I scoffed at the suggestion. “Right. Like the CIA and FBI reveal their plans and operations to each other and to the Miami police department? The leader of the Coalition Intelligence Core doesn’t reveal their plans to humans. The Scions are aliens. Makes sense the Coalition would send their own people to take them out.”
“You’re right. Alien cops for alien criminals.”
“The Coalition might share technology, if it serves their purposes. But their intelligence agency never shares operational details with the CIA.” Or any other human intelligence organization. Ever. In fact, I’d spoken to Commander Helion exactly once a month since I’d started this mission. I was overdue to report in, but I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of admitting he was right. He’d been trying to convince me to come to Earth for a long time. Swore I would find the Scions here, in particular the bastards my younger brother, Reji, had been hunting when he died.
When every other lead I had on Reji had dried up, I’d finally agreed to come to Earth in an act of pure desperation.
The device flashed and beeped. Transmission complete. I nearly sagged in relief. I deactivated the scanner and turned in Ethan’s arms. Facing him felt much more… intimate. “How is your shoulder?”
“I’m fine.” He handed me the ReGen wand. The light had dimmed, indicating there was nothing more that needed healing. At least in his shoulder. I wanted to take the wand and run it over him from head to toe, make sure he was in optimal condition. Unhurt. But the scowl on his face indicated that now might not be the time. He had his detective mode activated. “Why are you here? Why did you show up at the morgue? Not that I’m complaining.”
“Over a year ago, the I.C. made contact with the CIA, requested assistance tracking a criminal organization known inthe Coalition as the Silver Scions. According to my commander, the CIA responded with a promise of cooperation, but when the Coalition made contact a second time, the CIA claimed to have no idea how the Silver Scions were distributing their illegal technology on Earth. In reality, they were hoping to track the Silver Scions and keep the tech for themselves.”
“Sounds about right. The I.C. didn’t believe you?”
“Of course not.” I tilted my head and looked into his eyes. “We’re fighting for the upper hand, for control of knowledge so dangerous that hundreds of worlds, many of them millions of years more advanced than Earth, deemed it necessary to ban the technology for the safety of all.”
“And these Silver Scions are running around selling the technology anyway.”
“To the highest bidder.”
“And the CIA doesn’t trust the Coalition to take care of it.” It wasn’t a question.
“Nor does the Coalition trust the CIA? Would you?” I asked.
“Fuck no. I don’t trust aliens.” He leaned down to kiss me on the lips, a quick apology for the next few words out of his mouth. “I don’t trust your people, either.”
“Do you trust me?” Weak. I shouldn’t have asked a question I wasn’t ready to hear the answer to. Not when his trust was as vital to my heart as the blood pumping through my veins.
“No.”
Damn. That hurt far more than it should have. My beast howled in protest, and I had to close my eyes, afraid Ethan would see them change, glow, as some of the Warlord’s eyes did when they shifted into their beast forms. This was all new to me. I had no idea what outward signs my beast would exhibit, if any. I had to be careful.
“Hey.” Ethan pulled me close and pressed his lips to my ear. “It’s nothing personal.”
Nothing personal? He just had his cock buried inside me. His seed swam in my womb. His scent was all over my skin. But it wasn’t personal. For him.
For me? He was the air in my lungs. The blood in my veins. My reason to keep fighting. He was everything. “Why do you dislike the aliens so much?” I needed to know just how precarious my position truly was with him.
He held me close and we swayed as if there was romantic music filling the room. “A few years ago, Jenkins and I were working a case. The FBI came in, took all our evidence, and told us to drop it.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. One of the victims was a rookie cop. The whole department was pissed off. So when we started digging, no one stopped us.” His shoulders tensed and I knew whatever he told me next was going to be bad.
I melted into him. Quiet. Accepting. Willing him to tell me the truth.
“The dead cop was my little brother, Eddie. An Atlan Warlord killed him. We have it on an ATM’s surveillance camera. Huge fucker threw Eddie into the Atlantic and we never found the body. The Atlan was wearing an armband. Gang colors. Turned out he was with a criminal organization from a place called Rogue 5. Part of a group that calls themselves Cerberus. We did some digging, found out all the aliens from Rogue 5 are hybrids. These guys were big, mean. Evil. Just fucking evil. Jenkins and I tracked them to a building on the edge of the city. Brought back-up. Alerted the FBI. Told them they could yell at us later, after the raid.”
“What happened?”
“We kicked in the door and no one was there. The place was empty. When Jenkins got home, he found his wife and eleven-year-old daughter…”
Oh gods, no. “Cerberus killed them?”
A shudder passed through my mate. I rubbed his back in slow, soothing circles, trying to coax the truth from him. “That’s what we thought, at first. But now we know they were working for a larger group, one run by cyborgs.”
“The Silver Scions,” I confirmed.
