“Why is my mate here? The Hive nearly killed her. You have her images. Have you not found what you were looking for?” I spoke to Commander Helion. He was clearly in charge, despite the fact that Governor Maxim, Ryston and their mate, Rachel, sat quietly along the far wall observing the chaos that had descended upon their home base.
“Not exactly.” In addition to Commander Helion, Sebastion Arcas and their mate, Willow, Thomar Arcas had also brought his second, Varin, and their mate Danika, who sat next to Rachel, who must have left the dining hall while we were eating. The two women had their heads close and spoke quietly to one another. Two royals from Prillon Prime, the former head of the Coalition Fleet’s Intelligence Core, two fragile females and Varin, an integrated Prillon warrior who looked like he could handle himself in a fight.
“This is a lot of resources and people from Prillon Prime just to analyze a few images from Earth.”
Commander Helion cleared his throat. “Yes, we have the images. However, we cannot find anything that explains why the Hive repeatedly tried to capture you, Larkspur. Did they say anything to you? Did they demand to see the images? Ask for copies?”
“No. But they did ask my sister if she was the one who took the pictures, when they were in our apartment.”
“Oh, god. On Earth? They broke into your apartment?” Willow’s already fair skin paled further.
“Don’t worry, Willow. Kai took care of it.” The pride in Larkspur’s tone made me straighten my spine. Yes, I fucking took care of them.
I killed. Fuckers. Fucking Hive. Kill more…
There are no Hive here. Be calm. You took care of our female and her sister. You did well.
My beast settled once more as our mate sighed. “What can I do to help?” Larkspur kept hold of my hand as she did a slow spin, inspecting the images lining the walls.
“Do you have any idea what the Hive were looking for?” Helion asked. “Did you see anything unusual that night? Notice anything when you looked at the images prior to now? There are thousands of images stored on your data device. We have looked at them all, had our systems analyze every image and found nothing. We have no idea why the Hive are interested in you or your photographs.”
Larkspur released my hand and walked toward a set of images to her left. “I only sent out half a dozen images. It has to be something on one of those. No one ever saw the rest of the pictures from that night.”
“Sent them out?” Willow asked.
“Yeah. I have a set of buyers who are usually interested in my work. I sent the images from that night to the people I normally sell my pictures to. I assume that’s how the Hive found them. Although, that seems crazy. I sent low resolution images over email, and they were cropped. How did they find a handful of emails in all the junk email and digital mess on our internet?” She walked toward an image and stared at it. “There should be a folder on the flash drive called Fight Club with the date.”
Willow walked over to a control panel and displayed the folder in question on the screen in front of Larkspur.
“Yes. That’s it. Open it.”
A list of files with long, scrambled names appeared.
“Open the large files and leave the others. There should be six large files.”
As I watched, the screens flashed, old images replaced by six clear scenes from that night at the fight club. Judging by the positions of everyone, the images were all taken within a couple minutes of each other.
We all waited in silence as Larkspur walked from screen to screen and inspected each image as if seeing it for the first time. I searched the images as well and saw nothing I did not already know I would see. I was there that night, thank the gods. If I hadn’t been, I never would have caught Larkspur’s scent, never would have known she existed. Without these images, I would have most likely been sent back to Atlan months ago and executed. My beast would not have survived this long without hope. Without her.
An extreme sense of contentment flooded me as I admired the tilt of her head, the curve of her hips and breasts in the tunic she’d chosen. I wanted to pull the tiny boots off her feet and kiss my way from toes to lips and back down, stopping each way to feast on her wet heat and make her come all over my tongue. I wanted to drag her out of this room and back to bed. She’d said she wasn’t on birth control. Right now my child could already be growing in her body, safe and warm and perfect.
Mate. Perfect. The beast agreed with me as my cock became a hard, painful distraction. We would never tire of her, never want another. She was our reason for breathing, for fighting, for living.
I ignored the impatient tapping of Commander Helion’s fingers as he, too, waited and watched Larkspur move along the screens. She was about to step toward the last when she froze in place and stared. “Oh my god. Do you see him? Do you see his eyes?”
13
Larkspur
* * *
Eyes stared out at me from the picture. Black eyes, not brown, not bright or intelligent. There was no happiness in those eyes, no spirit. No, these eyes were black and dull, like dried tar. Shark’s eyes. The rest of the face was obscured by shadow. In fact, the entire face was barely more than dark edges and a blurred background. Except those freaky, staring eyeballs that felt like they could look right through me despite the fact that I’d taken the picture months ago, on another planet.
“Where? What do you see?” Willow’s mate, the big Prillon warrior everyone seemed to be deferring to, came to stand next to me. “I see nothing. Show me.”
I didn’t want to acknowledge the bizarre creature staring out at me from the screen, but I lifted my arm and stopped just short of touching the outline of those dull, black eyes. “Two eyes, right there. They’re black.”
Helion leaned closer to the screen and squinted. “I don’t see anything. Fuck.” He slammed his fist down on one of the control panels. I jumped.
