a female more than I do.”
Then, without more than a slight grin from him in warning, he pats me so hard that he knocks me out of the doorway.
Wind whips by me, scented with the glorious freshness of lush grass and and notes of ionized thruster dust. I spin and flail wildly, pissed at him for the unexpected breach of trust. If I don’t shift, this is going to hurt.
My disorientation fades. My irises tighten. A hot wave cascades over my skin. Muscle and bone adjust. I twist and land on my feet, drop to my knees, and catch myself with my hands. Claws protrude from my fingers, biting into the sod. My dark fur shimmers through my skin before receding again.
Carnas slams to the ground beside me, legs strung like his Shifter form. When he looks over at me, teeth bared, and skin fluctuating like mine, he growls. “That’s better, Aegeris. Claws out. Hunt well, my friend.”
He bounds off toward the females as more males unload behind him. I watch them sprint into the chaos, but my heart beats heavy with the weight of what I’m doing, of what’s riding on me finding the right female and what I want to ask of her.
Reluctantly, I get myself running into the mass.
A redhead gets tackled in front of me by a Klaphos male.
I leap over them and keep going. Females of all band colors fill the fields.
Two fight each other over a prismatic white Leosantian with tied up feathery wings, while orange Ginarigons clash with knobby, derma-plated Derorsin over three other females.