Chapter 1
Xabat
The prick of the blade into my flesh felt comforting. I had long since passed the point of registering anything but a strange, detached numbness. The small drop of blood that welled in my palm was dark green, thick, and vicious.
I tilted my hand, letting the drop fall into the swirling vortex of static that rose from the screen of the datapad. The green droplet dissolved instantly, its molecular structure fragmenting into the digital noise. A faint chirp from the pad acknowledged the biological input, and the static stilled, coalescing into a face—the face of my brother.
Xytol.
He still looked remarkably young, despite the years that had passed. His skin was the same green shade as mine, but he was slimmer, more wiry, without the musculature that marked me as a warrior. His dark hair was coarse and thick like mine, but shorn, not worn in the thick braids that marked the traditional style of our clan. Sharp and calculating eyes, a bright lavender instead of my deep purple, reflected a quick intelligence and a strategic mind that saw patterns and connections where others saw only chaos.
"Brother!" The word ripped from his throat, and for a moment, the worry that creased his features evaporated intorelief. Then he glanced nervously over his shoulder, anxiety etching deep lines across his face. The room behind him was stark, barely furnished, more like a prison than a home.
"You have to help me protect her. You have to help me, brother, or the consortium will take her away." He glanced over his shoulder again before he continued, his voice terse. "I thought for so long you were dead, brother. But when the news feed carried the story of Duke Ako's attempted assassination and I saw your face among the gladiators...." A smile broke out on his face, and it took me back to our youth, to happier times when we were younglings playing in the forests of our home planet. "I searched for you for months until I finally found a clue that you might be aboard theHistoria." A shadow flickered across his features, shame washed by fear. "I am not a free male, brother, and the things that I have done in service of those who have me...." He shivered, his eyes darkening. "I have hurt many, but not her. I need your help to save her."
My hand clenched involuntarily, sticky with blood. The fear and regret washing over my brother's features was palpable, twisting something deep in my chest.
"I am a captive, but I do not know where," Xytol continued after another worried glance about. "But it is close enough to Earth so that we are able to manipulate the planet's technology." A short, hateful laugh burst from his lips. "What the humans call AI is not artificial intelligence, but alien interference."
I huffed, a strange sound, more agreement than amusement. Even the human females I knew weren't surprised by this revelation.
"I met her through my work," Xytol said, his voice softening in a way that made my breath catch. "Harper Quinn. She lives in the southern United States, in a place called North Carolina. Like so many others I have known, she is marked forabduction, but I cannot let it happen. Not to her. You have to help me protect her, brother, she is my...."
A sudden movement just beyond the camera jolted Xytol, and he glanced off-screen, terror flooding his lavender eyes.
"Please, brother, help me save her," he hissed before the visual went dark. The sound, however, continued—the chaos of violence and cries of pain punctuated by a door slamming, and then silence.
The message had caused chaos aboard theHistoria. Intelligence circles had long whispered about the Consortium, a shadowy organization that had infiltrated the Alliance council, working directly against the efforts to curtail the abduction and enslavement of humans.
For me though, there was only one consideration. Find and protect the female my brother cared for. I felt certain he had been about to acknowledge her as his mate before the message ended, and as such, I had a duty to the female, just as I had a duty to my brother. Especially if he was now dead, which I feared most.
"How many times have you watched that message, Xabat?"
Captain Adtovar stood in the doorway, his bright blue eyes focused on the message that had once again devolved into a tornado of static.
I shrugged, not knowing the answer. Hundreds of times, perhaps, in the days since I'd received it. Each time desperate to notice something new, and each time disappointed.
Adtovar strode into the room, followed by his human mate, Maddie. Where Adtovar was tall and pale with large pearlescent horns sprouting from his forehead, his mate was smaller with light brown skin, deep dark eyes, and a riot of dark curls held back from her face by a brightly colored cloth.
Maddie's voice was gentle, almost tentative, as she settled into the chair across from me at the conference table. "How are you doing, Xabat?" Her dark eyes, warm with concern, searched my face for signs of the turmoil I knew lay written there.
I had grown fond of the captain's mate in the months since she'd come aboard. She possessed a rare quality—the ability to make theHistoriafeel less like a warship and more like a home. Maddie moved through the corridors with easy confidence, greeting each crew member with friendliness and warmth, treating battle-hardened warriors like brothers. There was no hierarchy in her kindness, no distinction between ranks. She simply saw us as beings worthy of care.
I lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug, the gesture feeling inadequate even as I made it. Words had never been my weapon of choice. I could plan tactical maneuvers, lead warriors into battle, read the subtle shifts in an opponent's stance that telegraphed their next move, but articulating the storm of emotions churning in my chest? That was a battlefield where I possessed no training.
Maddie leaned forward slightly, her expression brightening with cautious optimism. "We may have something that might help," she said, her voice carrying a note of excitement carefully tempered with sensitivity. Her dark eyes sparkled. "We've found the woman."
Every muscle in my body tensed, my focus sharpening as her words registered. My spine straightened, my hands flattening against the cool surface of the table. "My brother's mate?" The words came out rougher than I intended, but I would refer to Harper Quinn no other way. She wasn't simply a target to protect or a mission objective. She was family, bound to me through Xytol's claim on her.
"Harper Quinn," Maddie nodded. "She's a second-grade teacher at White Oak Elementary in Raleigh, North Carolina, butaccording to her Facebook post, she's headed to her beach house in Wilmington this weekend."
"Why does she have a book on her face?" I wondered aloud, the question escaping before I could stop it.
Maddie gave me one of those exasperated sighs that she usually reserved for her mate. "It's a...." She grunted, waving her hand in the air. "Never mind. The important thing is that we know where she'll be and can send guards to protect her."
"I will go." My words came out more as a demand than a request.
Adtovar's blue eyes darkened slightly. "Alone?"
