Alien Sentinel’s Mate by Mina Carter

1

“What do you think these assholes want with us?”

Seren K’Vass slid a glance at the human male who walked next to him. Jay’s face creased in a frown, his usual grin absent. But then, the “assholes” in question were B’Kaar cyber-warriors who had tried to kill both him and his new mate, Keris. Seren didn’t blame the male for being less than welcoming toward them, even if they were the primary power on the base at the moment.

“I don’t know,” he admitted with a small shrug. “The B’Kaar are… a law unto themselves.”

Jay snorted. “Seems like that’s standard for all Lathar. Why don’t you and Nyek like them?”

“We are K’Vass,” he explained. “They are B’Kaar.”

“Like it’s that simple.” Jay rolled his eyes. “Nyek was S’Vaan before he became K’Vass, and you don’t react the same to him.”

Seren hid his surprise at the human’s perceptiveness. He forgot at times that the human hid a keen intelligence behind his happy-go-lucky exterior. But the concept of warring clans and factions within the empire was too big a conversation to have in a corridor on a base filled with cyber-warriors listening in on everything they said.

“The paladin chose to be K’Vass, so that makes him K’Vass.”

“As simple as that. Huh?” Jay raised an eyebrow as they reached the door of the lab and gestured for Seren to precede him.

He shook his head, yielding point on this mission. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the human male. Of all the beings currently on the base, only a handful would Seren trust to cover his back, Jay included, but letting the human lead was strategic. The B’Kaar might have more numbers, but General Xaandril M’rln, an ally of the K’Vass, held seniority… and he was the father of Jay’s mate.

“You wanted to see us?”

As Seren had expected, Jay dropped the jovial attitude, going from laid back, amiable human to dangerous warrior within a heartbeat. His arms folded, his expression forbidding as he stood in the doorway of the lab office and looked at the B’Kaar within.

Risyn, commander of the B’Kaar, turned around, his second, Berrick, only half a step behind. Their attitudes to Seren and his group had markedly improved over the last couple of days, which wasn’t surprising when one of their number was the daughter of the emperor’s champion.

“Yes, yes!” Risyn strode forward and offered his arm to them both in the traditional warrior’s greeting. Seren inclined his head as he returned it. Unusually, at least for his experience of B’Kaar, neither of the two males wore their armored suits. Even the odd wiring under their skinlooked dormant, which meant that neither of them were currently uplinked to their suits. “Thank you both for coming. We wanted to share some… unusual findings with you.”

“Oh?” Jay asked as they both looked at the display on the screens. Two strands of DNA rotated side by side. Seren frowned. He had no healer’s training, but he’d spent enough time in the healer’s halls to recognize the DNA of his own species. The other looked to be almost identical—human, he supposed. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall nearby.

“Part of this mate program the emperor has you working on?” Jay asked.

Risyn nodded. “So far we’ve managed to isolate a couple of matches. The first is between you and Berrick here.”

Jay raised an eyebrow. “Did you miss the part where I’m already mated? No offense, friend,” he shot at Berr. “But you’re not my type.”

“None taken.” Berr gave a deep laugh, his almost black eyes twinkling with amusement. “And you’re not mine either, so don’t worry. But that’s not what we have there. Do you see the differences?”

He nodded to the screen in front of him. It had changed to show two identical strands of DNA.

“Mine, I assume?”

“That one is,” Berr motioned toward the one of the left. “But that one is not.”

Jay leaned in. Red circles on the screen highlighted small differences. “What am I looking at? Whose DNA is that?”

“That, we believe, is the DNA of your biological mother… and Berrick’s mate.”

“Mother? I was ad… are you telling me you can track her down just from my DNA?” Surprise rang in Jay’s voice. Seren tried to imagine what the female who had birthed him would be like but failed miserably.

“Not just your DNA, but hers as well,” Berrick replied. “At some point her DNA has been entered into the Terran database.”

Jay grunted in surprise. “That would only happen if she had gone military or gotten a criminal record.”

“There is a third possibility,” Risyn added. “She signed up for the new mate program.”

Sensing his friend needed time to process, Seren broke in, “You mentioned you wanted to show us both something?”

Berrick nodded and changed the screens. “Yes. We did. You’re luckier than me. I ’ave to go to Earth to find my mate, but yours is closer. Like, right here on the base.”

“What?” Seren and Jay chorused in unison.

Then the human looked at him and grinned. “Bro… it’s Gracie. She’s your mate.”

Seren blinked, surprise and triumph rolling through him. His instincts had been right, the delicate red-haired human female was his. His fascination and need to be near her made sense now. Then his smile faded. “Is that so?”

Jay frowned. “What’s the matter? I thought you’d have been happy to know.”

“How did you get Gracie’s genetic material?” Seren shot an accusing look at the two B’Kaar. “When she specifically refused you permission?”

For a moment both B’Kaar froze. Seren gritted his teeth as their faces shuttered, their careful expressions sliding into place. He knew all about keeping secrets. His own were written in both his DNA and in the history books, so they would find out nothing about him that wasn’t already known. Gracie’s secrets, though… they were her own until she chose to share them.

“Ah, yes.” Risyn straightened. “When one of our number came across some genetic material belonging to the female in question… it was decided, in the interests of scientific advancement of course, that it should be input into the database for analysis.”

“You stole Gracie’s genetic material?” Jay growled dangerously, sounding more and more like a Latharian warrior. “Did you wankers break into her room?”

Seren reached out as Jay surged forward, metal hand in the middle of the human’s chest to stop him. But his attention remained on the B’Kaar.

“I suggest you answer the major’s question,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. Anger boiled the blood in his veins at the idea one of the B’Kaar had broken into Gracie’s room when she wasn’t there. He refused to even entertain the thought it had been while she slept…

“In the absence of an ambassador from Earth, Major Stephens is the highest ranking Terran aboard. Since the emperor is keen to forge alliances with the Terran worlds, I do not think he would be amused if you displeased one of their representatives. And that’s before—”

“Yes. We are well aware that he is mated to the champion’s daughter,” Risyn said, his voice stilted with irritation.

“I was about to say, that’s before I get to you. You have my DNA,” Seren let his lips curl up into a chilling smile as he met the B’Kaar commander’s eyes. “That will tell you all you need to know about what I’m capable of.”

* * *

She hadn’t expectedaliens to be so damn sexy. They should be ugly, little green men that she didn’t want to climb like a damn tree.

Gracie leaned back in her chair in the observation lounge above the training hall, swirling the amber liquid, a passable non-alcoholic version of whiskey, in her glass as she watched the combat training going on below her.

“You find Warrior K’Vass appealing?” Miisan, the AI that had brought Gracie’s group to the once-abandoned base in the ass-end of Latharian space, asked, sparking to life to sit in the chair next to her.

Used to the reclusive AI’s antics, Gracie didn’t so much as bat an eyelid, nor did she bother to look up at the cameras in the corner of the room. B’Kaar, the Latharian cyber-warriors, were aboard so if Miisan had decided to show herself, she would have ensured any surveillance was disabled.

“He is… somewhat attractive,” she admitted in a low murmur, careful to keep her reply soft and the movement of her lips minimal as she watched the fights going on below them. She might be alone in the room, neither any B’Kaar or members of her own group in here, but cyber-warriors were in the training hall. Granted their suitswere lined up by the wall, the warriors themselves fighting hand to hand for now, but she knew their bodies were laced with implants. She wouldn’t put it past one of them to lipread with zoom lenses in their eyes or something.

“For a Lathar, at least.”

As she spoke, her gaze locked on to the solo non-B’Kaar on the floor—Seren K’Vass. Tall and dark-haired, his big frame was packed with lean, powerful muscle as he faced off against three of the cyber-warriors. His s’tovik easy in his hand, he turned combat into an art form. Moving with the grace and power of a prima ballerina combined with the lethality of a born soldier, he easily held off his opponents, proving that a true warrior didn’t need a body filled with implants to fight.

The fight came to an end and, as if he’d known she watched him, he turned to bow to her up on the observation deck.

“For a Lathar?” She didn’t need to see Miisan’s holographic face to know the AI frowned. “My analysis of human records indicate that warrior K’Vass meets all the requirements for human attractiveness and virility. He is—”

“Yes, yes…” Gracie waved, turning the movement into a scoop of her hair back from her face as at least three warriors turned to look at her from the floor below. Three B’Kaar, which made Seren frown and glare at them. She held her breath. She knew the bastards had been watching.

“He’s cute, alright?” she hissed at the AI, trying to glare out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t outright glare at Miisan without giving the game away, and if the B’Kaar even suspected the AI had shown herself, hundreds of them would be piling in to the room, pulling apart the wiring to see if they could catch her. “And I look like a fucking crazy person talking to myself. Happy now?”

Miisan shrugged, or rather, rearranged the light molecules around herself to give the effect of a shrug. “Then if he is the epitome of all humans find desirable, why have you not accepted his claim?”

Gracie turned to face her in shock, remembering at the last minute to cover the movement by standing and pretending to stretch with her back to the glass between her and the training hall.

“Accept Seren’s claim?” She arched her eyebrow. “That would be a tad difficult since he hasn’t actually asked me.”

The AI’s eyes widened in surprise. “He hasn’t?”

Her gaze transferred to the hall beyond Gracie as she frowned. “Why not? You are suitable mate material, within the parameters for desirability despite being human.”

“Gee, thanks for that,” Gracie said dryly, but the AI completely missed the sarcasm.

“So why would he not seek to claim you?”

Gracie shrugged, hiding her piqued pride at the fact that despite all evidence saying he found her attractive, he’d not once tried to kiss her. Of course, she’d probably have tried to gut him like she had that idiot B’Kaar leader when he’d tried it, but… she might not. Regardless, Seren hadn’t even tried.

“He’s male. Who knows?”

“Of all the short-sighted, idiotic, slow-witted, irritating… males!” Miisan hissed. Since she had shown herself, she had rarely displayed emotion, but she practically ground her teeth now. “I bring the last heir of the Vorr line and put a viable female in his path with suitable genetics, and he does what? Nothing!”

“Viable female? Last heir? Who are the Vorr?”

Despite her surprise at Miisan’s outburst, her training ensured she didn’t miss a thing and she zeroed in on what the AI had said.

“What do you mean about putting me in his path?” she demanded. “Even you, apparently a genius-level AI, couldn’t have anticipated that I would be on the same colony hit by that murderous octopus alien and end up on the same ship as Seren. That’s just not possible. And what the hell are suitable genetics?”

Miisan arched a holographic eyebrow. “What makes you think it’s not possible?”

“Well… I’m human for a start.” Gracie scoffed, folding her arms. She no longer cared that it looked like she was arguing with herself. Humans were a rarity here, so oddities in their behavior could be passed off easily. “Remember us? We’re apparently descended from that expedition you lot lost.”

Miisan smiled, the slow and sure expression sending a shiver up Gracie’s spine and not of the good, fun kind. No, this was more the kind of shiver her tarot-reading, superstitious grandmother would have called a “knowing.”

“What makes you think you were not exactly where we meant you to be?” the AI countered in a low voice.

“Meant to be? What does that mean?” she demanded, but now she really was talking to herself. The space Miisan’s avatar had occupied was completely empty. “No! Wait! You come back here, you bunch of fucking data bytes, and explain that!”

But the room remained resolutely empty, not even a spark of awareness prickling up the back of Gracie’s neck to say the AI was still here, lurking and watching her. But no. She was completely alone.

“Well, fuck!” she hissed, running her hand through her hair. It was loose for once, still slightly damp from her shower this morning. The heavy locks took an age to dry but she couldn’t bring herself to chop it all off again. It was her one vanity, something she hadn’t been allowed growing up. Vanity was distracting and looks unimportant when it came to ability and duty—lessons she had learned well.

Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the glass and sighed.

Mission objective: Surveillance

The words from her optical HUD, concealed in her contact lenses, blinked in the bottom corner of her eye. It was a constant reminder of the fact that her life was not her own. That she’d signed on the line and had a duty—a higher calling that went way beyond the physical, no matter how sexy he was.

Seren K’Vass wasn’t human. She was.

And it was best she never forgot that.