So, when Helion’s face appeared on the oversized screen—neon-green eyes full of menace and impatient alien demand—I tensed out of habit. Based on everything I’d learned about the I.C.’s highest ranking commander the last few weeks, he ruined lives for a living. As I understood things, he was never the type to justcheck in.
“Warlord. Ladies. Ethan Blake.” Helion’s voice was smooth as ever, but I had spent enough time with Krag and Rohn over the past month to read Prillon faces. Helion was excited about something. “Now that the dust has settled—and I have a direct channel to the human’s fighting force—I believe it’s time you saw something. Something I think you will all be interested in.”
Kovo sat forward. Adrian sighed softly like Helion had just pissed in her Cheerios. Lyra stilled beside me, retracted her claws—a sign she was struggling to control her beast.
Helion didn’t wait for anyone to respond. He touched something off screen, and the video feed changed.
It looked like bodycam footage—grainy, fast, and brutal. A firefight, flame and smoke kicked up in all directions. I recognized the inside of the warehouse where I’d seen my first cyborg corpse. The murder scene.
Realized I was watching the scene through the dead cyborg’s eyes, seeing his final memories.
Holy shit.
Lyra leaped to her feet as a figure emerged. Eight feet tall, broad-shouldered, moving like controlled chaos. The AtlanWarlord’s hair was dark and shorn close, his skin bronze with strange, tattoo-like markings half-hidden by shadows. But what caught my attention was the Warlord’s expression—stoic, focused. Merciless.
He approached the cyborg with no hesitation. Held out a weapon nearly identical to the one I’d stolen from the cyborg we’d killed, and fired.
The world tilted as the soon to be dead male spun and fell. Held out his arms as if he could hold off the beast-sized Warlord coming to end him.
The Warlord came down on top of him in a blur of motion that barely registered. One punch. No hesitation. Efficient. Clean. “Tell me where it is.” The command rumbled through the screen with the intensity of a rockslide. Unforgiving. Unstoppable. Already in motion.
“I don’t know. Please! I swear!” The cyborg gagged as a giant hand entered the screen’s view and settled around his neck. Must have squeezed. Hard to say. We could see what the cyborg had seen, but had no idea what he was thinking or feeling.
“Look at me.”
The cyborg obeyed. Turned his head. Stared into the eyes of the meanest fucking Warlord I’d ever seen.
Lyra gasped. “Reji?”
I stood and pulled her close. Her lips were parted, eyes wide and shimmering with shock? Horror? Hope?
Kovo stood, his entire frame coiled, unreadable—until his voice cracked. “He’s alive.”
The image faded and Helion’s voice returned. “He’s working deep cover. Obviously, he was on Earth when this event occurred. And now, Lady Lyra, you know where to start looking.”
Lyra’s hand found mine again, this time holding tighter than before.
I didn’t know her brother, but I knew what it meant to lose Eddie. I also knew what it meant to feel the weight of hope land like a thunderstrike in the middle of your chest.
That’s what she’d been to me. A lightning strike. A storm of passion. Devotion. Belonging.
Love.
So I did what any mate would do.
I squeezed her hand and promised myself, silently, fiercely?—
We would find him.
Don’t miss Warlord Reji’s story in Grace Goodwin’s upcoming Sci-Fi Romance: DAUNTLESS
Didyou miss Warlord KOVO in Bargain with a Beast ?
Adrian Davis thought getting on a real-life, ‘beam me up, Scotty’, transport pad was adventure enough. Visiting her mother—and the Atlan beast her mom had chosen as a mate—on another planet? Setting foot in an Atlan prison? Completely crazy.
Like totally, bat-shit, what-the-hell-was-she-doing-with-her-life crazy.
She was supposed to spend a few days wandering around with her twin sister, seeing the sights, expanding her horizons. The trip was supposed to be a much needed break from the hectic schedule she was keeping in school. She was only nineteen. She had plans. Finish college. Medical school. Husband. House. Two-point-five perfect kids and a golden retriever named Buddy.
