“The entertainment begins... now,” Thek-Ka announces, and I can hear the satisfaction in his voice. Three years he’s hunted me, and now he has the perfect finale—not just my death, but my failure to protect the female my biology has marked as my mate.
My combat secretions flood my system so fast that my vision sharpens to hyperacute clarity. Every exit route. Every piece of debris that could provide cover. Every weakness in Thek-Ka’s positioning. But underneath the tactical assessment runs a deeper terror—Zola is five feet away from me, completely unprepared for what’s about to happen, and there’s nowhere safe to put her.
Her scent wraps around me like a physical thing, that intoxicating blend of vanilla and bravado that makes my hands shake and my carefully maintained human pronunciation slip into the guttural accent of my home world.
“Please,” I tell her, and my voice comes out all wrong—too rough, too desperate, with three years of linguistic control crumbling under the weight of protective panic. “Please, you must run now. Very dangerous. Most extremely dangerous for beautiful safety inspectors who should not be witnessing alien death-dances.”
The words tumble out in a rush, and I realize I’ve just called her beautiful while explaining why she needs to flee for her life. My biology apparently believes this is appropriate crisis management.
But I can smell her terror, sharp and clean above the vanilla-honey baseline that marks her as mine, and I know she understands the truth as well as I do. There’s nowhere to run to.
We’re trapped.
“Crash,” she says quietly, and the way she speaks my name makes something inside my chest clench tight. “What do we do?”
What we do is die, probably. But not if I can help it.
The first projectile screams past my head, and I grab Zola around the waist, hauling her behind a cargo container as the platform explodes into chaos around us.
“Stay low,” I breathe against her ear, trying to ignore how perfectly she fits against me, how the vanilla-honey scent of her hair makes my mouth water and my combat reflexes stutter with distraction. “Do exactly what I... when I say to... oh, saints burning in the void, you smell incredible.”
The words slip out before I can stop them, and I feel her go rigid against my side while heat floods my face despite the life-threatening situation.
“Sorry,” I mutter, my embarrassment so acute it temporarily overrides my survival instincts. “The stress is making my... my speech filters malfunction. Very inappropriate timing for biological responses. Most unprofessional. Extremely poor crisis management.”
She makes a sound that might be strangled laughter. “Are you seriously apologizing for finding me attractive while we’re being hunted?”
“Velogian males pride themselves on proper... proper timing,” I manage, then curse as another projectile punches through the container above our heads, showering us with metal fragments. “This is not proper timing. This is catastrophically poor timing. My ancestors are probably ashamed of my courtship methods.”
Another shot forces me to press closer to her, shielding her from debris, and the sensation of her body against mine while adrenaline and protective chemicals flood my system makes coherent thought nearly impossible. Her curves fit against me like she was designed for this exact purpose, and my traitorous biology chooses this moment to flood my system with enough mate-recognition pheromones to make my vision blur.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispers, and I feel her hands flutter against my back where the fragments caught me, her touch sending heat racing through my system in waves that have nothing to do with injury and everything to do with the way her fingers trace over my scales with professional concern that feels intensely personal.
“Velogians heal... heal most rapidly,” I stammer, because her touch is making my enhanced senses catalog every detail about her—the way her pulse hammers against her throat, the subtle shift in her scent that suggests she’s not entirely unaffected by our proximity either, the soft sound she makes when my protective positioning brings us into even more intimate contact. “It’s not... not serious. Though your concern is most... most appreciated for... for...”
“For what?” Her voice sounds slightly breathless, and I can smell the shift in her biochemistry that suggests my pheromones are having exactly the effect they’re designed to have.
“For making my mate-recognition pheromones extremely confused about priorities during life-threatening situations,” I admit, because apparently mortal danger makes me incapable of filtering my thoughts before they escape my mouth. “Very inconvenient timing for biological attractions. Spectacularly poor survival instincts.”
The admission slips out, and I freeze. That was definitely not something I meant to say out loud.
Zola stares at me. “Your what are confused about what now?”
Before I can explain—or die of embarrassment, whichever comes first—Thek-Ka’s voice echoes across the platform.
“Where are you, Golden Viper? Surely you’re not hiding behind that fragile human female like a coward?”
The word ‘fragile’ sends protective rage coursing through my system so fast that my hands shake and my vision flashes red around the edges.
“She is not fragile,” I snarl, loud enough for Thek-Ka to hear. “She is brilliant and brave and perfectly capable of... of...”
I trail off, realizing I’ve just shouted a defensive declaration about Zola’s virtues while we’re hiding behind cargo containers from an alien death-warrior.
“Of what?” Zola asks quietly.
“Of making me say stupid things at inappropriate times,” I mutter, then peer around the edge of our cover to assess Thek-Ka’s position.
We need to move. The maintenance corridor behind the oxygen recyclers might give us cover, but getting there means crossing open ground while Thek-Ka hunts us for sport.
