Fuck. She was right and we both knew it. Before her insistence on helping, our teams had planned to fly reconnaissance hundreds of miles in the opposite direction. “Now we know where to look,” I insisted.
“You can’t scowl at a rock or use a blaster to intimidate a mountain. There could be hidden gas pockets. Fluid moving beneath the surface. I need to figure out what’s out there and how it works.”
I looked to Vance for support, but, as usual of late, he’d completely shut down his emotions, blocked both Rowan and I from sensing him. Except when we fucked our female. No male alive could resist such a temptation as our passionate, submissive, caring mate.
I would not lose her. Could not. She was not a warrior, did not belong out in the storm. Not again. We weren’t going on another data gathering mission in the morning. We were going hunting. My protest built in my gut. She must have felt itthrough our link because she interrupted before I could form a new argument, come up with a new tactic neither Vance nor I had already tried over the last two hours.
She refused to back down. She had both the governor’s and Rachel’s blessing. Short of refusing a direct order, neither one of us could stop her.
Vance stroked her from hip to shoulder with a tenderness I would doubt him capable of did I not witness it myself. “I can hear them.” She’d insisted and he’d admitted the truth to both of us—the Hive were a constant presence in his mind. Our mate had shrugged at the danger and taken off her clothes. Which was how we ended up arguing with her in bed. “The Hive are out there. What if I lose control? Or we are attacked by Hive Soldiers? We could be in combat, female. It’s too dangerous.”
“Danger? I laugh in the face of danger. Ha! Ha! Haaa!”
I frowned. She giggled.
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist. Just quoting a littleSimba.” She batted her eyelashes at me in a playful way I’d come to find fucking adorable. “You know? Simba? He’s a baby lion.”
She shifted until her head was tucked sweetly under my neck and her ass and thighs were in full contact with Vance.
“Never mind.” There was a smile in her voice. “I’ll have to show you some Earth movies, so you’ll understand all my awesome jokes. Go to sleep, mates.”
Vance stroked the curve of her hip as he studied her. “Why are you so determined to place yourself in danger? Why will you not allow us to protect you?”
“Because I can help. Because you need me. Because this ugly red rock is my home now, too.” She pressed a kiss to my shoulder and I nearly relented, willing to give her anything if she would remain at my side forever.
A thing she could not do if she was dead. “We will have a team of our best scientists with us. There is no need?—”
“Stop.” With a sigh—resignation, exhaustion and irritation with her mates bombarded me through my mating collar—Rowan sat up in bed and tucked the blanket around herself. “Your team is who? Surnen? He’s a doctor. Rachel? She knows physiology and biochem. Everyone else here is a warrior. A Warlord. A Hunter. A fighter. What else? Spies? Assassins? There’s no one on Base 3 who’s studied geology or anything remotely related. Even the women. Mikki was a surfer and what? I think she studied ecology or something? Lyndsay told me she does marketing and that she used to write a travel blog. Angela was studying to be a nurse. Kristin was FBI. Caroline was on Wall Street, for god’s sake. Gabrielle ran an ice cream shop. Lark is a photographer. Lavendar was a vet tech.” She listed off all the females she’d met over the last few days as I marveled at the amount of information she had acquired. The Intelligence Core would have been lucky to have her.
“How do you know these things?” Vance’s tone held all the wonder I felt.
She snorted. “I asked.” She rolled her head around on her shoulders and I knew both Vance and I felt her rising tension. “There’s no one else. Maybe, if you could transport somebody over from one of the mining bases, you wouldn’t need me out there. Maybe. But that’s not an option. The storms are too powerful. It has to be me.”
I had worked with Tyran and Hunt’s mate, Kristin, for years. She was strong and determined. Courageous. But the female was obvious in her strength, wore it like a badge of honor.
Rowan was different. Quiet. Softer in tone and action. So gentle with all the children. “I underestimated you, mate.”
“You and everyone else who’s ever met me.”
I cupped her cheek and pulled her down to me for a kiss, devotion pouring through me, for the first time, for the female I was coming to know and admire, rather than the promiseof what she might be. She was incredible. Brave. Intelligent. Fearless. Beautiful. Passionate.
Mine.
I kissed her again.
She snorted, clearly lost in old, painful memories. “Just ask my old boss. Or that stupid judge. They thought I’d cave when they gave me twenty years in prison.”
I held her close and spoke true. “I am eternally grateful to those males.”
“They’re assholes. Greedy, corrupt, evil assholes.”
I laughed at the fire in her eyes, the sureness in her mind. “I am still grateful. They gave us you.”
She smiled. “You can be charming. When you want to be.” She turned to Vance and gave him a quick kiss before settling down between us once more. “I’m tired. I literally think my body is all out of orgasms. If you two want to argue some more, can we do it in the morning?”
We watched over her until her breathing settled and she fell into a deep sleep. When I knew she would not hear us, I met Vance’s gaze. “One of us will be with her at all times tomorrow. She is not to be out of our sight.”
“Agreed.” Vance ran the tips of his fingertips over her bare shoulder. I didn’t need to feel the obsessive love coming through the mating collars to know exactly what he was feeling. I felt the same. “I know you are concerned about my Hive integrations. I will never surrender control to them again. You have my word. I cannot go back to the way things were…before.”
