Ethan rubbed his forehead. Scowled. “I’m calling Doc Pearson.”
“That’s not a good idea.” Jenkins’ sigh was loud, but based on his slumped shoulders and defeated tone, he wasn’t going to try to stop Ethan from his course of action. I activated the data retrieval system in my armored suit. Pulled up details on Doctor Arthur Pearson and scanned the information that appeared on my visor display. Interesting human. Bit on the fringes. A rebel. I liked him instantly.
“I know. But who else is going to be willing to stick their nose into this mess and piss off the Feds?” Ethan asked.
“No one,” Jenkins confirmed.
“Exactly. We need to figure out what’s going on in our city, or more people are going to die.”
“You willing to risk your career over a dead asshole?” Jenkins asked. “He’s probably one of them.. Let the FBI handle it. They have a whole god damn alien division now.”
“Liars wearing neckties. They don’t care about this city. I do.”
The predator in me purred in approval at his protective tone, a deep, primal sound that made my hands shake.He’s strong, the voice said with satisfaction, his masculine scent teasing me through the suit’s filters.Strong enough.
Strong enough to hold me up against the wall as he fucked me. Strong enough to allow me to surrender to him. Make me feel safe. Protected. Cherished. Strong enough to claim. To desire. To respect.
Deep in my throat, my beast hummed in agreement.
I shook my head, banishing the thoughts before they could take root. No. This human wasn’t anything to me. He couldn’t be. I was on a mission. I served the Coalition. My life wasn’t my own, not anymore. I would finish the assignment and return to base.
My newly awakened beast didn’t care about logic.
Mate.
Mate? The word clawed its way through my mind, sharp and unrelenting, so much worse than the way she’d started with a simple‘mine.’Thinking this human was our mate was a completely different level of insanity. I gritted my teeth, forcing my breathing to slow, the suit’s internal monitors suddenly flashing warnings at my abrupt distress. Weapons automatically armed. Powered up. Targeting activated.
I’d been in shootouts. In battle. I’d never lost control like this. I was literally about to go berserk. Rampage. Kidnap the male just to appease my beast.
When had I become this touch starved, hungrything? Standing here, cloaked and invisible, resolve slipped through my fingers like smoke. My instincts were louder than my training, snarling at me to get closer to this human male.Wantingto be closer. To touch. Kiss. Claim.
I forced my gaze away, locking onto the corpse sprawled at his feet.
The beast snarled at me. A warning.
I ignored her.
Syncing my armor to Ethan’s communication device—a human ‘cell phone’—I listened in on the comm as he contacted the doctor. An elderly male’s voice agreed to meet him at the morgue and inspect the body.
I waited. I watched. When they were done, I followed my detective outside and placed a tracking device on his vehicle seconds before he drove away.
3
Detective Ethan Blake, Morgue Bureau
“Thanks for coming in, Arthur.”I greeted Doctor Pearson the moment he walked in. As I expected, he barely acknowledged my presence, his gaze and complete attention focused on the body the staff had prepped for his arrival. Relief and anticipation filled me as the semi-retired surgeon rubbed his hands together with glee.
“Alien tech?”
“Looks that way.”
“Interesting.”
He was the most experienced forensic pathologist in the city. He was also a nut-job, conspiracy theorist who believed demons were real, aliens were from other dimensions, not other planets, the Earth was flat, and AI was going to turn human civilization into aTerminatorstyle hellscape with microscopic sized nanobots infiltrating human bodies in an evil plot to take over and extinguish the human race by turning us all into robots.
Fucking perfect candidate for an alien cyborg’s autopsy in the middle of the night.
I still felt like I was being watched. Which made zero sense. I’d left the scene, stopped at a convenience store for stale coffee and a dry sandwich, and shoved the mess into my mouth on the drive over. No headlights in my rear-view mirror. Everything was quiet.
