Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Ines
I’ve seen Texon fight before. At the old processing station I saw him kill a Xylan in about forty seconds.
This is different.
This is a male defending his home.
He is absolutely silent. His face is set.
His claws are out. He moves through the first wave of Green Horns with zero wasted motion, no drama, just one mercenary down, then another.
Heavy is on the other side of the yard. Cannibal roars from somewhere past the gate.
Scar keeps appearing behind Green Horns who don’t know he’s there until it’s too late.
But there are so many Green Horns, for every one that goes down, another pushes forward. They’re trained and they know what they’re doing in a way Kryzon’s old crew at the processing station didn’t.
“Inside,” Texon barks at me. “Now.”
Roxy grabs me the second I step through the door and pulls me into the main living area. Jana is there too. Both of them have blasting rods. They hand me one. I still have no idea where they got blasting rods. I don’t ask.
“How many?” Roxy demands.
“A dozen at least. Green Horns. Mercenaries. Kryzon hired them off-planet.”
“That arrogant bastard.”
“He’s a dead arrogant idiot,” Jana growls. “The brothers will finish him tonight.” She has not moved from her post at the kitchen island. The knife roll is still laid out. She holds the blasting rod in one hand and a very large chef’s knife in the other like this is a Tuesday. She looks terrifying.
Which is when the back door crashes open.
I turn. Two Green Horn mercenaries are through. They got past the back perimeter, past whoever was watching it. They must have split off from the main force. They see me and must know exactly who I am. Of course they do. Kryzon told them. Kill the journalist. Stop the story.
Before I can scream or raise my rod, before Roxy can raise her own rod and before Jana can throw a knife —
Rook is there.
I don’t even see him come in. One second the mercenaries are in the doorway, the next Rook is between them and us, and the first Green Horn is going down with a clawed throat before he can finish lifting his weapon.
The second one tries to bring his blaster up.
Rook slams into him like a pile of rock. They hit the wall. Something breaks — the wall, the mercenary, probably both. Rook’s claws rake across the Green Horn’s face and he crumples.
Rook wipes blood off his claw and turns to me. He’s barely breathing hard. “Are you hurt?”
“No. Rook — that was — holy crap.”
His eyes are already at the window. Scanning. Calculating. Then they narrow. “There.”
“What?”
“Kryzon.” Rook points through the glass. “Northeast corner. Trying to slip around the side while his mercs keep everyone busy.”
Of course. Of course. Kryzon didn’t bring a dozen trained killers to fight the Fever Brothers. He brought them to create a distraction so he could slip in and finish what his crew started. Kill me. Destroy the evidence. Then run.
“I see him.” Rook touches his comm. “Northeast corner. Moving toward the compound. I’m intercepting.”
“Rook, wait—”
He’s already out the door.
I should stay inside.
I do not stay inside.
I grab my tablet from the coffee table and a blasting rod and head for the back door.
“Ines!” Roxy snaps. “Ines, do not—”
“I’ll stay low.”
“Ines.”
“I’m a journalist, Roxy. I have to see with my own eyes what’s happening with Kryzon and also, I have questions.”
“You are a journalist who is about to get stabbed again,” Jana rants.
“I’ll be careful.”
“No—”
I’m already through the door, following after Rook.
I keep low and do my best to move the way I’ve watched Scar move through the yard for the last week, which is to say I probably look nothing like him but I’m trying.
I have to step over a cleaning bot that’s been knocked over on its side, still trying to whir forward against the grass. Poor little Max, I think. I pat him on the dome as I go past. Sorry, Max. We’ll fix you later.
The compound is chaos. Fighting is still happening at the front. I can hear Cannibal roaring again, Heavy shouting orders to Chief, and I see Texon confronting another Green Horn.
I slip along the side of the house toward the jungle and find them at the tree line.
Rook has Kryzon cornered against a rock outcropping. Kryzon is bigger than Rook by a full hand, but Rook is between him and the open jungle, and Kryzon can’t get past him. The older Xylan’s face is twisted with rage.
“Little Rook,” Kryzon sneers. “They sent the runt to stop me?”
“I will not let you in the compound and I will also not let you leave,” Rook says. “You are ending this night in a jail cell with the peacekeepers.”
“I will end this night on a transporter disk set to anonymous.”
“Not happening,” Rook snarls.
Then everyone arrives at once.
Chief comes through the trees with Scar at his shoulder. Heavy and Cannibal emerge from the other side, bloodied and panting. And Texon is beside me before I even realize he’s there, his gloved hand finding my arm, pulling me back against his side.
The Green Horns must be either dead or fleeing. The fight at the front is over. Now the full force of the Fever Brothers surrounds Kryzon of Twelve.
And there, right in the middle of all of them, is Rook, the brother who found him.
“It’s over, Kryzon,” Chief says.
Kryzon laughs.
It is the ugliest sound I’ve ever heard.
“Over?” He spits on the ground. “You think this is over? You think you’ve won something tonight?”
“We’ve caught you in the act,” Scar says. His voice is low and dangerous. “You’ve hired mercenaries to attack our compound. Minecorp administration won’t be able to cover this one.”
“Minecorp administration.” Kryzon’s laugh sharpens. “You still don’t understand, do you? You’re still looking at the wrong enemy.”
“Stop stalling,” Texon growls. “Your mercs are dead. You’re finished. We’ve already alerted the peacekeepers, they are on their way.”
“Oh, brother.” Kryzon’s eyes rake over him. “I’m not stalling. I’m educating.”
“Then educate,” Chief says flatly.
“You think Grytel gives me orders?” A slow smile. “He’s nothing. A puppet. A convenient face for you to hate.” He looks around at the brothers, slowly, making sure he has every one of their gazes. “The orders come from Chronos. They always have.”
My tablet is already in my hand. My stylus is already out. My journalist brain has completely taken over, which is good, because my regular brain has just stopped working.
Chronos.
The Xylan home world. The ancestral planet and the seat of Xylan government. The place every Xylan in the four sectors ultimately answers to.
“You’re lying,” Heavy growls.
“Am I?” Kryzon’s teeth bare. “Your parents. Daxon’s exile. Heavy’s memory wipe. The Midnight Mist. Ines Vieira. All of it. You’ve been chasing shadows on Timbur while the real enemy sits in comfort on Chronos, pulling every string.”
“That’s convenient,” Scar snarls. “A confession that names no one. An accusation that can’t be verified.”
“Oh, it’ll be verified,” Kryzon says. “When the next piece of your family falls apart, you’ll know I wasn’t lying.”
Chief’s voice goes dangerous. “Manipulation.”
“Truth.”
“Who on Chronos?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
Every head turns toward me.
Kryzon’s eyes land on mine. And he smiles. A slow, cruel smile that I am going to remember for the rest of my life.
“The journalist wants a name.”
“Yes, I want a name.”
“No.” He savors it. “No, I don’t think I’ll give you that.”
“What faction? What are they after? Why this family?”
“No.”
“You just accused someone on your ancestral homeworld of coordinating the murder of two people and the destruction of an entire family. You don’t get to just drop that and walk away.”
“Ms. Vieira.” His smile widens. “I’m not walking anywhere.
Your fever-drunk brothers will either kill me or hand me to the peacekeepers.
Either way, this is where I end. But what I do get to do is leave this family with a wound that doesn’t close.
You’ve been hunting me for rotations. Now you’ll spend the rest of your lives hunting someone you’ll never find.
” His eyes flicker back to Texon. “You have no idea what’s coming for your family. ”
Scar steps forward. His whole body has changed. He looks like a creature made of violence. “Who.”
Kryzon just laughs.
I am writing as fast as I can. My stylus is shaking.
I have twenty more questions and no time to ask them.
Who? What faction? What are they after? Why this family?
But Kryzon isn’t answering anything more.
I can tell by his face. He’s given them exactly enough to poison their peace of mind and nothing else.
I will find out, I promise myself. I will dig and I will find every thread and I will—
A heavy green hand closes around my arm from behind and yanks me backward so hard my feet come off the ground.
I scream.
Everything happens at once.
Texon roars.
The mercenary’s grip is on my arm and my waist. I can feel my sleeve tearing. He’s dragging me backward. I’m thrashing. Kicking. I land an elbow somewhere soft. He grunts but does not let go.
Then Texon is there. The mercenary is ripped away from me with such violence that I feel my arm wrench in its socket. I hear a wet sound.
I don’t look.
And in the chaos of being grabbed and pulled and twisted and saved I feel the fabric of my glove.
It catches on something as I fall. Trunk’s right glove is ripped nearly off too.
I don’t know how. I don’t know when. I just know that as he grabs for me to steady me, as his claw wraps around my hand to pull me up from where I’ve half-fallen…
His bare palm presses against mine.
Oh.
Oh hells.
The heat is instantaneous.
It starts where his skin meets mine and it spreads. Not like warmth. Like wildfire. It races up my arm, floods my chest, pours down into my belly and lower. I gasp. My knees actually give out for a second.
Texon goes absolutely rigid.
He is frozen. His eyes are huge and dark and I watch the exact moment something inside him shifts. The patient, dormant, monkish male I have been sleeping next to for two nights vanishes.
In his place is someone else.
Someone hungry.
His whole body changes. I can see it. His shoulders go tight. His breathing goes deep and ragged. His pupils blow wide. And — because I am human and I cannot help myself — I look down at his crotch.
Oh wow.
His heavy erection is tenting the front of his pants obscenely. I have been sleeping next to this male for two nights and had no idea this was what I’d be confronting.
And I’m not upset about it.
“Trunk?” Chief’s voice shouts from somewhere far away. “Trunk, what—”
“Get Kryzon secured.” Texon’s voice is not his voice. It is deeper. Rougher. It is the voice of a male who has exactly one thought in his head and cannot remember any others. “Now.”
“Brother, are you—”
“Now.”
“Did he just clasp her bare hand—” Heavy sounds bewildered. “Did his body just—”
“Apparently,” Scar says.
“How.” Heavy again.
“Later,” Chief snaps.
Texon’s grip on my hand tightens. His other hand wraps around my waist and pulls me flush against him. I can feel him shaking. Not with fear. With restraint.
“I need to claim my Bride,” he growls.
I should probably be embarrassed. There is an entire audience of my new in-laws standing about ten feet away. There is a captured conspirator right there watching. There is at least one corpse at my feet. I am covered in dirt and someone else’s blood and my hair is an absolute catastrophe.
Yet I am not all that embarrassed. I am so, so ready. I’m inhaling his potent scent and it’s making me hot and bothered in an instant. I need him, now.
Rook steps forward and points into the jungle. “We’ve got Kryzon. Go.”
Texon looks down at me. And even now, with every instinct in his body screaming at him to drag me into the jungle and finish what the fever started, he pauses. He looks at me. And there is a question in his eyes.
Even now, even like this, he’s asking.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes.”
He scoops me up into his arms like I weigh nothing. The last thing I hear as he turns for the jungle is Scar’s voice, dry as desert sand. “Well. That happened.”
And then Rook, calm, “I’ll help secure the prisoner.”
And Cannibal, genuinely bewildered, “Was anyone going to tell me Texon and Ines were compatible now?”
“Later,” Chief snaps again.
Texon is already running.
The jungle swallows us.
And the claiming begins.