THE VAZNIK WARRIOR’S HOLIDAY SURPRISE

VAZNIK WARRIORS: BOOK SIX

AVA YORK

STARR HUNTRESS

CONTENTS

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Epilogue: Nadia

Are you a STARR HUNTRESS?

Rescued by her Alien Mate

Rogue Mate

Kazan

NADIA

The spaceport was unlike anything I had ever seen.

Tourists and businessmen milled around the waiting floor, lugging chrome suitcases behind them, and there was an anxious atmosphere to the place. It felt as if the entire spaceport was buzzing with excitement.

Or it could just have been me.

I had never left Earth before, and I was aching to cut through the atmosphere and see what lay beyond.

A lot of women my age had been given that possibility through the genetic lottery, but even though I had already been tested a couple of times, I had never been matched with anyone.

I didn’t know how I felt about being shipped off to some alien I’d never met before as his ‘mate,’ but I had dreamt of seeing the galaxy countless times.

How many times had I pictured myself setting up my easel and a blank canvas on a ship’s observation deck?

I could paint the sunrise in Venus, or the solar flares in Aeon IV.

Anything in the whole galaxy.

Not that I’d had much luck selling my paintings.

Embarrassingly enough, I made more as a gamer, either in tips from streaming, or the occasional prize pot on the e-games circuit.

I wasn’t the best out there, but good enough to keep the bills paid while I kept painting.

As it was, I was restricted to painting what I knew and my imagination. It wasn’t that I disliked Earth. I loved that blue planet as much as anyone else. Still, I had that hunger for adventure and I had never managed to quell it.

And finally, after scrimping and saving, I was going to do it. I was going to get out into space.

Well, at least as far as I could go.

“Yes?” The attendant asked me as I made my way to the front of the line, staring at me from behind her desk. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and offered a bored expression.

“I want to buy a ticket for the Moon,” I said, trying to sound as confident as I could.

“The Moon is a big place.”

“Right.” I cleared my throat, nervously shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “I’m going to visit the Shackleton Crater Lunar Base.”

It was going to be wonderful. I’d already found a hotel I could afford, and made a list of cafes and food stalls the travel blogs said were the cheapest. It was hard to find a place because of the Foundation holiday, but that meant even more events, more experiences to cram into my short time there.

“I’m going to stay there for three weeks, and then come back, and so I’m going to need a—”

“A ticket with return,” the attendant announced, pecking at her keyboard with two fingers. Apparently, my excitement wasn’t wearing off on her. “Please press your index finger here to complete the payment.” She turned a handheld terminal toward me and I did as instructed.

But the moment I pressed my finger against the flimsy plastic sheet, the screen lit up and a message popped up announcing that the transaction had failed. “Miss, after fees and taxes have been applied, you don’t have enough funds in your account.”

“I, well…” I straightened my back and cleared my throat, mind frantically spinning.

I’d messed up on my math somewhere.

Clearly, the money I had made from my last tournament wasn’t enough, after I had prepaid for my hotel and allocated money to a separate account for food, and paid for a cheap translation patch.

I leaned forward and lowered my voice into a faint whisper.

“Are there are any lower cost options available?”

Her fingers tapped the keyboard a couple more times, and then she looked straight at me. Her lips turned into a thin line, and she arched one eyebrow.

“There’s a small freighter that’s going there,” she said. “It’s as low cost as it can be, but you shouldn’t expect to find any amenities during your flight...or even during your wait in the terminal.”

“I’ll take it,” I hurried to say, almost as if I expected for the opportunity to disappear in a couple of seconds. As the attendant turned the banking terminal toward me, I jammed my finger against the screen once more.

This time the screen turned green, and I felt as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

“Terminal 73B.” With a dismissive wave, she pointed at the corridor behind her. I gave her a quick nod and followed along the path she had indicated. Much like she had promised, there were no amenities to be found.

While most brochures of space travel promised cozy lounges with refreshing drinks, Terminal 73B was nothing but a service hangar loaded with drilling mechs. Maintenance workers in blue overalls were busy loading the mechs into a shuttle that reminded me of a rusty kettle full of dents.

“Is this the shuttle to the Shackleton Crater?” I asked one of the maintenance workers and he answered me with a grunt. He pointed toward the edge of the hangar, where a few people waited with their suitcases. It seemed like I hadn’t been the only one looking for a low-cost flight.

I joined the group and, after waiting for almost an hour, we were eventually led into the shuttle. We walked down cramped corridors until we joined a small army of workers, all of them strapped down to seats that had definitely seen better days. After putting my suitcase in a dusty overhead compartment, I found an empty seat—no numbered seats on this ship—and settled down for the flight.

I knew that I should be feeling nervous about flying in a ship like this, but I wasn’t. If anything, I was excited that I was finally going to leave Earth and do some travelling.

Sure, I wasn’t exactly going to leave the Solar System, but this was better than nothing.

After my family died during a Suhlik attack, I promised myself I wouldn’t die before making it to space, and I was finally going to keep that promise.

My parents had spent their whole life saving for a trip to Europe, and the Suhlik had robbed them of their lifelong dream. This trip I was embarking on was in my parent’s memory. Their dream of travel, my own longing for new skies.

“Brace for takeoff,” a loud voice announced over the speakers, and I heard a loud rumble. The entire shuttle started vibrating, the metal dividers that had been bolted to the hull rattling in place, and I was suddenly slammed against the seat. It felt as if someone had placed an anvil on top of my chest.

I looked to the side, but none of the workers seemed particularly afflicted with any of this. They had probably done this trip countless times, and their bodies were more than ready for how brutal takeoff was. The other tourists—at least they seemed like tourists—seemed to be struggling like I was.

Eventually, though, the brutal trepidation was replaced by a feeling of weightlessness. My body started floating up and, hadn’t it been for the straps keeping me in place, I would’ve drifted toward the ceiling.

Even more excited than I already was, I watched as the dividers that lined the compartment slid back to reveal large viewports that offered a look at what was outside the ship.

I held my breath as I watched Earth turn into a blue sphere, the vastness of space rising behind it like the gaping maw of a beast. As Earth shrunk in size, I turned in my seat to see the Moon start to grow.

Surprisingly enough, the yellowish tones I had grown used to had been replaced by a dull grey. Still, the brightly-lit domes, all connected to make the sprawling Shackleton Crater Lunar Base, turned Earth’s lone satellite into one hell of a sight.

“This is amazing,” I said in a low whisper, fascinated with the view. Only the tourists were gathered around the viewports, the overall clad workers obviously jaded to the site, but I couldn’t care any less.

Space travel was new to me, and I was going to bask in the glory of it without being embarrassed.

The Universe, though, seemed to have other plans for me.

Without any warning at all, the entire compartment was flooded in a bright red light, and the klaxons started braying so loudly I thought that my eardrums were going to rupture. I looked around, having no idea what was going on, and this time I wasn’t the only one—even the maintenance workers seemed scared, and that didn’t fill me with confidence.

In fact, it was just the opposite.

“Attention, brace for impact,” that loud voice came again, and I couldn’t help but notice the terror hiding behind its words. “We’ve experienced a power failure, and the thrusters are down. We’re currently adrift and in a collision course with an orbital power station. I repeat, brace for impact.”

My breath caught in my throat.

My heart rammed itself against my chest.

After all I had gone through just to get into space, was this going to be the end?

ZORATH

Flying a warship could be a son of a bitch.

Not the combat part, I had always enjoyed that. Fast maneuvers and finagling a way out of a tight spot were always specialties of mine.

It was when the mission was done that the job really started to suck.

“Hey, Zorath!” Thelkor leaned over the corner of my pilot station, all smiles. He was the best gunner I’d ever had the privilege to serve with and a hell of a drinking buddy to boot – when I wasn’t on duty.

Which was a pain, because right now it felt like I was the only one that was.

“What’s up, man?” Who was I kidding? I knew what was up. This had to be the third time he’d been by since we had left the PriCon Sector.

“You sure I can’t convince you to have a toast with us?” His eyes narrowed slightly, and I had to keep my focus locked on my screen to keep from chuckling at him.

We were friends, but I always suspected he could turn in an instant.

Combat guys, you know.

“No can do.” I lifted my palms as if to indicate my job. “Somebody’s gotta fly this thing. And if Command catches me at the helm with a drink in my hand, they’ll strip me of every credit I’ve been awarded.”

“Aw, you’re no fun.” He swiped a teasing hand at me.

“Not true. I’m a lot of fun – just not when I’m on duty.”

It wasn’t always like this, but right now we all had a reason to celebrate.

After a successful raid on the Suhlik base, we had been granted three weeks leave.

Not just that, but we had all been entered in the matching lottery program. If our number came up, the prize was better than money – a DNA match.

A mate.

At least, the possibility of one.

As if the guys didn’t have reason enough to drink after crushing all those Suhlik assholes, they had already started toasting each other’s wives. We hadn’t been in the program more than three days, and some of those fellas were already picking wallpaper.

Mine was going to be vranthian eggshell blue.

“Captain Timcur? I’ve got eyes on Earth’s moon.”

“Bring us in, Zorath. Well done.”

We had been given approval to spend our leave at Shackleton Crater Lunar Base on Earth’s moon, and we all planned to take this chance to get to know some human women.

Not that they’d be our matches, but at least this way we might not be totally clueless.

Sure, there were a lot of other species in the Mahdfel treaty, but as the humans were one of the newest signatories, they seemed to be making a lot of matches with warriors lately.

We’d all been obsessively learning Earth languages and slang. We watched their entertainment and puzzled out their quirks.

Off shift, I’d been reading every travel blog and guidebook on the SCLB, just waiting to actually go to all of those places, see all of the sights.

But the only human women I’d ever met were already mated with other Mahdfel warriors, so that kind of changed how you interacted with them.

It shouldn’t have, but it always did.

Despite my joke about the wallpaper, I didn’t exactly have the confidence in landing a match that the other guys did. As far as they were concerned, as soon as your name was in the hat, getting a mate was a foregone conclusion. I was less sure.

Not only that, but what would I do with a mate, really? I mean, sure, all anybody wants to talk about was the sex, but what about all the rest of it? Having precious little knowledge of how human women lived, the idea of living with one seemed borderline crazy.

“Captain? We’re coming in for the approach. You may want to tell the party in the back that they might want to strap in.” I deployed the docking units.

Actually, I’d take some perverse joy in rattling all those jerks around a little bit. Serve them right for starting the drinking before I could join in.

“SCLB, this is The Golden Meridian, do you read me?”

“Copy, Meridian.”

“Requesting permission to dock. See notification VPR-275.”

“Notification authorized. Permission granted.”

Whether or not those guys were buckled in, we were touching down. Locking in procedures were the same on all of the domed stations, so even though this was my first tangle with “the Moon,’ I had a pretty good idea how this was going to go.

At least I thought so.

Up in the corner of my monitor, a red icon flashed up.

It was an emergency alert.

Not anything wrong with our ship.

A distress call.

I clicked it, and the info spilled out across my screen.

Transport Shuttle R-21 Power Failure. Drifting Collision Course with Orbital Power Station Foxtrot. Immediate Assistance Requested.

That got my attention fast.

I tapped a few more icons and saw that intervention shuttles were still being prepped down at Shackleton.

In fact, from what I could tell, we were the only live vessel within distance, and would probably beat any other responders by a handy margin.

“Captain Timcur?”

“Yeah, buddy, whatcha got?”

“I’ve got a distress call on a shuttle set to collide with an orbiter. No other ships are in line to intercept before contact. Requesting permission to initiate rescue maneuvers.”

“Zorath… you know we’re a warship, right?”

“Yes, sir – but we are the only vessel within distance. I can do this and still have us at Shackleton for cocktail hour.” There was a long beat.

“Knock yourself out.”

And it was go time.

“Shackleton, this is The Golden Meridian. Request you put a temporary hold on our docking, I’ve been authorized to launch rescue tactics on the disabled shuttle.”

“Wait, really?”

“Affirmative. We’ll be back.”

Leaning into the thrusters, we pushed away from the moon with a deep dive. I tightened my grip on the controls and hunkered down in my chair.

Come on, Goldie. This is what I live for.

The rest of the crew probably didn’t even know what was happening, so it looked like the entire enterprise was going to come down to me.

Which, honestly, was just how I liked it.

Locking in on the coordinates, it was only a few minutes before I got a visual on R-21. She was on a dead line for that orbital station, alright. It was a good thing I had spotted that call – there was no way the Quick-Intervention team would have made this.

I was going to have to think fast. My docking gear was still fully deployed, so I shifted the parameters to extend our hook lines to their limit.

That gained me another three yards, but it was still going to put me in tight quarters when it came to passing over.

This was going to be close.

Easing back on the throttle, I let Goldie drift into a coast. Banking around from R-21’s starboard, I started to ease down on her. With the first pass, I had the instinct that I was coming in too hot and cleared distance at the last second.

My heart was racing, and I pulled around until I was facing the tiny shuttle head on. Shifting my distance readers to manual, I got a screen that would let me eyeball our approach. Not strictly regulation, but I was going to get a much more accurate bead on the whole thing. I gripped the controls and swallowed hard.

Bagging out on that first pass had cost me. This next one had to count because it was the only shot I had left. If I didn’t manage to snag her on this round, the folks on that shuttle were liable to have a lousy afternoon.

The move was to come in low and slow, then tap the reverse thrusters just before we hooked. That would let things cinch into place without jerking the damn thing around. It wouldn’t do the travelers a whole lot of good missing an orbiting satellite if they just got scrambled in the rescue.

Keeping a close eye on my distance reader, I edged up on the disabled unit. Was I sweating? Yeah, maybe a little.

At least no one else was watching to give me grief over it.

Ticking up over the shuttle, we were within fifty feet. Which is absurd given Goldie’s size. All it would have taken was a slight tip of my wrist and it would have been curtains for R-21.

Keep it steady, Zorath. Aaaaaaand. – tap.

Just the faintest brush of the reverse thrusters. We bucked slightly, but it was enough. Shit, the underside of our ship ducked just enough that we probably clinked glasses with the back end of the shuttle. But it worked.

Two of our hook lines found purchase and dragged R-21 just out of line enough to let Foxtrot slip by.

My breath hadn’t been that tight on our entire mission. I leaned back at my station to gulp in a deep breath. I’d been holding it since the first bank.

Just as I was coming down, Thelkor wandered back onto the bridge.

“Zorath! What the shit is going on in here?”

“We’re heroes, that’s what’s going on. I’ll take that drink now.”

NADIA

I felt like my heart was rattling my bones, it was pounding so hard. Our tub of scrap metal disguised as a space shuttle had been so damn close to crashing into that station.

I’d thought we didn’t have a chance, but lucky for us, that Mahdfel ship swooped in.

I still wasn’t sure how they’d managed to stabilize us.

So lightheaded I could barely see where I was going, I groped my way away from the window and into a seat. My trembling wouldn’t stop, and I was hyperventilating a little. I almost died, I kept thinking to myself.

I almost died!

I put my head between my knees and took deep breaths.

Slowly, my pulse calmed, and my mind turned to berating myself for taking this piece of shit shuttle. I knew it looked rough, but I talked myself into taking it anyway. Man, would it have sucked to die on my first trip to space. I was only just getting started!

Before she was killed, my mom always said my stubbornness would be the death of me someday. Even as a little kid, that only made me roll my eyes.

But today was almost the day!

Being determined to get to the moon on this piece of junk just about killed me.

For some reason, I started giggling hysterically. The laughter bubbled out of me and I was powerless to stop it. The whole situation wasn’t actually very funny but that didn’t seem to matter.

Soon I was gasping for air in between giggles. I was sure my face was bright red, and I could feel a tear leaking from between my eyelids.

“Excuse me,” a voice said. I looked up to see an older woman holding out a tube of water. “Do you need this?”

I wanted to say yes, but words weren’t happening for me. I nodded as best I could in between giggles and reached for the water. I managed to get down a few sips, and those did the trick. My breathing began to calm, and I realized my limbs weren’t shaking anymore.

“There you are,” said the woman kindly. “None of us are feeling like ourselves right now.”

“Thank you for the water,” I replied, my throat hoarse. “And yeah. That was terrifying.”

“Is this your first time going to the moon?”

“It’s my first time in space,” I said sheepishly.

“Oh, my!” The woman pursed her lips in sympathy. “I hope it won’t put you off traveling forever.”

“I don’t think it will.” I looked down at my hands, white-knuckled on the now empty tube. “But then again, maybe.”

“Well, don’t worry too hard about it now. I spoke to the captain, the warship will get us to the dock soon. Then you can catch your breath on solid ground.”

The idea of the lunar base being solid ground was oddly funny to me, but I managed not to get trapped in another laughing fit. My new friend moved away and I focused on the stars shining through the shuttle window.

I wanted to recapture some of the joy I’d felt as we left Earth’s atmosphere, but I couldn’t.

All I could think was that if not for that Mahdfel ship, little bits of me would’ve been floating among those same stars I was looking at.

A jolt almost threw me from my seat, and my heart was back to galloping a mile a minute. Were we crashing into the moon now?!

“Do not be alarmed ladies and gentlemen, do not be alarmed. We have just docked at Shackleton Crater Lunar Base.”

“It would’ve been a hell of a lot more helpful if that announcement happened BEFORE we docked,” I muttered to myself. A sweating man in the seat next to me nodded vigorously.

We all got up and were shuffled off the ship by the shuttle crew, all of whom were extremely apologetic about our experience. Still feeling dazed from everything, especially that last scare, I let myself be swept along in the line of passengers.

Suddenly, I was in the docking port. It was filled with activity, and there were almost as many aliens as humans walking around. I goggled, looking all around me as I ambled forward. I’d never met an alien in person before, and now—

Wham. I had just walked into something very solid. Something very solid, and… warm?

My gaze traveled up what seemed like an inordinately long distance. I got the impression of powerful muscles and rich crimson skin barely covered by a black vest, and then I was looking into the most magnetic pair of silver-blue eyes I’ve ever seen.

My heart somersaulted as I froze. For some reason, I had the unshakeable sense that I knew these eyes, maybe had always known them.

Then, the moment was broken and the weird feeling drained away. I heard whispers all around me as I stepped back and got a better look at whoever I’d collided with.

A tall, red, alien man was standing in front of me. Black horns arched from his brow, and glowing white tattoos traced their way all over his arms.

They started to glow the moment he saw me. His eyes shimmered like stardust as he regarded me.

“I think that’s the pilot of that warship.” I heard a voice I recognized murmur. It was the older woman who’d brought me water, talking to her friend.

“He’s rather a maverick,” interjected a male voice, not bothering to be quiet. “That operation with the hooks was quite the stunt.”

At hearing that I’d just crashed into and then stared at the alien pilot who’d saved my life, embarrassment flamed up my cheeks.

“Uh, thank you,” I mumbled now avoiding his eyes. “I was on the shuttle just now.”

“It was nothing,” he said. His deep voice rumbled down my spine, somehow sounding like it should belong to a great furred beast. “Will you come have a drink with me?”

“Huh? What?” The question caught me completely off guard.

“Do you want to have a drink with me?” I understood the invitation this time, but I wasn’t about to go along with it. I’d just landed on the moon for the first time, my plans didn’t include going on a date with an alien. Even a hunky one.

“Oh, umm…” I flailed for something to say. "I’m good. I just had some water.” The words came out of my mouth and immediately wanted to bash my head into the nearest permasteel girder. Could I have come up with a dumber excuse?

“I didn’t mean water.” He sounded amused. “Here, I’ll try again. Hello, I’m Zorath. I just saved your life. How about in return you let me buy you a drink?”

“Cocky, much?” I asked, without meaning to.

“How is it cocky to state simply what happened?” The alien — Zorath smiled.

“Ok, look. I’m very grateful you saved the entire shuttle,” I said tartly. “But I just got here. I need to go check into my hotel and put down my stuff and, you know. See where I am.”

“I’ll carry your stuff,” Zorath offered. “You’ll see where you are as you walk to the bar. And, I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I don’t know…” He made some good points, but I had envisioned my first moments on the moon so clearly.

They didn’t involve Zorath, but I was increasingly having trouble figuring out why they couldn’t.

He must have noticed that I was weakening, because he stepped closer. His proximity made it even harder to think.

“You said thank you,” he pointed out. “If you meant that gratitude, then the least you can do is let me get you a drink.”

I still felt hesitant. Then I noticed that we still had an audience, and it seemed like all of the shuttle’s other passengers were hanging on my reply.

There was no way to say no without looking like a total jerk.

Not to mention… there was something about him. His looks should have been intimidating, but I found his strangeness intriguing.

I certainly found his physique compelling. Plus, hadn’t I just been musing on how I’d never met an alien in person before?

And… there was something else. Something that pulled at me.

This was my chance to not just talk to a Vaznik warrior but go on a date with one. I’d left Earth to have an adventure, and there I was saying I wanted to just go to my hotel.

“Won’t you at least tell me your name, beautiful human?” Zorath asked, interrupting my thoughts.

Someone near me sighed breathily. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who found him attractive. In three minutes, he’d managed to wind up with a fan club.

Maybe I’m a petty person, but for some reason, the idea that he could turn around and ask someone else out was what decided me.

Not the mysterious pull.

Not at all.

“My name is Nadia,” I said. “And ok. May it never be said that I’m ungrateful to handsome aliens who save my life.” I sent him a flirtatious glance. If I was going to do this, I wasn’t about to let him have all the fun.

“Let’s go get that drink.”

ZORATH

What exactly had I done?

I shook my head as I walked with Nadia. I didn’t know what had come over me. Acting rashly wasn’t my way. As a pilot, that was something you could never do.

It might look like recklessness to someone who wasn’t a pilot, sure.

No matter how crazy a stunt looked, you were always calculating, always double checking your instruments.

You had to think things through. Always.

But apparently not today.

I could feel my nerves flaring through me and I took some deep breaths to try to pull myself together.

I was in the presence of my mate. My tattoos had never glowed like this before.

Sure, I had always known it was possible, but it was a dream. A chance.

But now it was confirmed.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

But here’s what I did know for certain: the tattoo flaring didn’t lie.

It was just a simple fact.

Nadia was my mate.

That was the bottom line. As far as I knew, this way of meeting was rare. Usually it was through genetic matching. But just a meet-up did occur, from time-to-time.

And this was one of those times.

Almost on cue, my tattoos started to heat up again, as if to remind me of the match. I focused my willpower to calm it down a touch.

All right, I thought to myself. I get the message!

We wandered through the city as parties and celebrations were happening all around us. It was the Foundation, the annual festival honoring the founding of the moon colony.

As we walked along, we could hear snatches of music and laughter, people having a good time. There was something in the air and I had to admit that it felt good to be a part of it, however tangentially.

As a warship pilot, “joy” wasn’t something that you often came across in your career. It was a welcome respite to my mind.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Nadia said.

“What’s that?”

“This. The carefreeness. People enjoying their lives. Ha, it sounds silly, I suppose but I feel like that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should.”

I nodded.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said.

Nadia smiled at me and I felt a wave of heat rush through my body.

Then I promptly shut up. Kicking myself for not talking but absolutely unable to string a coherent sentence together.

Perfect combination, I thought, rolling my eyes at myself.

A group of six people, clearly three different couples of human women and Mahdfel, came strutting past us, all a little drunk, all more than a little flirtatious and all clearly having a blast.

I envied them for a second, but then I remembered that I was on a...(a date? Was it too soon to call it that?)..a something...myself.

“How far is this place you mentioned?” Nadia said.

“It’s not far,” I replied. “Are you tired? Would you rather do something else? Would you rather go home?”

I realized that in that moment, I sounded a little more frantic than I had intended. And I’m pretty sure that she knew that.

“No, not at all,” she said. “Everything is fine. I was just curious.”

“It’s not far. I’m happy to carry you, if you’re tired, though,” I said and immediately regretted it.

She stopped walking for a moment and looked at me.

Here it comes, I thought. Rejection. Loss of mate. Everything I dreaded in my now-apparently neurotic brain.

“You don’t go out much, I take it,” she said with a hint of a grin.

“What makes you say that?” I said. “You don’t think I’m pretty smooth?”

She chuckled a little.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “Smooth like a gravel road.”

I laughed at myself and it felt pretty good to do so.

We walked a little farther in silence. Her bag was light, barely noticeable, and in the distance there was more singing, voices rising and falling to the accompaniment of laughter.

Harmony seemed to be optional.

“How long does the Foundation last typically?” Nadia asked. “I have to admit that I don’t know too much about it really, I just got excited and decided this would be the perfect time to come.”

I shrugged. “From what I’ve read, it depends,” I said.

“On what?”

“On how long the alcohol lasts.”

She laughed at that and I found it to be an utterly delightful sound to my ear. I wanted to hear it a little more.

That was the moment I tripped walking up a stone stairway.

“So graceful. Not so much your thing, I’m guessing,” Nadia said.

I picked myself up and dusted off.

“Pilots don’t have to be graceful on the ground. As long they land the ship.”

“Well,” Nadia said, her eyes flashing something at me I couldn’t quite pick up on, “I’d say you’re covered in that regard.”

Honestly, I didn’t know how to respond to that. At all.

Luckily, the need to do so was taken away from me.

We had made it to the bar.

“This is the place,” I said.

The street was fairly crowded with revellers, but most seemed to be walking past this particular spot. It was small and looked a little run down.

“What’s the name of this place?” Nadia asked.

“Tranquility Base.”

She nodded.

“I like that. A little nod to Earth history.”

“Yes. And it more than lives up to its name. According to the guidebooks, it’s usually pretty calm and sedate in here. They don’t have all the fancy screens that the newer places have, so you can have a conversation without shouting over the noise of a crowd,” I said.

“That sounds pretty good to me,” she said. “Maybe we can...ah...get to know each other a little better.”

“Agreed,” I said and held open the door for her.

We walked in and were almost knocked over by a crashing wave of sound. There was a huge crowd inside, making an enormous racket.

Nadia looked at me a little blankly.

“I’m guessing the word is out on your little secret hideaway,” she said flatly. “Maybe that guidebook was out of date.”

I sighed heavily.

“Yeah. I’m really nailing it so far, aren’t I?”

“Hey, just remember. You’re a hero pilot. That should buy you some good will.”

“How long will that last?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“Well, at least for as long as it takes you to get me a drink. After that, we’ll have to see,” she said, eyes twinkling with mischief.

So much so, I couldn’t decide how serious she was being.

Which was precisely her intent, it occurred to me.

“Great,” I said. I pushed through the crowd, breaking a trail for her until I found a small unoccupied table.

Placing her bag down on one chair, I pulled the other out for her.

“Have a seat. I’ll be back soon. What are you drinking?”

“Whiskey neat, please.”

“You got it.”

I strode off to the bar to put the drink order in, cursing myself for fumbling this seemingly every step along the way.

The crowd in the bar was loud and boisterous, clearly having a blast.

Space is big, but Mahdfel crews end up seeing a lot of each other on missions or between them.

There were a few faces amongst them that I recognized, but one group in particular stood out.

It took a moment to place them, then I snapped.

From what I could recall, this was a Vaznik crew that had become a part of colony security, defending the base from Suhlik attack.

But I’d met them in the field, years ago.

I guess tonight was their night off.

Approaching the bar, I nodded to Rekker as the bartender walked over to me.

“What do you need?” he asked tiredly. Bartenders always sounded tired. Like they were always annoyed when customers came in.

“Two whiskeys. Neat, if you would,” I replied.

He nodded.

“Coming right up,” he said.

Rekker looked over at me.

“We’ve met, haven’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “Zorath.”

He shook his head.

“No need to call me ‘sir,’ Zorath. I’m not your commander. Good to see you. How are things in the flight corps?”

“Adventurous,” I said and he raised an eyebrow.

I told him about the ship and the landing from earlier. His eyes grew slightly wider but other than that his expression didn’t change.

“Well done, pilot,” Rekker said. “Well done indeed.”

I nodded.

“Thank you, sir.”

He glanced over at the table where Nadia was sitting and waiting.

“And what’s this?” he said to me with the merest shift of his head.

“This,” I said, “is me most likely continuing to make a fool of myself.”

“I see,” Rekker said. “Been that kind of an evening since you landed, I take it.”

“Oh yes,” I said.

The bartender came back with the drinks.

“This is on me,” Rekker said.

“Sir, I can’t allow—”

He shook his head.

“First of all, stop calling me sir. Secondly, I’d say you earned someone buying you a drink today. Third, you look like you could use something to calm your nerves.”

I nodded.

“All of this is true,” I replied.

Rekker gave me a searching look and I could feel the weight of his experience cutting through me.

“You felt it? The flash? Through your markings?”

“Is it that obvious?”

He laughed, shaking his head. “It definitely is, I’m sorry to say. Zorath, listen to me,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “every Vaznik you see over there has been through exactly the same thing. And what’s more, all of them felt as out of their depth as you feel now.”

I nodded.

“That is something of a relief to hear, I have to admit. What advice can you give me? Something I should do or say?”

He laughed again, suddenly and loudly. “Oh, my friend,” he said, trying to get a hold of himself, “if I could tell you that, I would bottle it and retire a rich individual indeed.”

I stared at him.

“Just...go be yourself. Anything else is a lie,” Rekker said and walked away.

I watched him go.

“Thanks for the drinks!” I called after him and he waved.

I took a deep breath, picked up the drinks and headed back to the table.

Back to Nadia.

Back to my mate.

Nadia

THE MORE WE TALKED, the more the hubbub of the crowd in the bar seemed to fade away.

I was feeling warm and a little soft, but my wits were still about me.

Not that Zorath was being anything other than a gentleman, to be fair.

And to further be fair, there was some part of me, deep down, that wished he wasn’t being such a gentleman. In a dark little cave somewhere in my belly, I could feel that craving, but I pushed it away.

“You all right?” Zorath asked with what sounded like real concern.

“Huh? Yeah. Why?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t know. You look a little flushed,” he said.

“Ah. Yes,” I said, feeling myself get more flushed. “The whiskey. It affects me like that. Even if I’ve only had a couple drinks.”

Zorath nodded.

“I get that,” he said.

I smiled at him, not sure of what to say at that moment.

“Maybe we could...check out some of the festival later, if you’re of a mind,” he asked me.

I nodded.

“Yes, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Maybe?” he says with a sly smile. “Should we have dinner first, give you more time to succumb to my charm?”

“Not this time. That might be too much, too fast,” I answered. “But dinner another time is a possibility. A girl gets hungry.”

He looked me up and down for a moment like the cat checking out the canary.

“I’m sure she does,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes at him and felt that flushed feeling rise up inside me again. I wanted to push it down, but I liked how it felt.

What was going on here?

I didn’t come here to spend all my time staring into the dreamy silver eyes of an alien.

...but they were pretty dreamy, I had to admit.

“Stop it!” I said suddenly.

Zorath looked at me, confused.

“Stop...what? Is something wrong?”

I shook my head.

Nice, Nadia, I thought. Way to use your inside voice.

“No, nothing, no, sorry. I was just...ah...you know what? Sometimes when I drink a little too much, if I tell myself, out loud to ‘stop it,’ it actually helps slow down my intoxication level.”

I crossed my fingers under the table praying that he would buy that.

“Wow,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”

“You can’t?”

“No. I mean, that’s amazing. To just be able to will yourself to sobriety. That’s pretty incredible. Can all humans do that?” He asked with complete earnestness.

I titled my head and looked at him closely.

He was cute. No question. But maybe a little bit dumb too.

Eh, I thought. That’s ok.

“Not all,” I said. “I’ve had some special training.”

He nodded slowly.

“Very cool. Well maybe you can teach me sometime. That’s a technique I’d love to learn.”

I sighed. I needed this to not go any deeper than it already had.

“Yeah. Maybe so. How did you get into being a pilot?” I asked, hoping that would be enough to steer things away from my ‘super-power.’

“Oh, you wouldn’t want to hear about that,” he said.

“Try me,” I replied.

He looked at me, then nodded.

“Ok. Well. I guess the simple answer is I love to fly. Always wanted to fly. Always wanted to...I don’t know...escape the bounds of gravity?”

Suddenly, he was very aware that I was watching him and I could see him get embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “That must sound ridiculous.”

I shook my head.

“No, not at all actually. I like how it sounds.”

“You do?”

I nodded simply.

“Tell me more,” I said.

He shrugged.

“I’m not sure what else to say. I always wanted it. I mean, look, don’t get me wrong. There are days it’s a drag. Days when it doesn’t seem like you’re not doing anything more than driving a fancy bus. But there are other days...”

“Like today?” I offered.

“Yes, like today. When something more happens. And that can feel pretty amazing. Like nothing I’ve ever felt. And you don’t get tired of it. That’s the best part. Every time you feel it, it’s like the first time.”

A touch of the poet in him as well, I thought. Interesting.

Then suddenly I became aware of him watching me and I got a little embarrassed myself.

“Well. This has been lovely, but, ah, I really should be heading back to my hotel.”

I saw disappointment cross his face for a moment but he got a hold of it.

And I was sorry he felt that, but I wasn’t here for this.

I was here for my own adventure, to see the sights and relax a little bit. To get a lifetime of inspiration for my paintings.

Not to do...whatever this was.

“You sure?” Zorath said.

I nodded.

“Yeah, I should be getting back before it’s too late.”

“All right then. No problem. Let me walk you back to where you’re staying.”

I shook my head.

“No, you don’t have to do that,” I said.

“Nonsense. I insist. Besides, better to be safe than sorry.”

“Oh yeah? In case a shuttle craft comes falling out of the sky again and lands on me?”

“Hey,” he said with a grin, “if I’m not piloting her, who knows what could happen?”

A little cocky too.

I liked that more than I wanted to admit.

“Ok. Walk me to the hotel. Let’s get out of here.”

He ran over to pay the tab with the bartender and I watched as he said goodnight to someone in the crowd sitting on the other side of the bar.

He walked back to me.

“Shall we go?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Let us away,” I said and we walked out the door into the lunar night.

The air was cool and comfortable and I had to remind myself that I was on the moon. As I looked over the horizon of the city, I could see the blue orb of the Earth rising through the sky.

“Isn’t that something,” I mused out loud.

“What’s that?” Zorath said.

I pointed up at the Earth.

“This wasn’t a view I expected. I mean, I knew it was there, of course. But seeing it...it’s something else.”

Zorath nodded as we continued walking our way towards my hotel.

“You’ve kind of hit the nail of the head,” he said.

“The head of what?”

“The question you asked earlier. About me becoming a pilot. More than anything else, it’s the views like that. Perspectives you don’t get from the ground. That’s as much of a draw as anything,” he said.

“That makes sense to me,” I said, looking up at the world I was born on. “Perfect sense.”

I liked how Zorath talked, I realized. I liked that there was more going on under the surface than you might guess at first. What with him looking like the devil himself and all...

But there was something...yearning...in him.

I was liking it more than I could have expected.

Winding through a small park, I breathed in the night blooming flowers, letting myself drift along in his company.

When we reached the tiny lobby of my hotel it was almost a shock.

“I should take that now,” I said, reaching for my bag. With reluctance, Zorath handed it over. “Thank you for walking me all the way back here,” I said softly, feeling things I didn’t quite understand.

He bowed slightly, which I found even more charming.

“You’re most welcome,” Zorath said.

I leaned back against the wall and he came closer to me as I did so. I could feel the heat of his body coming off him. I almost felt like I was absorbing it.

“So..uh...these markings...” I said.

“Yes?” he said.

“These are tattoos?”

He shook his head.

“We’re born with them. But every Mahdfel has his own distinctive pattern. Like fingerprints.”

“Oh, how interesting,” I said, a little more breathily than I intended. “So that means there isn’t anyone quite like you.”

He nodded.

“That’s what it means,” he said and leaned his head in to kiss me.

I came this close to committing to it, but then I backed away.

“Zorath, listen...I...I think that you’re...what I mean is, I didn’t come here to the Moon for this. I came for myself, to find some time with myself.”

He cocked his head towards me.

“Wouldn’t this be for yourself?” he said and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Well, maybe so, but I think it would be for you a little bit too,” I said.

He chuckled at that.

“That may be true. I don’t want to push anything.”

I nodded.

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your understanding.”

“You’re welcome. It will happen soon enough. I can wait.”

He said it so plainly that it took me a second to register it.

“What did you say?”

He looked a bit taken aback.

“Ah, well, I just meant that...you know...I know that we’re...that is...you and I...we’re fated to be mates. It’s our genetic disposition.”

“What?”

“It’s our...I mean...there’s like this...I don’t know...a pheromone thing that happened, when my...when the markings, they sort of flash white? Right? That’s how we know we’ve met our genetic matches. If you don’t believe me, we could get you tested.”

“Excuse me?” I said, as all the warm fuzziness of the night disappeared just as quickly as if I’d taken an ice cold shower.

“A genetic test. We could compare our genes, but I already know that—”

I stepped away from him and towards the door, chin high, refusing to allow my chin to quiver, not even a little bit.

“Let me tell you something, Zorath. I don’t believe that genetics can tell when love occurs. Love happens outside of things like that. It’s ephemeral, it’s poetic, it’s...”

“A coming together of two different people who end up having a lovely evening together?” he said.

“That’s besides the point! I will NOT have my heart’s direction decided for me by a math test!”

“Genetics test,” he offered.

I glared at him.

“Sorry,” he said meekly.

“Good night, Zorath,” I said.

“Nadia, hold up,” he said.

“I said good night!”

And I stormed back into the hotel, shutting the door on him.

And then I pretended that I didn’t think about him the rest of the night.

Sigh.

Some vacation.

Zorath

WELL.

That had not gone as well as I had hoped.

Nadia seemed genuinely angry at the notion of genetic testing and how that helped make a match.

Maybe it was a human thing.

Walking away from the hotel, I nearly ran into Rekker.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Before you looked nervous. Now you just look something between baffled and sulky.”

I told him.

Apparently, I could have a new career in making the notoriously gruff commander laugh.

Thrilling.

“You poor idiot,” he said, clapping me on the back, “that is something you can never do.”

“What?” I answered, even more confused. “Talk about science?”

He laughed even harder at that.

“Science? You think that science is going to win the day here? Trust me, this is one of the rare instances that science is not your friend. Humans in general, and women specifically, are not interested in learning about how science can govern their emotional states. They want to believe in magic! Chemistry!”

I looked at him quizzically.

“Isn’t chemistry science?”

Rekker rolled his eyes at me and dropped his voice into a dramatic whisper. “Brave Mahdfel Warrior, you have much to learn indeed. My advice is to make amends tomorrow.”

With a snarky grin he turned to walk away.

“Wait, how do I make amends?” I shouted after him.

He just waved his hand and continued to stride away, still laughing.

I stood there, frustrated and feeling way out of my depth.

Give me a warship that was spiraling down out of control into the upper atmosphere any day rather than deal with this.

So there I was the next morning, standing in front of her hotel, not exactly sure when Nadia would appear, but determined to be on the spot when she did.

I had stopped and purchased some flowers as well. That was something I had heard about. Humans like flowers.

I felt a little silly, standing in front of the hotel entrance so early in the day, just waiting. People coming and going, looking at me.

But I reminded myself that I was a pilot, a soldier. I could handle people looking at me holding flowers and giggling.

Probably.

Luckily, I didn’t have to wait too long. Nadia emerged, looking fresh and ready to go for the day, a backpack over her shoulder and a bright look on her face.

She was just about to walk out past me when I stepped in front of her.

“Good morning,” I said and she stopped suddenly, jerking back with eyes wide.

“Ah! What? Don’t do that!”

“Don’t do what?” I asked.

“Don’t just...surprise someone like that! You scared me!”

Void. My heart sank.

This wasn’t at all how I wanted things to go. Straightening my shoulders, I tried again. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t sure what to do in this scenario.”

She cocked her head at me. “Yeah, that’s pretty clear.”

Feeling a bit at a loss, I thrust the flowers out towards her.

“These are for you,” I said.

She burst out laughing. Not the response that I was looking for, but better than jumping back, right?

Nadia reached out and took them from me.

“Well, that’s very sweet of you, thank you,” she said.

I smiled, relieved. That was a little better.

“You’re welcome. Humans like flowers,” I said.

She shook her head at me, continuing to laugh. “Some of us do. Some of us are allergic,” she said.

Suddenly, a bit of panic swelled up in me.

“Are you one of those? Are you an allergic one? If so, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know! I can get you something else!”

She reached out and put her hand on my forearm and electricity surged through me at her touch.

“I’m not allergic,” she said. “C’mere.”

She gestured for me to lean down towards her. I did so and to my incredible delight and surprise, she gave me a small little kiss on my cheek.

“Thank you. They’re beautiful,” she said.

The warm feeling that was spreading through me was amazing and it was also making me feel more than a little goofy.

“Wait here a minute. I’m going to run these back up to my room, put them in some water,” she said and disappeared back into the hotel.

I stood there, fairly certain that to anyone passing by I must appear to be glowing. It was a very, very good feeling.

A couple walked out of the hotel and I cheerily said good morning to them. They returned the greeting and both started chuckling.

Yeah. It was pretty obvious, I think.

Nadia came out after a few more moments, and it seemed to me that she maybe had a touch of the glow about her as well. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought so.

“So, I understand that you were planning to see the sights today,” I said, hoping that the next part of the plan wasn’t as filled with hidden mines as the flowers had been.

“Yes,” Nadia replied. “That is correct.”

“Well, it just so happens that I have brought with me more than just beautiful flowers. Which I picked out myself, by the way,” I said, feeling a little more confident.

She laughed again and it was a wonderful sound.

“Oh did you? Well, I’m even more impressed,” she said.

“I did indeed,” I said nodding. “But along with the flowers, I brought these,” I said and pulled out a series of local paper guide maps from my belt. The fact that they were paper and not digital added to the cost, but it was worth it to see her face light up.

I fanned them out like playing cards.

“I am prepared to take you to all the sights to see around Shackleton.”

“I didn’t think the base was big enough to warrant so many different guides,” she said, grinning.

“They’re full of surprises here,” I said with a smile. “And so am I.”

“Well then, lead on Macduff,” she said.

I looked at her questioningly.

“No, it’s...it’s Zorath.”

She laughed again and shook her head.

“I know, Zorath. It’s an expression from Earth.”

“Ah! Well, that makes more sense then. Feel free to call me Macduff then.”

“Ha! Maybe I’ll call you ‘Mac’ occasionally. How’s that?” she said.

I thought about it for a second.

“You know, I’ve never had a nickname. That’s acceptable to me,” I said. Especially as a nickname she’d given me. It was like a secret gift, a code between us.

She nodded.

“Mac it is, then.”

I extended my arm and off we went.

Nadia was curious about everything surrounding the base and I did everything I could to answer her questions.

I’d stayed up all night, studying the new guides, trawling the message boards for any changes to events that might interest her. And with every delighted look that crossed her face, I silently pledged to do it again, every night if necessary.

The first thing I did was take her to a spot I thought would be particularly interesting to her.

Leading her along, we came upon a small, unassuming little place.

Nadia looked at me quizzically.

“I don’t get it. What are we looking at?” she said.

There, before us was a small square of land that was roped off. In the middle of the square, were two parallel rows of markings.

“You don’t know what this is?” I asked.

She looked at me and shrugged.

“I don’t think so. But clearly I should.”

“Think about it for a second,” I said.

Nadia turned from me and crouched down near the rope line. She studied it for a couple of moments and then, I saw realization dawn on her face.

She sprung back up to her feet and looked at me with wide eyes.

“This is where she stopped, isn’t it? This is where it happened!” she exclaimed.

I nodded.

“That’s right,” I said.

She took a step back to get a fuller look.

“Unbelievable. To think, that all those years ago, this is the spot where the rover made her last broadcast, just hours before the landing party arrived. History says that she was too badly damaged to be revived, but her survey of the crater was essential to the establishment of the base,” she said.

“Yes. This is the place where Artemis the Rocker made his last stand. One of the first representatives from Earth to another celestial body,” I said.

Nadia burst out laughing again, this time harder than before.

“What?” I said. “What’s so funny?”

It took her awhile to compose herself, she was laughing so much.

“Artemis Seven the Rover! Her name is Artemis Seven!”

I looked at her blankly.

“Are you sure about that?” I asked.

That question caused another round of laughter.

“I’m positive,” she said.

“Well then, who’s Artemis the Rocker?” I demanded.

“He was a musician, I think. the singer for a band called Celestial Sorrow. As far as I know, he never went into space. Except maybe in his mind,”

“I think someone gave me some bad information then,” I said, pulling out the tour guides and flipping through them furiously. Nadia bust out laughing again.

For a moment, I stared at her and then I started laughing at myself. I couldn’t help it. She was infectious in that way.

There were definitely worse ways to spend a day.

NADIA

I never would have guessed that I would have had this good of a time with Zorath. He was charming and odd and funny.

And as a bonus, he was often funny without realizing that he was being funny.

Which made him even funnier.

It felt good to laugh so much and so hard. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had just let loose. Too long, I was thinking.

After regaining some composure, we moved on from the Artemis tracks. Zorath was proving to be a pretty good guide, all things considered. He was engaged and eager to show me around.

Just being near him felt good.

And if I let myself think about it, parts of me were feeling just a little more than good.

That obviously wasn’t going to happen, so I shoved those traitorous thoughts back in their box and paid attention to the next sight.

After we’d walked what felt like all over the base and back, we stopped for a late lunch before a small cafe.

“The guide books say that this is the best place for lunch on the base,” he said.

Oh.

“Um,” I started, not sure how to bring this up. “It was one thing for you to buy me a drink last night. But you can’t just pay for things. And,” I swallowed, raised my chin up. “I don’t think I can afford this place.” No thinking was required.

Last night I’d checked over my account balances and then did some browsing on the station message boards. I’d realized with horror that I’d need to be careful even at the cheaper food carts. Being here for the festival was exciting, but everyone had raised their prices.

Not much, but just enough to eat through my thin margins.

“What?” he narrowed his eyes, and I braced myself for questioning. “How could you abandon me here?”

“What?” I blurted. This wasn’t how I was expecting this to go.

“I’ve been planning a food tour of the restaurant for days,” he explained. Almost well enough to think he wasn’t making it up on the spot. “The only problem was that I’d have to eat alone, which would make all of the food taste terrible, don’t you think?”

Despite myself, I fought back a grin. “I don’t think eating alone would ruin your lunch.”

He struck a dramatic pose, hand over his chest. “But you don’t know the idiosyncrasies of a Vaznik!” He dropped his voice, leaning in to whisper conspiratorially. “It’s like your people who are allergic to flowers.”

“You’re a goof.”

“So of course it would be a great favor to me if you’d accompany me on my food tour,” he continued, ignoring my raised eyebrows. “And since it’s such a favor, of course I’d be paying as we go.”

“I can’t let you do that, Mac. Really.” Even though it was sweet, and tempting, and…

He dropped the playacting. “Please, Nadia.” His fingers brushed my cheek, and my skin crackled with fire as I gazed into those amazing eyes.

Well then.

I tucked my hand into the crook of his arm.

“Well, Mac, those guides haven’t steered us wrong so far. So I’m sure this will be wonderful,” I replied and we both started chuckling a little again, the strange tension dissolving in our laughter.

Mostly.

We sat down and looked at the menu. I was surprised to see that almost anything you could want was available.

The automatic food processors were the answer to that, I supposed. They could potentially make you anything you asked for, given enough time and sufficient data.

I asked Mac about it and he nodded.

“That’s true. But that’s where the chefs come in. After things are generated, they are able to add their own little flairs, right? Spices, seasoning, sauces, whatever. That’s what really makes the meal,” he said.

“That makes sense,” I replied. “I wouldn’t have thought you would care so much about food.”

“Why? Because I’m a Mahdfel?”

I shook my head.

“No, because you’re a soldier. I’d always guessed you guys just gobble down whatever is in front of you, ‘cause you’re never sure exactly when your next meal is coming.”

He thought about that for a moment.

“I think that generally that’s pretty true, so well-reasoned there. But I have a secret: I’m a bit of a foodie,” he said.

A huge grin spread across my face.

“You’re a foodie?”

He nodded.

“Oh yeah. I love it. The flavors, the textures. In fact, can I confess something to you?”

I leaned in, falling even further under his spell.

“I wish you would,” I said.

“All right then. If...if...I ever retire from the military, I’d like to be a chef.”

“Get out,” I said.

He raised his hands in earnestness.

“I swear to you. I’m really into it. Don’t get me wrong. I love being a pilot, and being a warrior is important to me. But someday, when it’s time to leave the field of battle...I would be glad to become a chef. Surrounded by good smells all day, prepping meals that make people happy. There are worse lives to lead.”

I looked at him with a new respect.

“I have to say, Mac, that is not something I would have expected you to say,” I said.

He shrugged.

“I’ve got levels,” he said simply and I started laughing again.

“You sure do,” I said, unsure of what else to say. My thoughts were spinning. He wasn’t just a cocky flyboy as I’d first assumed.

He was sweet and thoughtful. Funny, with unexpected dreams for the future.

And he had said I was his mate.

Our food arrived, and relieved to have a distraction, we dug into it, greedily devouring every bite. All of the walking and sightseeing and the laughing, I think, had served to make me very hungry indeed.

We were finishing up and I put my fork down.

“So, Chef Mac, what’s the verdict? Did it live up to the hype?” I asked.

He nodded, still chewing his last bite.

“I would say that this little place has more than lived up to its reputation. The meal was excellent. Did you like it?”

I nodded.

“Very much indeed. Thank you for bringing me here. I’m really glad you did,” I said.

He lowered his head in a slight bow.

“You’re very welcome,” he said.

He paid the bill and left a generous tip and then we headed out into the city again.

“Where to now, Tour Guide Mac?”

He grinned at me.

“Now I’m Tour Guide Mac?” he said.

She nodded.

“Yup. There’s three of you: Pilot Mac, Chef Mac and Tour Guide Mac.”

He chuckled.

“I wonder if I should tell my superiors. Maybe I can get triple pay.”

“I would,” I said. “I mean, you’re pulling triple duty after all.”

Mac laughed at that, and the low chuckle sent my heart fluttering.

We strolled along through the city, not really going anywhere just ambling along. It felt good after eating to move at our own pace.

There were lots of people out, all enjoying their days. The festival was still going on and there were all kinds of events happening throughout the city.

“Is there anything in particular you’d like to do?” he asked me

I shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’m happy to do whatever. I have to tell you, I’ve really been enjoying myself. So thank you for that.”

“You’re so welcome,” he said. “The way I figured it, it was the least I could do, considering what a mess I made of things last night.”

I shook my head, still not sure what to make of it all.

“Don’t worry about it. It occurs to me that I may have overreacted a little.”

“No, no,” he said. “You were right. I shouldn’t have suggested that. Because you’re right. Science isn’t the answer to everything.”

I nodded.

“Well, I think that it’s the answer to most things. But there are some mysteries that are a little more of a challenge to get a handle on. And those mysteries are leaps of faith, right? Or at the least, the mystery is what makes them a little bit more fun,” I said.

“That is something that I’m only just now beginning to understand. Soldiers don’t like mysteries. They like clear direction, orders. Things that make sense from the first. When things get murky, soldiers get a little lost,” he said.

I could feel the honesty in those words.

“I hear that, Mac,” I said.

“But,” he said, “after last night and today, I’ve realized that a little murkiness can be ok.”

I smiled at him.

“It can even be a little fun,” I said.

He smiled back and I felt something inside me melt a little bit at that.

“Yes. It sure can,” he said.

We strolled along through the city to a small park. It was quiet there, and not many tourists. It was a peaceful moment after so much activity for the day.

The park was originally an asteroid impact crater. Something that had impacted the moon millions of years ago and the after effect was still there.

It was beautiful and there was something humbling about it.

There was a small bench on the edge of the crater and we sat down together, just enjoying the silence and the time together.

There were stars everywhere and the sky was bright and full. It was more than a little bit magical.

“I hope that you’ve had a good day,” Zorath said.

I looked over at him and got a little lost in his silver-blue eyes. They reflected the starlight and I had to admit to myself, there was something more than a little dazzling about them.

About him.

“I’ve had a very good day. And I can’t thank you enough,” I said.

He looked me over and I could feel the desire in him.

“I can’t thank you enough, Nadia. Thank you for giving me the chance to make up for my mistakes last night,” he said.

“You’ve done more than make up for it. I’m even looking forward to getting back to my hotel room and smelling how the flowers have filled the air. It will be lovely. And so nice to fall asleep to,” I said.

He smiled at that and he gently and cautiously reached for my hand. Twining my fingers with his, something passed between us in that moment, some electricity and energy pulsed from one hand to the next.

I felt a little high and I couldn’t even fully explain it.

But it was definitely there.

“Nadia, I—” Mac began but I put my hand on his face, stopping him.

“This is a moment,” I said, “where you shouldn’t be talking, but rather you should be doing. You get what I’m saying to you, Mac?”

He nodded, smiling.

“Good,” I said. “Then stop making me wait and take a chance.”

He leaned in and kissed me.

Fully, on the mouth.

I kissed him back. It was delicious.

And I began to wonder if there was more to this whole “genetic match” business than I was giving it credit for.

I was going to have to do a little research, I thought.

Putting my hands around the back of his head, I pulled him to me closer and kissed him deeply, feeling my body melt into his as if it was made for him.

His broad hands around my back felt right.

Perfect.

Even if I didn’t know what we were doing next, it had been an amazing day so far. Who knew where we would go from here?

ZORATH

It was a serious stroke of luck having our leave at the SCLB during festival time.

Not only was Nadia here, but that gave me a pretty full spread of activities to do together, and it didn’t have to feel like I was pushing too hard to come up with things to do.

She was definitely the type who would have stepped way back if she felt like I was desperate to impress.

Now, ‘desperate’ may not have been the right word, but I was damn sure giving her my best.

While I’d been largely unfamiliar with Earth food, The Moon had some of the most exceptional restaurants I’d ever been to.

Granted, I was more accustomed to either rehydrated nutritional rations, or greasy GalactiStop trash. Thanks to our leave stipend, however, I was able to splash around a bit of money, and there was no one I’d rather have spent it on than her.

The look on her face when we’d stopped for that first lunch, when I realized how much she’d had to scrimp and save just to get to the Moon made me want to bundle her up and take her someplace else, some place I could pamper her and take care of her.

It seemed unlikely she’d let me do that.

So I continued the game of thanking her for keeping me company, and we had lunches at a variety of food stalls of her choosing.

She paid for lunch, I paid for dinner. Nadia had her pride, and I wouldn’t hurt it.

I just made sure she ate well at the most expensive, best reviewed restaurants on the base.

That meant a few meals at The Lunarium, which specialized in Earth/Nortellic fusion. To be honest, I hadn’t recognized a damn thing on the plate, but Nadia had relished it all. She’d even sneaked a few bites of mine.

One night we found ourselves all the way up to the pinnacle of Artemis. The cocktails were expensive, but the view was unbeatable.

“Have you ever been, Zorath?”

“Where? Earth? Never had the chance.”

“Hmm.” She tipped her head back and just drank it all in.

I could see the attraction. This immense, swirling blue ball suspended in the blackness. After so much time zipping around the cosmos, I’d almost gotten numb to seeing planets like this.

For that evening, we sipped martinis while I tried to see it through her eyes. For someone who had spent their entire life largely on one continent, let alone a single celestial body, it must be pretty wild.

And, there was no denying the vibrant colors of it. The damn thing was almost as intoxicating as the drinks.

Which did a real number, by the way.

Some of the Vaznik had shared legends about this ‘gin,’ but it was something to be experienced.

Evidently, it was fermented from some kind of strange Earth berry that gets directly into our system.

So, whereas I could match whiskey all night long with anyone you could point to, after two and a half of those things, I was a jolly mess.

Little whoops. Not really what I’d planned to do, but I’d been curious.

And Nadia just seemed amused by the whole thing.

Fortunately, we had made it back down to the base of the pinnacle before things really caught up with me. Back down on the street, we bumped into Thelkor almost immediately.

And by ‘bumped into,’ I mean I ran headlong into him, and almost knocked him into a moving transport vehicle.

“Son of a bitch, Zorath, look out!” Fortunately he was laughing. But then, so was the Buravian woman on his arm.

“Do you know him?” she asked, as her pale grey eyes lit up.

“You bet I do – he’s our pilot.”

“Not like this he’s not,” she fell into a high pitched laugh that set my teeth on edge.

But as I was the one nearly swaying on my feet, it wasn’t my place to judge.

“Damn, man, how much have you had?” He looked into my bleary face, and I held up three fingers. He balked, and turned a massive grin toward Nadia. “What have you been feeding this guy?”

“Martinis,” she laughed.

“Wait, Gin martinis?”

“Yup,” I said with a hiccup.

“Oh, come on. Just be sure you get him down soon. One more of those and he might never get up!”

“I’m always up,” I said, beaming all over. “That’s what so great about the moon, or anywhere out here – you’re always up from somewhere!”

This set the green girl next to Thelkor into a fit of hysterics, and even in my drunken state, I knew it wasn’t that funny.

“In fact,” I was really on a roll now, “I want to get even more up.” Just behind me in the plaza was a two tiered fountain, splashing bright blue water.

As I made for it, there were a chorus of good humored warnings. But, nobody was ever able to warn me off shit I had put my mind to. Scrambling unsteadily up onto the edge, I turned to wave at everyone.

“Well done,” Nadia clapped, cracking up. “You got yourself more up. Now come on down.”

“Nah. I’m goin’ to the top.” At least that was the plan.

Unfortunately, I chose to punctuate my proclamation with a sweeping gesture of my arm, which sent me toppling backward into the Robert Falcon Scott Memorial Fountain.

Not the most dignified place to take a bath.

When I came up for air again, Nadia was practically glistening with laughter. Maybe it was the booze, but everything seemed to be moving in slow motion and have an extra edge of sparkle to it.

Though, every day we spent together it became clearer and clearer to me -- Nadia didn’t need any help to shine.

We’d managed to be around each other more or less constantly for over two weeks, and she hadn’t gotten bored with me yet. Far from it, actually.

Still, I had to keep my head.

She didn’t want to be tested.

She didn’t want to hear about the matching.

But I knew she was weakening.

At least, I hoped so.

By the time it was officially Shackleton Eve, I had determined that I couldn’t afford to let all the good momentum we’d built up go bust.

I could feel that tiny whiff of melancholy tainting the edges of everything we did.

I was going back on duty at the end of the three weeks, and I knew she was going back to Earth. The key was to make the most of the time we had.

As luck would have it, Shackleton Eve was going to offer plenty for us to take advantage of. It didn’t hurt that Captain Timcur had managed to bribe his way into dinner reservations at Penelope’s – one of the finest restaurants at Shackleton Station.

“Yeah, well. Mine was cold.” Olath said. He was the first mate and could find fault with anything.

“It was supposed to be cold, you knucklehead – it was a salad.”

“Still, though.” He folded his arms and glared at the table. The guy was a fantastic tactician, and as good a soldier as you could meet. He was just terrible in fancy dress. It was hard for him to enjoy food he hadn’t killed. Preferably, just killed.

“Well, mine was magnificent,” Storgin said with a smile. “Thank you, Captain.” If Olath was all edges, then Storgin was all class. Like he was born to grease any wheels in the cosmos. And their deep friendship was built on a needling one-upmanship that always kept things lively.

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Thelkor chimed in, “but I’m going to find a good spot for the fireworks.” What he meant was, find someone good to watch the fireworks with. The green giggler was long gone, and he looked a little at a loss without someone to woo. Above all of the crew, he was the party boy, and he loved women.

The lack of females in our species made that hard for him, and the long stretches on male-only crews even harder. That meant that any leisure time was a free for all, as far as he was concerned.

“I think he might have the right idea,” I said to Nadia. “What do you say we try to find a spot?”

“It’s already pretty stacked up out there. Do you really think we can find one?”

“Oh, Nadia,” I smiled. “I’ve already got one in mind.”

After a quiet ride in the utility lift, we made it to the section of dome where The Golden Meridian was docked. It was a fair way up, but I figured that would give us a remarkably clear vantage. Kicking open the docking port with a hiss of pressurized air, I hoisted Nadia up to sit right on the rim. The feel of her tiny waist under my hands just made me ache even more.

“Oh, gosh!” As the lift cleared back, she looked to her toes and saw how dizzyingly high we were.

“Just don’t look down,” I said, putting a hand around to hold her shoulder. “I won’t let you fall.” After a moment, I felt the tension ease out of her and she settled into my side, letting her feet swing above the void.

We had arrived just in time. Fireworks in a city under glass, even unbreakable transparent permasteel, wouldn’t be the most advisable risk, but the Shackleton Commission had long ago found a first-rate workaround. All the city lights dimmed, and a massive holographic display spattered across the inside of the dome with a riot of color.

As they crackled and snapped, you could see the enormous, mottled blue sphere of earth looming behind. The juxtaposition was dazzling. The vibrancy of the planet seemed the perfect counterpoint to the intense reds, greens and whites searing across the inside of this little, globed world. It suddenly made one feel very small.

I was reminded to hang on to the things in my life that really mattered. And there I was, an arm around the shoulders of a human woman who molded more and more into me with each breath. Surrendering the display sizzling around us, I looked down on her and watched the reflected colors race across her face.

After the barest of moments, she tipped her chin up to look at me. Then, reaching up gently, she gifted me a simple kiss.

It deepened, and I felt my heart race, my body demanding that I claim her.

Carefully I loosened my arms around her, brushed the hair back from her face.

This was her choice. Her decision.

That done, she settled back and watched the show. I turned back with her, but I couldn’t see any of it. Not really.

All I could see was the trouble I was in.

Because there was no way I was going to be able to let her go.

NADIA

I couldn’t believe it was our last day together. I woke up early, already feeling sadness in the pit of my stomach. Back when I was deciding whether or not to get that first drink with Zorath, I’d had no idea that one of the consequences would be getting attached to him.

I didn’t want to say goodbye to him, but I didn’t have a choice.

And all I’d have was the memory of his kisses, the way he’d held me like I was the most precious thing in the galaxy.

I could have cried. We could have taken things further. He’d been clear at every moment this was my move to make.

I’d been too scared.

I already knew my heart would break when I got on that shuttle.

If we’d gone further, if I’d given into what my body was demanding, it would have torn me in half to leave.

And now it was tearing me up anyway.

I had to get back to my life on Earth, and I had a shuttle ticket waiting for that evening. Even if I could change all that somehow, Zorath had to report to duty the following day.

I reluctantly started to pack my suitcase. I figured I might as well do it sooner than later, so I could maximize the time with Zorath before my shuttle.

But each item of clothing I pack seemed to have a memory attached. That was the shirt I’d been wearing on our first date — and on that first shuttle where I’d almost died, of course. There were the boots that had gotten covered in moon dust at the crater park. Under the bed was the dress I’d worn the night Zorath got drunk and fell in the fountain.

I chuckled. Even as bummed out as I was, the image of his face as he tripped backward into the water was still funny as hell.

A knock interrupted my packing, and I jumped. It was too early for housekeeping, and I knew I wasn’t late checking out.

“Nadia!” Like thinking of him had summoned him, Zorath’s voice came from the other side of the door. “Let me in!”

I pulled open the door, and Zorath immediately grasped my wrist.

“Oh good, you’re dressed,” he said. “Let’s get going.”

“Get going where? I was in the middle of packing!” His enthusiasm was infectious, but I was confused. I was pretty sure we hadn’t made any early morning plans the night before.

“It’s a surprise,” Zorath replied, a trace of smugness in his voice. “Please come with me, it’s also a time-sensitive surprise!”

All of the places Zorath has taken me had been pretty wonderful, so it wasn’t hard to go with the flow.

“Give me just a second and we’ll go,” I promised. I turned inside and pulled the crater park boots back out of my suitcase. I laced them up and stepped back to the door. Zorath was looking at the suitcase with a pained expression.

“I know how you feel,” I told him as I shut the door to my hotel room. “This has been a really good few weeks.”

“Well,” began Zorath, recovering quickly. “It’s about to get even better.”

He grabbed my hand and dragged me down the stairs and out into the streets of the base. We were headed in a new direction, towards what one of Zorath’s crewmates — Storgin, I thought — had mentioned was the military area. What could Zorath possibly want to do over there?

“You can’t tell me anything about where we’re going?”

“Not if I don’t want to ruin the surprise.” Zorath’s grin seemed to cover his entire face. He was so excited and pleased with himself, I decided not to ask any more questions. I didn’t know how or why, but I trusted him with everything I had.

Again, the idea that I should look into that whole genetically matched mates thing entered my mind. Not the time for that, I told my brain sternly. Besides, it didn’t matter if we were mates or whatever, we both had separate lives to get back to.

I was shaken out of my maudlin reflections by Zorath halting our madcap dash in front of a pastry shop we’d passed a few nights ago. I’d lamented that it was closed, but now it was open. Trays of delicious looking breakfast rolls lined the walls, many of them in unexpectedly bright colors. Drifting from the open door was the smell of a hot drink made from a Buravian root I’d learned tasted even better than coffee.

“You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

“Nope.” I was touched and impressed by how well Zorath knew my patterns already. “I’m just starting to get hungry.”

“I’d say we could get one of everything, but it’d be too much to carry.” He winked at me and dove into the store. I followed, and by the time I’d discovered what an Ezpell berry muffin was, he’d procured a couple of pastries and a cup of steaming caffeine for each of us.

“Can we sit over there and eat these?” I pointed to a bench across the square.

“We’ll eat when we get where we’re going.” Zorath looked down at the slight pout I couldn’t keep from my lips. “I promise it’ll be worth it.”

One hand holding onto my drink, the other still against Zorath’s warm palm, we kept moving towards the military area. Finally, we reached its gate, and Zorath flashed ID to get in. I freed my hand from his and began to reach for my wallet, but turned out, the guard was already waving us through.

Zorath recaptured my hand and squeezed it as we moved through the halls. We burst through one final door, and Zorath swept his free arm out to indicate the room.

“Ta-da!”

Unfortunately, I was laughing too hard to appreciate the grand reveal. Zorath hadn’t realized at the end of his arm was his not-coffee cup, and a deep purple spray now arced across the formerly spotless floor.

“Oh.” He looked down. “Oops. But whatever, we’ll clean it later. Isn’t this cool?”

I recovered from my amusement at yet another example of Zorath’s incongruous clumsiness. Why did he have to be so damn charming! I turned my gaze to whatever he’d been trying to show me.

“Uh… what am I looking at?” To me, it just looked like a flat grey pad surrounded by a steel railing. There was a console to the right but otherwise the room was empty.

“A teleportation pad,” said Zorath. He was positively beaming.

“WHOA. I’ve heard of these, but I thought they were kept super secure.”

“They usually are.” Zorath’s trace of smugness was back, but balanced by a guileless boyish excitement. “Remember the group at Tranquillity Base, that first bar we went to?”

“Yes…?” I failed to see what that had to do with this.

“I made friends with them, well one of them in particular, Rekker. He was supervising the transport of some gear to the planet Vyrlis, which just happens to be an almost completely uninhabited paradise with a famous sunrise.” He grinned. “There’s an almost completed base there, but due to a logistical snafu with staff assignments, the base isn’t online yet. No one is there but a couple of guards that are probably bored out of their minds.”

I was starting to see where Zorath was going with this, and the excitement began bubbling up from my feet all the way to my chest.

“I convinced him to let us use the teleport system while it’s keyed to Vyrlis and… here we are.” Zorath’s smile got even broader, although I hadn’t thought that was possible.

“He’s allowing us to use a teleportation pad? To go to another PLANET?” It seemed too good to be true.

“Well, I told him it was your last day.” Zorath shrugged, face carefully blank.

“You told him about me?” Suddenly I felt like I did back in high school, blushing because some guy had told another I was his girlfriend.

“Of course.” Zorath acted like it was obvious, and I remembered he didn’t think I was his girlfriend.

He thought I was his mate.

And I didn’t know what I was.

But before I could dwell on that thorny problem, he continued. “I wanted your last day to be special, so I got Rekker to give me clearance for the two of us to teleport over to Vyrlis. With the base unoccupied, it’s not considered to be a secure facility yet. You said you wanted to see the galaxy, but all you could afford was the moon. I wanted you to have more than that.”

“You remember I said that?” I was stunned at Zorath’s thoughtfulness.

I’d made a joke about ending up on that shuttle because I was so broke, and that the atoms of my dead body spiraling through the galaxy wasn’t what I had in mind. And he’d heard the true yearning underneath it.

“I remember everything you say,” Zorath said, casually. Before I could respond to that piece of whoa-this-is-intense, he’d darted to the control panel.

“We really lucked out. Vyrlis is said to be idyllic at any time, but supposedly it's sunrise is unparalleled.”

My brain was whirling with how incredibly romantic all this was, until it seized on what I thought was a major obstacle to Zorath’s plan.

“But sunrise already happened, right?”

Zorath looked at me, his eyebrows knitted.

“Nadia, Vyrlis is another planet. It’s in a completely different timezone.” He shook his head. “Not really a timezone, but just trust me on this.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling indescribably stupid. “I think for a moment I forgot how space works.”

Zorath laughed.

“Bounce around planets long enough, and you’ll expect them all to be on their own schedule. You just roll with it,” he said as he finished poking buttons. “But we have to leave now if we’re going to catch the whole thing. Ready?”

My sweet, tall alien stepped onto the platform and held his hand out to me.

“Ready,” I said, and took it.

ZORATH

The inside out prickling sensation of teleportation ended and we were standing, hand in hand on a pad, under a predawn sky we could see through a clear plexi dome that covered half the roof.

I turned to Nadia, and saw the dazed look on her face

“Are you ok?” I asked. I’d used teleportation systems enough before that it didn’t occur to me that it would feel strange to Nadia.

“I’m fine.” She rolled her shoulders and neck. “That was weird as hell, though. It was like being pinpricked all over my skin, but it didn’t hurt? I kept thinking it should be hurting, and it wasn’t, and that was really confusing.”

“You won’t mind the return trip?” I searched her face anxiously.

“No, no.” She waved my concern away. “And anyway, I’m not thinking about the return right now. We’re on a different planet!”

I looked to the south and saw the mountains Rekker had told me about through the dome, shadowy against the lightening sky.

“That’s where we’re headed.” I pointed towards the peaks.

“Huh? You mean…” Nadia’s eyes got round. “How are we going to get there?”

“We’re going to fly.” I grinned, not bothering to hide the fierce delight that ran through me. I couldn’t wait to pilot a ship just for me and Nadia, show off a little.

“In what?” She looked skeptical, but I detected excitement hiding behind a twitch of her lips.

“Come with me and you’ll see!”

Just as I turned to look for the shuttle hanger, someone hailed us.

“Hey, you two, over here.” Another Vaznik stood next to a control panel. “Are you the guy Rekker commed about?”

“Sure am,” I said, walking over, Nadia at my side.

“And you must be the human mate.” The ochre-skinned Vaznik smiled, obviously intending to be friendly.

I shot a look at Nadia, who was of course bristling at the assumption.

Well, not an assumption, but she certainly hadn’t accepted the truth yet.

And if I was being honest, that was driving me a little crazy.

“Here’s the authorization,” I said quickly, shoving aside my brief instant of frustration and forestalling Nadia from snapping at the guy.

The other warrior took the chip Rekker had given me and thumbed through the screens on his on comm tablet.

“Looks good to me,” he confirmed. “The hanger is behind me, shuttle bay 4.”

I was already moving by the time he gave us the bay number. The paleness of the sky was starting to worry me. I didn’t want us to be late.

“Thank you!” I tossed the words over my shoulder, and shepherded Nadia towards our vessel.

“Do you just know how to fly this thing?” she asked, once we were in shuttle number 4.

“Of course. It’s standard military issue, why wouldn’t I?” I eased us up off the docking and towards the opening of the hanger.

“I guess I thought you only piloted warships.”

“No way. These little ones are so much more fun.” I timed my words perfectly, bursting into the open air right at that moment.

“Oh my god!” Nadia gasped. Was that terror or exhilaration?

I shot a look at her. Lucky for me, she seemed happily awestruck as she gazed out of the shuttle’s windows. It would’ve been a real downer if my mate didn’t like flying.

She steadied both of our sloshing tvo cups as I soared up towards the peaks. I spared a moment to reflect on how maybe adding breakfast to the mix had been unwise. But, I knew my mate, and I knew she put off eating til late in the morning. She wouldn’t enjoy the sunrise as much if she was sitting there starving.

“You should eat.” I encouraged her. “Look in my pack.”

“Oh yeah, I was hoping you got one of these.” Nadia triumphantly held up a muffin studded with pink berries.

“I got two.” I smile as I steer through a bank of morning mist. “Those are my favorite, actually.”

“And for good reason,” Nadia mumbled around a bite. “Mmmm, good call Mac. I didn’t even know I was hungry.”

“Of course, you were.” I shook my head fondly. We were so good together, already. I really hoped she would see that… but we were running out of time.

“This is cold, though,” she told me.

“Oh the tvo?” I glanced over.

“Right, that’s what it’s called. Or is it supposed to be cold?”

“No, you drink it hot… sorry. I didn’t really think that part through,” I confessed.

“Don’t apologize.” Nadia laughed. “You thought up this whole crazy adventure! How could I ask for more?”

My heart felt warm in my chest.

All I’d wanted was to do my best for Nadia, and it felt nice to have her acknowledge the effort I’d put it.

Plus, we weren’t even at the good part yet. It was just a little further…

“This is incredible,” Nadia breathed, as we crested the mountains.

Vyrlis’s ocean laid spread out before us, a spotting of islands in the distance. I guided us down to a flat spot and set down right as the first ray of sun was breaking the horizon.

“Nadia, quick!” I undid her harness for her and tugged her to her feet. We bounded out of the shuttle and greeted the sunrise.

“Oh,” said Nadia in a small voice as I guided her to sit on an outcropping of rock. “There are two suns.”

Split by nearly the whole width of the ocean, Vyrlis’s dual suns were in sync for a rare show, both floating up over the water. One shone yellow light across the shimmering ocean, a peach glow crowning it and golden clouds hovering above. The other shone pale blue, creating layers of periwinkle and violet in the planet’s purple sky.

I’d seen a lot of sunrises in my day, getting up for missions. Some even with multiple suns. But this one… it definitely blew all the others away.

“You like it?” I couldn’t help myself from asking.

“Are you kidding?” Nadia laughed, delight suffusing the sound. “This is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She threaded her arm through mine and leaned her head on my shoulder. Unthinkingly, I pressed a kiss to the top of her head. When I realized what I was doing, I expected her to pull away, but she just sighed contentedly.

“Look at that green,” she said dreamily. Where the rays of the two suns overlapped, the clouds had turned a pale sage. “Even in my wildest dreams I didn’t know exploring the galaxy could be this beautiful.”

“Me neither,” I murmured. “This is even better than I thought it would be.”

We marveled together at the surreal paint strokes of color in front of us. Lavender waves lapped at the pristine white sands far beneath our feet. Slowly, the southern islands became clearer in the light. I pointed them out to Nadia, and she chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“The sun rising in the south.” She shook her head. “Even these little things are so new to me. Just — thank you, Zorath.”

Nadia lifted her head and turned to me. Feathers of dawn light brushed her cheekbones as her green eyes gazed into mine.

She was so gorgeous. I’d been lost in her from the moment I met her, and now she felt so right nestled into my side.

I wanted to kiss her, but more than that, I wanted her to know. It wasn’t just science. I was falling in love with her.

Every moment we were at each other’s side, it became clearer that we were meant to be — and that went way beyond any genetic match.

I gathered my courage and took a deep breath. She seemed to sense I was about to say something, and tilted her head quizzically. The adorableness of the gesture almost threw me off, but I steadied myself.

“Nadia, I…” I hadn’t felt this scared since my first battle. “I’m—“

Boom.

A huge sound ripped through the serenity of the mountaintop dawn.

I shot to my feet, immediately scanning the area for what I knew could only be an explosion. Then I saw it. A plume of smoke was rising back behind us in the valley.

The base.

“What was that?” Nadia was next to me, peering in the same direction. She looked scared, and rightfully so.

“I think that was the base,” I said grimly. Then I caught a glint of a sleek black hull through the grey clouds, landing somewhere out of view. My fists instantly clenched.

“And that is a Suhlik ship.”

NADIA

Mac was moving with speed and purpose and I did everything I could to keep up with him, my mind a half step behind my body.

The Suhlik were staging an attack. I couldn’t tell how big it was or how much damage had been inflicted as of yet, but I could tell it was serious business. The way that Mac was moving alone was a cue to me.

“Why aren’t we taking the shuttle?”

He shook his head, not slowing down for even a step. “The instant they caught a whiff of a Mahdfel engine signature, they’d blow us out of the sky.”

Good reason.

“We’ll have to get back on foot. Slower, but safer. Well,” he shrugged as we skidded down the side of the hill. “Relatively safer.”

We hurtled ourselves through the trees towards the sound of the explosion. Even as we were running, I shook my head at myself.

Here I was, running through the jungles of an alien world, alongside an extraterrestrial fighter pilot, towards the sounds of a battle.

This was not how I would have expected my life to go had you asked me a couple of weeks earlier.

Heck, even a couple of days ago, the most dangerous thing we’d done was try the anti-gravity tunnel in the Recreation dome.

That didn’t exactly give me a lot of training for this.

We had reached the edge of the tree line and in the clearing, we could see Suhlik forces scrambling around like ants on a piece of chocolate.

I turned to Zorath, questioning.

“What are they doing?” I whispered.

He shook his head.

“I’m not sure,” he said, eyes narrowed.

Suddenly, a Suhlik warrior just appeared a few feet away. We dropped to the jungle floor instantly.

Mac and I looked at each other and he brought his finger to his lips. I nodded slowly. I hardly dared to breath.

Despite not being able to see him, I could hear the Suhlik’s raspy breathing and the shuffling of his heavy feet as he stomped around.

We waited, tensed, trying to hold everything in place lest we give ourselves away. Then the Suhlik moved along.

When it was clear he was a safe distance away, Mac belly crawled over to me.

“I think they’re securing the perimeter, making sure there aren’t any rescue forces coming,” he whispered.

“Do you think more Mahdfel may be on the way?”

He shook his head, face grim.

“I don’t know if the few guards that were here had time to sound the alarm. I don’t think we can count on it.”

“Oh great,” I said. “And here I was worried we were going to have to do something stupid.”

Mac grinned at me and I felt that smile shoot a little energy through me.

“I already knew that you were up for the challenge,” he said.

I laughed very quietly.

“I’m glad someone was,” I said.

“Follow me,” he said, and we started moving again, as silently as possible.

With Zorath leading, we kept moving around the edge of the facility, sticking to the trees. Keeping one eye on the Suhlik, we crept along carefully.

They were working away on something and then they all broke into a sprint, heading away. Mac suddenly had a look of alarm on his face.

“What are they—” I said to him.

“Duck down, now!” he whispered harshly, cutting me off.

“What?” I said and I felt his hand on the back of my head, pushing me down.

Almost immediately afterward, there was a terrific BANG and I could feel an intense, but brief, wave of heat wash over me, like a hot wind racing through the trees.

I looked up and saw a plume of black smoke drifting lazily through the air. The Suhlik had blown the door open. That was their plan. They wanted into the facility.

Peeking my head over the underbrush, I could see the Suhlik moving swiftly into the compound. Almost all their numbers had headed inside, with just a handful remaining outside, keeping watch.

And those soon spread out to watch the entire perimeter of the base.

For the moment, we were safe.

I looked over to Mac, who had a very worried look on his face.

“What do you think?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“I’m not sure. There’s nothing valuable in there yet, no intel, no resources, no weapons. I can’t understand why they would—”

He stopped in mid-sentence.

“What? What is it, Mac? What do you think they’re doing? You know, don’t you?”

He didn’t say anything for a second. I could practically see the wheels turning in his mind.

“Ok,” he said finally, “hear me out.”

“All right,” I replied.

“The Suhlik have been staging semi-regular attacks on Shackleton for years, right? As long as I can remember. But those attacks are mostly hit-and-runs. Intended to inflict some damage and then get away. They’ve been trying to find ways to get a foothold on the moon, so they can really take it down,” he said.

I nodded.

“Ok. I’m with you so far,” I said.

“So what does this facility have that could help them?” he asked.

It took me a moment, but only a moment, to get where he was going.

“The teleportation pad,” I answered.

He nodded.

“They’re going to try to activate it. To send an infiltration force into the Shackleton base. Attack it from the inside. If they do that, in force, by surprise, the bases won’t last long.”

I felt a chill run through me. I suddenly pictured the Suhlik, tramping their booted feet all over the Artemis’s tracks, destroying them forever.

“We have to stop them,” I said.

“Yes, we do,” Mac said.

A Suhlik soldier swept along the compound near the door and moved along to the other side of the building.

“Why aren’t they guarding the door more closely?” I asked.

Zorath shrugged.

“I’m not entirely sure. They must not think they’re likely to meet much resistance. The ones outside are likely intended to just raise the alarm if an enemy approaches, with the majority of their forces stationed inside, so they can fend off an attack from a fortified position. It will be difficult to remove them.”

“Like a tick,” I murmured.

“What?”

I shook my head.

“It’s not important. What should we do?”

He rubbed his hands on his face for a second, trying to clear his head.

“We need to get in there, get a better sense of what they’re doing and find a way to stop it. We don’t even know how many of them there are. And once we know, we can find a way to get a message back to Shackleton. I’d bet their intel on this base was down to the number of guards. But they won’t be expecting us to still be on the loose.”

I looked at him blankly.

“Going in there doesn’t seem like the best plan,” I said. “Isn’t there another one? That involves less of us going in there with a larger, armed force who have bad breath?”

Zorath smiled at me.

“Not really,” he said.

“And what about weapons? We don’t have any,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “we have your devastating wit.”

“Great,” I said. “That should be able to stop them dead in their tracks.”

He reached out and took my hand, giving it a squeeze.

“You should stay here, stay safe,” he said.

I shook my head.

“No way,” I said. “You can’t go in there alone. Because if you do, undoubtedly something terrible will happen to me out here and then you’d be forced to come and save me and how would I ever live that down?”

He leaned and gave me a quick kiss.

“You’re something else,” he said.

I grinned.

“Yeah, aren’t I just? C’mon, Mac. Let’s go and be heroes,” I said.

He nodded and we crept forward just to the edge of the clearing.

Two Suhlik walked past us, chatting with each other. They weren’t even really looking around. They were confident that they were safe.

Hopefully, that would prove to be a bit of a weakness.

After they had cleared away from our position, Zorath nodded to me and we moved forward swiftly.

I was amazed at his ability to move silently, given his size and weight. They must be trained in that, I realized. Even as pilots.

We reached the blown door and there were black scorch marks all over the structure. Whatever they had used to knock out the door had worked and then some.

Cautiously entering the facility, we could hear the echo of voices bouncing through the hallway. It sounded like they were arguing about something.

Creeping through the hallways, Mac led us along, making sure we kept out of sight.

But every room we checked was empty.

No comm stations. No way to signal for help.

The Suhlik voices were getting louder and we ducked into a room, opposite the teleportation pad.

Peeking around the corner, all we could see were row upon row of golden soldiers, ready to attack.

We quickly scurried back to a safe room.

“What now?” I whispered.

“The only thing I can think to do is to cut out the power,” Zorath said to me. “We’ve got to just play for time. There may not have been time to get a distress call out, but those guards would need to report in to command every few shifts. When they miss their check in, someone in Mahdfel command will know there’s a problem and come investigate.”

“Wait, wait…” I held up my hand. “In the same way, won’t Rekker realize you’re not back, and start getting worried?”

Zorath’s deep red cheeks darkened and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Um, well, he might have suggested this was a nice planet to get lost in for a while. If we’re late coming back, I don’t think a Suhlik invasion is the first thing he’s going to think is going on.”

“Really?” I blinked, sure I was doing some serious blushing of my own. “Right then. How do we cut the power?”

He made a wincing face.

“What?”

“You’re not gonna like this,” he said, “but I think we have to head back outside.”

I stared at him.

“Are you serious?”

He shrugged.

“Hey, I’m making this up as we go along. There are too many of them in here. More than I realized. And I don’t want to risk your life any more than I already have.”

“I could kill you, you know,” I said.

“I don’t blame you. Let’s go,” he said.

We retraced our steps out and found ourselves quickly outside. We couldn’t see any Suhlik nearby.

“The power cables are on the far side. Let’s duck back to the trees,” he said.

We sprinted over and made it safely to the tree line.

Edging along, we made it to the far side of the clearing.

The power cables were directly ahead of us.

I looked to him for the next step.

“Next time, can we start with this plan first?” I said to Mac. “By cutting the power, we’ll be buying several hours for them to fix this.”

Then I felt something hard pressed against my head.

“Yesssss,” I heard a Suhlik voice say. “Next time.”

ZORATH

My blood ran cold.

Nadia’s green eyes were wide, imploring me for help. On instinct, I lunged forward, but the slide on the blaster went back with a click that rattled my bones.

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” The Suhlik stuffed an arm around Nadia’s waist and pulled her tightly to him. She was equal parts hostage and shield. My brain was about to short circuit as I sought out any option that would save her.

That was the only thing that mattered in my life.

“What do you want?”

“Nothing too vital,” he sneered at me over rows of jagged teeth. “The code for the teleport would buy you her life.”

Shit. I swallowed hard, but it immediately got caught up in the knots all down my throat. Those codes were the only price I felt like I couldn’t afford to pay. It would mean betraying thousands of lives, and a major strategic stronghold.

“Don’t do it, Mac.” Her pet name for me scorched up my spine, at once tugging at my affection for her, and steeling my resolve.

“Shut your mouth!” The Suhlik gnashed the words into her ear, pushing the muzzle of his blaster so hard against her temple that I could see the mark it was leaving. It was all too much. Seeing her like that split open all the pent up feelings I’d hidden from myself in my own mind. All the things I had toyed with admitting, but had never told her.

I loved Nadia.

It was more than the DNA, and more than all the ‘destined mate’ shit I’d heard from others who had been through the process.

What I felt for Nadia was bigger than anything I could have imagined, and it came crashing over me in a single, devastating wave.

“Take me instead.” The words tore up from inside me and caught all three of us off guard.

“Say that again,” the Suhlik’s eyes narrowed.

“Zorath, no.” Looking back and forth between the two, I lowered my hands, squared my shoulders, and leveled my eyes on his.

“Let her go and take me. I’m a better bargaining chip than she is. She’s just some human woman, but I’m a decorated military pilot.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are, Mahdfel. And I know the kind of games you Vaznik cowards play.” With that, he swung the blaster around and pointed it at me.

As relieved as I was that she was in the clear, I suddenly found myself faced with the business end of some serious problems.

He still hadn’t turned her loose, which I thought was pretty shitty of him. After all, we had a deal, didn’t we?

Although, it was about what one could expect from a Suhlik. Playing fair with the enemy was never a strong point in their rule book.

Being willing to fight dirty was something I prided myself on, and I couldn’t touch this guy.

If we had been in the field of combat, I might have lunged forward and grabbed his hand. I’d wrestled bigger weapons away from tougher adversaries. But none of them had been clinging to someone that I cared about.

That absolutely changed the stakes.

“To hell with this!” With a startling shout, Nadia brought up her knee, and drove her heel down directly on the Suhlik’s instep. I could hear the bones crack from where I was standing.

He buckled, screamed, and that was enough for me to be able to scoop the blaster out of his hand. I made sure to snap his wrist in the process. Just for good measure.

Nadia ducked out of his grip and charged over, clinging to me like a vine. After seeing her in so much danger, she felt better in my arms than ever.

“Are you alright?”

“I will be,” she panted.

“That was pretty incredible,” I said.

“I’m glad you noticed.” By now, the hobbling Suhlik had righted himself, and I aimed the blaster directly in his face.

“Wait! Let me…”

“Nope.” I shot him pretty much point blank, and he dropped into a heap. It might have been merciless, but the way he had threatened Nadia had left me in less than a merciful mood. The only trouble was that the blast was sure to bring some of his buddies running in our direction.

Maybe I should have just broken his neck, but he’d touched my mate.

Threatened her.

The Suhlik mob was coming en masse, and fast. I didn’t relish the notion of what would happen if they got their hands on us. One Suhlik was enough to deal with. Without Nadia’s quick thinking, we might not have been able to take him. But a whole herd? I looked at the blaster in my hands.

If I knew this kind of weapon, and I’d had a bit of experience, there wasn’t enough charge to take down all the trouble coming our way.

That left only one option.

I fired at the power box, hitting it in a steady stream until with a burst of sparks it sizzled and started smoking.

The low hum that had filled the air went silent as the power died.

“What do you say we get out of here?”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said. Her luminous eyes sparkled up at me, and I discovered that all of the feelings that had surged into me when she was in mortal danger had remained. That wasn’t a moment of emotional extremity. The love I felt for her was rooted in a deep, unshakable truth.

I leaned in to kiss her, but she was already gone. That was a bit of a shock. When I opened my eyes, all I saw was the shifting of leaves and underbrush where she had dived through. Making a dead line directly into the thick of the jungle, I had to run to catch up with her. Voices and shots still rang out behind us, but we pushed ourselves to the extreme.

Our feet pounded away at the turf as we hurdled trees and forced our way through thickets of branches. We were side by side, and while I could easily have run ahead, I made a silent promise to myself to never let her out of my sight again. At least not until we were clear of all this.

“Oh, damnit!” Skidding to a stop, we found ourselves at the base of a steep rock face. Nadia’s breath raked in and out of her, and she paced lightly, her hands riveted to her hips. “What do we do?”

I looked behind us, into the tangle of jungle behind us. It was so thick, a pack of Suhlik could be on us before we ever saw them coming. We literally had our backs against the wall. Looking up along the mountain, I saw the dark mouth of a cave about twenty or more feet up.

“There,” I pointed. Nadia looked along the line of my arm, then back at me.

“You’re kidding, right?”

I shook my head, and she took another appraising glance up before hurling herself at the rock. One of the many things I adored about her was that I hadn’t yet seen her back down from a challenge. Hand over hand, she hauled her way up, proving her abilities to herself as much as to me.

If it was possible to love her even more, watching her climb up to that cave would have done it. She grunted with the exertion, and I started to stir in spite of myself. It only made me focus harder on my own climbing. That wasn’t exactly the time to get hard.

We finally reached the rim of the cave, and I crawled ahead of her and helped her inside. The mouth was smallish, but within a few feet it opened up into something large enough for me to stand in. It was small, but any refuge was welcome.

“You’re amazing,” I said. “You know that?”

“What?” She turned, surprised and gazed at me.

“What you did back there. The way you just took off when it was time to go. Climbing up here when I know you thought you couldn’t. You’re a wonder.”

“Oh, Zorath.” She trotted over and threw her arms around me, hugging me hard. “I should be thanking you. You saved me back there.”

“You’re the one who stomped his foot,” I said.

“Yeah, but what if you hadn’t been there? That was my one move – what would I have done after that.” She shook her head. “Don’t kid yourself, Mac. You rescued me.”

Reaching down, I tucked two fingers under her chin and pulled her up so I could see her. Then, tucking a strand of blonde hair over her ear, I weighed exactly how much I was willing to give myself away to her.

It would have been so easy to pour it all out, but I didn’t want to scare her away. Not after all we had just been through.

We didn’t have much time.

But we had enough time for me to show her how much I cared for her.

It didn’t matter at that point who came by.

I was with the woman I loved.

“One thing I can promise you, Nadia – I will always be there for you. Looking after you is all I want.”

“Would you really have given yourself up for me? That wasn’t just a tactic?”

“I’m not that smart,” I said, shaking my head. “If it came down to your life or mine, the answer is simple. Your life. Every time.” Those emerald eyes searched my face, and her lips drew nearer to mine. “I just hope we never have to choose again.”

“Oh, Mac.” Her eyes glistened. “I thought I’d lost you, that we’d run out of time. And now I don’t want to wait, don’t want to waste another minute apart.”

We found each other. Her arms pressed up over my shoulders, and she pulled herself up into me, deepening the kiss. This time, when my body stirred up, I didn’t shy away from it. I wanted her to feel my firmness – what she did to me.

With a gasp, she pulled away, and I could see on her face that she knew.

It was impossible to miss. There was a wild, breathless moment where I wondered what would happen next.

Then, she dove up, and kissed me with a ferocity that I had been aching for.

NADIA

As I stretched up to reach Zorath’s lips, it was as if my body was coming alive, sensory information overwhelming my rational thought.

No more waiting. No more wondering. No more regrets.

If he’d died back there, and I’d never told him how I felt, never showed him how much he meant to me…

I leaned into the kiss, my tongue reaching for his, and my skin lit up with the slightest hint of a cool breeze coming from the mouth of the cave. My lips seemed to burn and I had to touch him, I had to feel him.

When I put my hands on his sides a shudder of pleasure ran through me, as if my palms were an erogenous zone.

Maybe they are, I thought. Why couldn’t fingertips be sexual? It’s not something I had considered before today, but it was also before I had experienced the passion of being with Zorath.

His arms went around me, pushing me against him. I felt myself go weak through my back and he bent me over with the force of his kiss. I let him carry me down onto the dusty floor and I opened my mouth to invite his tongue inside.

His weight pressed down on top of me, his hands groping at me as he twisted his tongue against mine. His lips were so hot I thought my own would catch fire. I hadn’t been able to admit it to myself, but I had been fighting this since the first moment I saw him.

As his strong hands ran down my sides and his body moved against mine, I rocked back and forth with my hips. I got my legs around him and clung to him, sliding back and forth against the hardness of his body. Everything was hard. His arms, his thighs, his hands… and the enormous staff I could feel pressing against me.

He shifted forward and I felt him thrust against me through both of our clothes. As the suggestion of his cock teased at my clit, I let out a plaintive cry and thrashed under him, my pussy begging to be split wide and thoroughly pounded.

He moved back to look into my eyes and the way he touched my cheek made something in my chest ache. This was not just physical. He was affecting my body in a very serious way, and there was so much more to it than sex.

He cared for me in a way no one else ever had. As he looked into my eyes, I saw the longing there, a deep loneliness that hid behind his hard gaze. He needed me and I knew it, I knew it completely.

The truth of this moment would endure in my heart and I would always see this softer, sweet side of him, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

And I needed him.

“My Nadia, my brave, beautiful Nadia…”

His hand ran down my chest, over my belly and down over my hips. I was too eager to help him get my clothes off and ended up tangled with both my arms and legs. I couldn’t help but laugh as my right arm got stuck over my shoulder and my left leg got stuck under the opposite knee.

As soon as Zorath helped me out of my predicament I grabbed his shirt and tugged it upwards. He barely responded because he was staring at me, eyes running up and down my body like he was starving and I was the only food left in the world.

As I pulled the shirt over his head and went for his pants his hand reached up, very slowly, and touched my breast.

The super sensitivity kicked in all over again and I shuddered as he touched me. His palm rubbed against my nipple and I moaned as the electricity flowed through me, concentrating between my legs with a throbbing that blew all thought from my mind.

All I could do was pant and watch him as he ran his hands over my breasts. A little smile crept on to his face as he rubbed at one and then the other, finally cupping one in either hand to squeeze them both at the same time.

I threw my head back and gasped, moans and cries getting stuck in my throat and coming out as soft, sharp sounds. He pushed on me gently and I fell back on to the cave floor, letting him touch me all over. Zorath watched me as I leaned right back and opened my legs, letting him see all of me.

I felt exposed and scared, but it was a good feeling. I could tell that he liked what he saw and that gave me confidence in myself that I had never had before. I gently played with one breast, rolling it under my hand while he watched.

He tore his eyes away from my little show, drawn back to my pussy. I was so drenching wet I felt like untapped springs inside me had burst their banks. I had never known I could be this hot. As Zorath’s hands ran down my thighs I shivered and gasped but when his lips touched me the sensitivity in my body shot so high that for a moment, I think I passed out.

My clit was throbbing as he traced it with his tongue, sucking on it and using his lips to explore my folds. I grabbed his head, completely out of my mind, and thrust myself against him. My throat was getting so rough I knew I had to be screaming, but I couldn’t hear it. All I could feel was the enormous orgasm shuddering through me.

My fingers twisted in his hair and I opened up even further, feeling the clenching of my deepest muscles. He stuck his tongue into my pussy and my orgasm came raging through me. He kept up with his tongue, savoring my juices and pleasuring me even while I was still coming. This sparked up a chain of multiple orgasms that left me shaking and breathless on the cold, hard floor.

I was drifting. I was no one. My body kept shivering, completely over stimulated. I felt his hands on my hips and I moaned in anticipation, looking up to watch him grab his cock and guide himself in.

I felt the massive head pressing against my entrance and I spread my legs as wide as I could. He was watching my face with a kind of wonder, as if he couldn’t believe how much I was responding to him.

“Zorath, please,” I begged and pulled him down for a kiss, feeling the exquisite pleasure of his cock sliding in, inch by inch, as my tongue swept around the inside of his mouth and teased his lips.

When he shifted position and slammed his cock all the way in, I shuddered and screamed, grabbing on to him with my hands and digging my nails into his shoulders. My pussy gripped him tight and the pleasure was so intense it was as if my insides were bruised. I kept my grip on him as I folded from the waist and thrashed against him, trapped between him and the hard floor.

Zorath didn’t move a single inch while I rode the wave of pleasure. As I collapsed back on to the ground, breathless from another orgasm, I saw him smile. He wasn’t even thinking about his own pleasure, only mine.

I was literally a mess of lust now. I could hear myself murmuring, some over excited sound that was nothing like words. My muscles were trembling, and my joints were loose. Zorath put his hands on my shoulders and drew his hips back, making me scream as my body ached, desperate to have him sheathed back inside again.

He thrust back in with incredible slowness, like he was savoring every inch of my pussy with his cock. He did this a few times, moving even more slowly each time. The lazy, heavy feeling from orgasms piling on top of orgasms kept me soft in his arms. I lay against the hard floor panting, watching his hands and his body as he started to thrust faster and faster.

My body was so hot and loose that every thrust jolted me along the floor and pressed me against his hands. The sensation of being trapped between his unforgiving hips and unyielding hands made those deep muscles grip him again and another orgasm came thundering through me. As he kept thrusting and I felt his cock swelling I grabbed him around the waist and screamed, desperate to feel the force of his release and know that he was as satisfied as I was.

He let out a long, shuddering cry as he leaned over my shoulder, blinking and gasping. I could feel him trembling as my pussy clamped around his spurting cock and caressed it, my orgasm blending with his. When he fell against me both of us were panting and sweating, the rhythm of our breath almost as intense as the beat of our bodies while we made love.

As he rolled off me, he pulled me into his arms and held me close against his chest and I wrapped my arms around him and stroked his back. It really was impossible to tell where his body began and mine ended, and that was perfectly fine by me.

ZORATH

It hadn’t been my first time. But, after what had just happened between us, it might as well have been. Nothing I had ever experienced in my life could have prepared me for what it was to be intimate with Nadia. To say that she was a revelation would have been to do her a disservice.

“Are you sure we can relax?” Nadia asked.

“It should take them hours to restore the power,” I said. “And honestly, I don’t know what else to do.”

We lay there, panting into the dark of the cave. My horns were just beginning to lose the intense tingling she had fired into them. How could she possibly have known exactly what I needed to feel? I listened to her breathing settle, and it was as though mine was keeping pace exactly with hers.

She snaked a hand across the broad, sweaty expanse of my chest, and came to rest just over my heart. The heavy thump of it must have thundered into her palm, because she dug her fingers in for a second, then pressed down harder. As if she were trying to get closer to it – to hold my heart in her hand.

Lying next to her, all the danger of that strange place seemed light years away. As if all the running and the fighting had happened to someone else. Two others, who knew nothing of what it meant to hold someone you have been longing for.

“What are you thinking about,” she asked.

“Oh, nothing.” I kicked myself for letting a puff of masculine pride blunt the simpler, gentler edges of my nature.

There was nobody there but us – why should I have to hide anything from her?

“I was thinking about the bond.” I admitted. The words hung in the air, and I wished I could reach up and snatch them back. So much for letting my guard down.

“Me too,” she said. Her fingers traced a tentative circle on my chest – those fingers which had been so ravenous even a few minutes earlier. She took a breath as if she were about to speak, but nothing came.

I kept still and waited.

“Ever since we’ve met, I’ve been pulled toward you,” she finally said. “But I didn’t want to go too far. I knew if I did, you’d break my heart when you left to go back to your ship.”

I started to protest, but she put her fingers over my lips. “But now, all I know is that we don’t have enough time. That whatever this is, I can’t fight it anymore. Don’t want to fight it.”

Leaning over, I kissed her hard, trying to push away all thoughts of the outside world. With a sigh she snuggled into me.

“Tell me about how the bond feels for you.”

“That’s a pretty huge question to ask,” I chuckled. She let a light, breathless laugh with me, and just a bit of the tension blew away. “It’s difficult to describe,” I offered at last. “Really, it comes down to a kind of knowing. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that these things light up.”

I held up my arm to show off the intricate markings, and she reached up her hand to trace along the lines. As she did, little trails illuminated behind her fingers.

“I like them,” she said. “Now that we’ve… you know… will they not light up as much? They seem pretty calm at the moment.”

“Couldn’t tell you.” I let my arm fall lightly over so that my fingers could dabble at her ribs, drifting up to outline the underside of her breast. “This is all pretty new to me. When it comes to the whole ‘true match’ thing, as far as I know we only get one in our lifetime. So, I don’t know what to expect.”

“So, this has never happened before?” There was something new in her voice.

Gentle and probing. Almost as if she were surprised that I wasn’t like this with every woman I wanted to impress.

“Never before,” I shook my head. “Actually, come here.” As I was coming down from the intensity of our experience, I was awakening more and more to how uncomfortable the dirt floor of the cave was.

Bracing my back against a broad flat stone, I lifted her up into my lap and let her head fall against the spot where my neck met my shoulder. Her breath warmed a tiny circle on my chest, and the heat of her in my arms stirred me again. Nadia felt my cock hardening against her backside and looked up at me wickedly.

“Wow. Again? Already?”

“With you around?” I smiled at her, “Always.” I took a deep breath, asked a question that had been preying on my mind since we’d met “What about you?”

“Hm?” I hadn’t made myself clear.

“With human women – is it just one for a lifetime, or can you feel the pull more than once?”

“Oh. Well,” she inhaled deeply. “There’s a whole culture of film and books that tell you it’s supposed to be one for always, but it turns out to be a lot more complicated than that. With us, you end up feeling a lot of different ways about a lot of different people.”

“So, you’ve had a lot, huh?”

“Oh, shut up,” she smacked my chest and we both laughed faintly. “I haven’t. I guess it’s just different. In our world, it’s hard to know that someone is the right fit. And sometimes, even when you do know it, that might not be enough.”

That last bit sent a chill over me. Was that her way of opening the door to an easy let-down? Because I was certain that we were a fit. I had the glowing, constant evidence of that fact. But, maybe she was right. Even for all my knowing, it might not be enough to keep us together.

And then, even from this distance, I heard the sound I’d been dreading.

A low hum, more of a feeling in my bones than a real noise.

“The power is back on,” Nadia whispered.

“We can’t let them do it, you know.” My sudden change in tone caught her off guard. She lifted her head and stared at me. “Even if it’s just the two of us against all of them, we can’t let the Suhlik through that transport. If they can get that kind of easy access to the moon…” Letting the implication hang was enough.

“You’re right,” she said, eyes grim.

“So, as much as I would love – and I mean genuinely love – to stay here holding you like this, there are things at play bigger than us.”

“The Suhlik,” she nodded. “If there’s any way we can stop them, then we have to do it.”

“Damn straight.” I gave her bare butt a pat, and she hopped up.

Once we were fully dressed again, I squeezed her hand.

“We’re going to finish that talk you know.”

She nodded, brushing my lips with hers. “As soon as we’re done. I’ll hold you to that.”

Stepping over to the lip of our cave, I looked down the expanse we had climbed. She stepped up beside me and followed my gaze.

“What are you thinking?”

“We can’t just stay up here and wait for them,” I said. “They may want us, but they’ve already got the teleport, and that’s the real prize. We may not even be worth the hunt.”

“Well then.” She clambered over the mouth of the cave and started to climb down. I swung out after her and propelled myself down until I was just underneath her. If she slipped, I wanted to have the best chance of catching her.

“Enjoying the view?” I realized that I had a dead shot at her ass.

“Very much. Why else would I come down here?”

In short order we set foot back on level ground. Taking a moment to get our bearings, she turned her face up to me. It dawned on me that I was supposed to have some kind of plan.

“I think we should… um.” I immediately ran out of steam. She rolled her eyes at me and put her hands up to cup either side of my jaw.

“I’m shit at directions. Do you think you could get us back to the pad?”

“Positive. What are you thinking?”

“Where the teleport is, that’s where we’ll find the Suhlik. If the two of us aren’t worth chasing off into the wild, then there’s only one thing for us to do, right?”

“Right. We bring the fight to them.”

NADIA

I was having a sense of deja vu.

It seemed like I was in this very position not so very long ago. And I wasn’t relishing having to be in it again. But there was no choice. This was what needed to happen.

Lucky me.

Looking over to Mac, I caught his eyes.

“Don’t be late,” I said to him.

“Not a chance,” he replied.

I took a deep breath and stepped right out into the clearing.

On the far side of the compound, two Suhlik soldiers were patrolling. They spotted me and stopped moving, more than a bit stunned, I would say.

I waved to them, as casual as can be.

“Hey fellas,” I shouted to them. “How’s tricks?”

I heard Mac stifle a chuckle at that.

The two Suhlik looked at each other, not sure of what to do for a moment and then they started sprinting towards me.

I stayed still, just smiling and waving to them.

They came up upon me, nearly skidding to a stop.

“What’s going on, guys? I’m wondering if you two can help me. I got turned around and I’m trying to find the swimming pool. Any idea which side of the resort it’s on?” I said.

The Suhlik exchanged a confused look and then turned back to me.

“There’s no pool here, human. Only your doom,” one of them hissed at me.

I laughed a little.

“Honestly, guys, who talks like that? Does someone write your dialogue for you or what?” I said.

“What did you say?” the Suhlik hissed at me.

“She said you’re incredibly stupid,” Mac said, emerging from the trees suddenly and clubbing them over the head with the stout branch we’d scavenged.

Both Suhlik crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

“Well. That plan worked,” Mac said. “Quiet, too.”

“Yeah. A break in our usual pattern,” I said dryly.

Mac grabbed the weapons from the Suhlik and handed one to me. Now, at least, we were both armed.

“What now?” I asked.

He gave me a sheepish look. “So, this is a part of the plan that you’re not gonna like,” he said. “We can try to cut the power again, but no doubt they’ve got a guard on it. We’ve got to find a comm link, at least try to get a better idea of how many we’re dealing with.”

I looked at him with a blank expression.

“You’re going to make me go back into that facility, aren’t you? I feel like, in the future, we need to be better at our plans and stop repeating ourselves,” I said.

“Hey,” he said with a breezy air, “that’s how we get things right. Practice makes perfect, after all.”

And I punched him in the shoulder.

“Ow,” he said, rubbing the spot where I struck.

“Big tough alien warship pilot,” I said sarcastically.

He stuck his tongue out at me and I shook my head.

“All right, once more unto the breach,” I said.

“You’re something else,” Mac said to me. “In case we get separated, here are the codes for the transport. You’ve got to memorize them.”

“Not really my thing” I muttered, but repeated the sequence over and over until we both knew I had it.

We moved quickly across the clearing and back to the blasted-out door.

Looking around, Zorath nodded to me and with weapons drawn, we headed inside.

This was insane.

I wasn’t a soldier!

I was a painter. A part time gamer.

And this was the worst first person shooter I’d even been in.

One deep breath. Then another, and I got a hold of myself.

Soldier or not, we didn’t have any choice but to keep going.

The hallways were still as empty as they had been earlier.

Had they already figured out the codes for the teleportation pad?

Slinking through the facility, we heard marching steps heading towards us.

Mac nodded to me and we ducked on opposite sides of the hallway.

It was a lone Suhlik and he was distracted by something, seemingly muttering to himself. He walked right past us, barely looking up. Mac slipped out behind him and with a quick and powerful blow to the head, took him out.

One less to deal with.

We continued on our way, heading towards the transport pad. Two more Suhlik headed our way and we basically just performed the same move again, ducking to the side and then taking them out as they passed.

“If this keeps up, we’ll be able to take them all out,” Mac said softly.

“Wouldn’t that be a dream?” I asked.

And, of course, right after I said that, as if on cue, a large Suhlik appeared. The three of us stared at each other for a moment, unsure of what to do.

But then he decided to rush us both, tackling us to the ground at the same time.

I quickly crawled out from under him as Zorath wrestled with him.

“Here!” the Suhlik shouted out. “They’re—” but I cut him off, wrapping my hands around his mouth. It took both of them to do it.

Meanwhile, Zorath brought his gun right under the Suhlik’s chin.

“Duck to your right!” he shouted to me and I moved as instructed.

Zorath fired and the Suhlik went limp instantly and fell down on top of Zorath, dead.

We both tried to catch our breath. My heart was racing and I did what I could to get it under control.

I stumbled off the Suhlik’s back and with an effort, Mac shoved the corpse off of him and crawled out from underneath.

He got to his feet, his hands on his knees as he tried to get himself together.

“Let me ask you something,” I said to him, panting.

“Shoot,” he replied.

“Do Vaznik have the concept of ‘jinxing’? Or is that something foreign to you?”

He threw his hands up. “Hey, how was I to know a giant Suhlik was around the corner?”

I shook my head at him and he just laughed.

“You ok?” he asked, with real concern.

I nodded.

“Yeah. I’m all right. You?”

He nodded.

“Ready to press on?”

I shrugged.

“Not really, but what choice do we have?”

“That’s the spirit,” he said with a smile and off we went.

We snuck our away along, not meeting any more resistance. I wondered about that until we reached the teleportation pad.

And there were all of the Suhlik, armed and waiting.

Three were working on the control system while the rest of the battalion stood idly, clearly getting more than a little impatient.

I didn’t know but it looked like they were trying to brute force the codes.

If we were lucky, that would take them some time.

From what little I understood about cryptography, maybe years even.

But if one of them had some sort of code cracker, we might only have a few hours.

We ducked behind some storage containers and gave each other a worried look.

This wasn’t good.

“What are we going to do now?” I whispered hurriedly. “There’s no way we can take out that many. Not unless they all decide to go for walks like the others did.”

Zorath didn’t say anything for a moment, lost in thought.

Finally, he looked over at me. There was a new clarity in his eyes.

“Obviously, we can’t take them all ourselves. But we can’t let that size of force transport to Shackleton. It will be a disaster and who knows how many people will die in the process? Besides, if they take the moon base, you know what that means.”

I thought about it for a second.

“Earth. They’ll launch an invasion of Earth.”

He nodded somberly.

“With the transportation code, if they crack it, they could fill the moon with their forces until they’re ready to go. And then...”

“Earth would be caught completely unawares. They wouldn’t stand a chance,” I finished for him.

“That’s right,” he said, nodding. “So, we need to take some action here. But there’s only one option as I see it.”

“What?”

Mac looked away from me for a moment and I knew that I wasn’t going to like the answer.

“I create a diversion,” he said. “A big one. Something that leads them all away from the teleport pad. Then you rush up there, activate it, send yourself to Shackleton and warn them about what’s coming.”

I shook my head.

“No, Mac, that’s a bad idea,” I said flatly.

He took me by the arms.

“Listen to me, I don’t like this anymore than you do. But we don’t have any choice. We can’t stop them by force and I will be able to evade them until you can return with help, ok? And while that’s happening, Rekker and the rest of the security forces can prep to fend off an invasion,” he said.

“But what if—”

He stopped me.

“There’s no time to debate this. I need you to be brave and as fast as blazes, ok? You have to activate the pad and get through without any Suhlik following you. I want you to be as safe as possible. I’ll be alright. I can take care of myself,” he said.

I felt tears welling up in my eyes and I fought to push them back down.

“You could die, Mac. You could die and you would be alone. I can’t have that,” I said.

He put his hand on the side of my face and the cool touch of his skin on mine felt like water.

“Death isn’t anything. Death is just a transition from one thing to another. And even if that were to happen...it wouldn’t be enough to keep me from you,” he said.

I looked into his silver eyes and saw that he meant every word of what he said.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it. But you have to be careful for me. Even if death is whatever you say it is, I’d rather have you here.”

He grinned at me and leaned in and kissed me deeply.

“I’d prefer that myself,” he said.

He stood up and winked at me, then started screaming and running back down the hall.

Despite the shouts of what must have been their commanding officers, a good chunk of the Suhlik took off after him.

Well, I thought.

Here we go.

ZORATH

I looked back as I ran screaming down the hallway to see how many of the Suhlik had followed me and saw something that made my heart sink.

The Suhlik had an assault mech suit.

If they managed to get that through the teleportation pad to Shackleton Base, it would be a massacre.

I prayed to whatever gods may have been listening that this plan worked. Because if it didn’t, I didn’t have another one at the ready.

There was some howling and hissing behind me and I could see the Suhlik coming after me in pursuit.

Luckily, no one was manning the suit at the moment. If that had been coming after me, my survival chances would’ve dropped to zero.

Bolts and blaster fire scorched the walls around me and I had to weave left and right to make sure I didn’t get tagged.

I turned and fired off a couple of quick rounds and I heard a yell. I managed to hit one of them.

Huh. Maybe the gods were listening after all.

I made a quick right and ran down the hall. This compound was essentially a circle, so unless I was able to make it back out the front door again, I would eventually wind back up at the teleportation pad.

I skidded to a sudden stop when a pair of Suhlik warriors appeared in front of me, weapons drawn.

“End of the line, scum,” one of them hissed.

“Nah, I’m good, thanks,” I said and dove straight into the one on the right and, turning as we tumbled to the ground, firing off another shot.

The left one fell to the ground, taken out.

Leaving me with just the one underneath me. There was no room to draw a weapon here, it was close quarters combat.

I pushed my forearm against the Suhlik’s throat and he moved his head at the last moment and sunk his teeth into me.

“Motherfucker,” I gritted. “Had to do that, didn’t you?”

I pulled back with my left hand and cracked the Suhlik right in the head, forcing him to release his bite on my arm.

Switching my grip on the blaster, I brought the butt of it down on his mouth, shattering his teeth and sending them flying.

He grunted in pain and spit his own teeth out all over the floor.

“No biting,” I said, and put the barrel of the gun in his bleeding mouth and pulled the trigger.

That ended that.

I could hear the other Suhlik storming down the hall behind me, however, so there was no time to revel in victory.

I scrambled to my feet and took off down the hallway, trying to find another way to circle myself back towards the exit and the clearing. If I could get out there and reach the trees, I could easily evade them and Nadia would be able to safely get away, warning the security forces on the moon.

There was a roar behind me. It was filled with rage.

I’m guessing they found the two Suhlik I had just killed.

Running with as much speed as I could muster, I kept arcing my way to the right. I didn’t have many other options. It was the only way that this hallway went.

They were gaining on me. I could hear their snarls and their hisses, the stomping of their feet.

The Suhlik kept firing off shots, but as I was always just around the corner from them, they couldn’t draw a bead on me.

Hell, I thought, maybe they’d run out of ammo before they caught me.

Hope springs eternal, I suppose.

Just ahead of me was a solid steel door. I wasn’t sure why this door was here but I pulled on the handle, finding it open and slammed it shut behind me, locking it.

I was in a room with glass windows on every side. There were monitors everywhere. It was some kind of security station.

The windows overlooked the transportation pad.

There was a pounding on the door and looking at the monitor, I could see several Suhlik outside, trying to break it down.

I looked around frantically for something to block the door or more serious weaponry, but there wasn’t anything to be seen. All the chairs were bolted down and there weren’t any weapons, a comm panel or anything else useful.

“Well,” I said out loud to myself. “This is problematic.”

I looked out the windows of the security office and I could see Nadia creeping out.

I couldn’t see any Suhlik out there.

I’m guessing all of them were either at my door or were racing through the facility trying to find me.

I sighed, the band of worry wrapped around my chest loosening.

Maybe I wouldn’t make it. But she would be safe.

As I watched, Nadia slunk along, carefully looking back and forth and made it to the transport control panel.

At that moment, the door to the office burst open. The Suhlik blasted the door off its hinges with some small explosive device.

I ducked behind a desk and fired off a few rounds, striking a couple of the Suhlik coming through.

This wasn’t going to last very long. I just had to hold them off until Nadia got away. I wasn’t sure how long it would take her to activate the transporter, but I needed to buy her as much time as possible.

The Suhlik were pouring in and my blaster only had so much charge. I had to do something to delay them somehow.

I heard one of them shout and I knew that they had spotted Nadia on the platform. Stepping out from behind the desk, I fired some shots off quickly and that was the end of my ammo.

Not waiting for them to attack me, I dove into the crowd, knocking them down, kicking and swinging, biting when necessary.

I wasn’t going to last long. It just had to be long enough.

Four of them piled on me and it was more than I could fight off easily. They pinned my arms and legs down and the largest Suhlik, presumably their captain, stepped forward.

“Now you die,” he hissed. “And then she does.”

“Fuck you,” I growled and struggled with everything I had to get free.

That was when I heard a barrage of blasts, shattering the glass of the office, sending it flying.

The Suhlik holding me collapsed, all of them having been shot. The captain whirled around and a bullet grazed him across the temple, sending him to the floor.

I got to my feet and saw Nadia, in the mech suit! She had strapped herself in and managed to activate it.

It was moving awkwardly, but it was moving nonetheless. Nadia was clomping towards me.

I shook my head in wonder.

“How are you doing that?” I shouted to her.

Even from this distance I could see her smile.

“Hey, it isn’t that different from a video game really. And I’m a pretty decent gamer!” She shouted back.

I laughed, shaking my head.

I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant, but it sounded pretty good to me.

The Suhlik captain had crawled to his knees and was speaking into a comm device.

“That’s right,” I heard him say. “Human in the mech suit. Top priority. Send a few more soldiers to the security office. There’s a Mahdfel in here with me.”

I ran over and kicked the communicator out his hands. He looked at me with pure fury.

“I will have you. Then I will have her. Bringing both your corpses to Shackleton Base so your friends can see how I violated you,” he snarled at me.

“It will take more than a lot of big talk, Suhlik. You wanna be the champ, you gotta take the champ.”

He looked at me quizzically.

“I’m hanging around humans too much,” I said and punched him across the face. I could hear the running footsteps of more Suhlik troops coming my way.

I didn’t need to be told twice.

Turning around, I headed for the shattered windows and dove out onto the floor, tucking into a roll as I did so.

I stumbled to my feet and headed for Nadia, who had been walking towards me in the mech suit.

“Glad you could make it,” Nadia said with a grin.

“Weren’t you supposed to head to the moon to warn everyone?” I asked.

She shrugged, face crimson.

“I decided I didn’t want to wait til the next life to see you. I’d rather do it now,” Nadia said.

I looked at her and smiled.

“Gotta say, I couldn’t agree with you more,” I said as we prepared to take on the next Suhlik assault.

Because we both knew that it was coming.

NADIA

At first, this seemed like the worst idea I’d ever had. I was shooting wildly, making more holes in the side of the barracks than I was in the Suhlik.

But I’d had enough control to keep the spray of fire away from Zorath, which was all that mattered.

Then my gaming experience bubbled up. The controls of this assault mech really weren’t all that different from the ones I used in gaming tournaments.

That joystick swiveled the main body right to left, and that joystick tilted the guns up and down.

Except this wasn’t a game.

This was real life.

With real enemies trying to kill us, trying to infiltrate the SCLB and kill everyone there, and use it to launch another attack on the Earth.

Even if I had nightmares about this later, I had to play the game.

Because losing wasn’t an option.

I jammed my thumb down on the trigger as another Suhlik jumped towards Zorath, blowing off the bastard’s face in mid-air. A bit of what I thought was probably brains hit my cheek, but I just wiped it off.

Back on Earth, I hated the thought of killing animals so much, half the time I considered becoming a vegetarian.

There on Vyrlis, I felt so bloodthirsty I would’ve ripped out a Suhlik’s throat with my bare teeth. That’s what they got for threatening my mate.

Mate?

I missed my shot as I realized the word I’d just used, even in my mind.

Viciously, I aimed a second time and shot off the Suhlik’s hand. It howled and the weapon it’d been holding skidded across the ground.

“Zorath!” I shouted. “Weapon to your right!”

He dove for it, rolling once and then coming up with weapon in hand. He tucked it into his belt with a few other backups. I was glad to see them all. The worst thing that could happen right now would be for him to run out of ammo.

Then again, maybe not, I thought, as Zorath shattered a Suhlik’s knee with a kick. It shrieked and collapsed on the ground, an easy target. Unrepentant, I shot it where it lay.

I watched Zorath out of the corner of my eye as I picked off the Suhlik closest to the teleportation pad console. He was beautiful in his deadliness, never standing still as he lunged at foe after foe. Given his height and musculature, he was more graceful than he had the right to be. Sometimes he was just a red blur between the reptilian enemy aliens.

Mate.

I thought the word again and sent a line of fire up a Suhlik trying to creep up on Zorath’s back. We got naked one time, and suddenly he was my mate? I’d never been that kind of girl, ready to jump into a commitment.

But earlier… it just felt different.

There was another Suhlik running for the teleport controls. I sprayed a line of fire across its path, not hitting it but making it fall back. I had to keep them from retreating to the moon base. Any number of Suhliks loose in an unprepared military complex was bad news. I might have been a civilian, but I knew that much.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a Suhlik running for the base of the mech. I knew I’d better get it before it was too low for my guns to hit. I swung into a perfect shot, and — click.

Click. Click. Click.

The mech was out of charge.

“FUCK!” I yelled.

The Suhlik had made it to the side of the mech. It was scrabbling for handholds and yelling for backup. It seemed like half of the remaining Suhlik fighters peeled away and headed directly for me.

“Zorath, I’m out of ammo!” I screamed. I found his black horns among the remains of the horde. He’d already seen the Suhlik swarm the mech and was running towards me. If it were possible, he was even faster than before, crashing through the soldiers that surrounded him like they were nothing.

He pulled another blaster out of his belt and aimed for the mech. I crouched into my seat as a Suhlik swiped its arm up over my head, just barely missing me. I heard a splat.

One of Zorath’s shots must have gotten it, because it slumped over dead, falling on top of me and trapping me in the gunner seat.

I struggled, trying to push the scaly body off me, but it was so damn heavy. I grunted as I levered my arm under its torso and pushed. I wasn’t getting anywhere, but then the dead Suhlik was ripped off me.

I threw up my hands, expecting my doom in the form of the snake-like face of one of the Suhlik. But it was Zorath. A surge of relief shot through me at my sight of his face, paired with a surge of… love?

He yanked me out of my seat and into his arms. The moment I was cradled against his chest, I knew I couldn’t lie to myself any longer. Almost losing Zorath, watching him in danger at every turn just now, my heart had been jolted into recognizing that I loved him, so much.

Maybe I had for a while.

But I didn’t have time to process the earth-shattering truth that I was in love with a red-skinned alien.

The Suhlik were still coming.

“Put your arms around my neck and hold on!” Zorath bellowed.

I did as he commanded, and he jumped off the mech in one bone-rattling motion. Clasping me to him with one arm and shooting Suhlik left and right with the other, he dashed for the teleport console.

His last blaster ran out right as we reached the pad.

He threw it aside, and a grinning Suhlik stepped between us and the controls. Never loosening his hold on me, Zorath pulled back and delivered a brutal punch to the Suhlik’s face. A bloody fang flew through the air as the soldier crumpled, our last obstacle to the console gone.

Zorath jammed a few of the buttons and threw us both onto the pad. We sprawled across its surface and I screwed up my eyes as I heard the Suhlik yelling and more gunfire.

The pinpricking sensation from the first trip gathered across my skin. I just hoped I wouldn’t feel a bullet wound added to that feeling, and then —

Silence.

We were in the teleportation room at the lunar base, prone on the pad. I groaned and pushed myself up on my elbows.

Blearily, I saw a Vaznik I vaguely recognized standing next to the pad. Rekker, I guessed. Three other tall horned soldiers were beside him, and a pallet of boxes next to them. All four of the warriors were open-mouthed, gaping at Zorath and me.

“Zorath…” My mouth was so dry I could barely get his name out. I groped for him, but he wasn’t there. The most ice cold horror I’d ever felt blasted through me. Did he somehow get left behind?

Then a familiar red crossed my vision. Zorath had already gotten up and was wrenching a blaster from one of the other Vaznik’s belt. The guy barely even had time to protest before Zorath was sending a stream of laser fire at the transportation console.

The noise was deafening as he emptied the charge in a matter of seconds. The controls had been reduced to a smoking mass. Sparks were jumping across its surface and down to the floor.

“What in the fuck?” Rekker said into the quiet that followed. “Zorath, are you insane? What did you just do that for?”

“Suhlik,” said my lover, swaying on his feet with well-deserved exhaustion. “An entire battalion of them. Attacked the Vyrlis base out of nowhere, killed everyone. They were planning an assault on the Moon. They were about to come through.”

“That can’t be right,” whispered one of the Vaznik I didn’t know. “Everyone on Vyrlis is dead?”

“I’m sorry,” said Zorath. “We did what we could.”

“Just you and your human woman defeated an entire battalion of Suhlik?” Rekker looked impressed.

“As many as we could,” I said, my voice shaky. “Now, can we have some water?”

I’d barely finished speaking when Zorath threw himself down beside me and gathered me into his arms. I pressed my face into his neck, clinging to him like I’d never let go.

“We’ll go get you that water.” Rekker sounded a tiny bit amused. “But this needs to be reported, immediately. You, go get the Admiral.”

I heard the sound of booted footsteps at a run, but I hardly cared. We’d made it. We were safe, and thanks to Zorath’s quick thinking, the Suhlik couldn’t follow us. The biggest and scariest adventure of my life was over and I was finally back at Shackleton Crater Lunar Base.

I remembered this all started because I told Zorath I wanted to explore the galaxy. I tamped down the hysterical giggle that threatened to spill out at the thought. I didn’t need another bout of those right now.

What I needed was just this.

Being held in the arms of the man I finally could admit to myself I loved.

ZORATH

As far as I was concerned, we couldn’t get away from there fast enough. On every side, everyone seemed intent on puzzling out all the shit we had just endured, and I was in no mood to talk about it. Shit, when we landed, Nadia and I were both still catching our breath.

Shattering the telepad might not have been my most graceful move, but I wanted to make damn sure that those Suhlik monsters didn’t have a fucking chance of getting through. Now, they could troubleshoot back on Vyrlis all they wanted – they weren’t getting to Shackleton anytime soon.

But we couldn’t leave until the debriefing was over.

Finally, the brass left us, and mopping up the Suhlik on Vyrlis was someone else’s problem.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Damn right, Mac. I need some air.”

She didn’t have to tell me twice. We nearly ran out of the teleportation center, and as soon as we were back out in civilization, I was able to breathe easier. Looking down at Nadia, I could tell she was feeling the same way.

Shackleton may have been as densely packed as any other dome city, but at that point I was ready for it. If I never saw another jungle, it would be far too soon.

“Let’s find ourselves someplace quiet?”

“Yes, please.”

We took a couple of steps, but Nadia faltered slightly.

Fear raced under my skin.

Had she gotten hurt in the midst of everything and I hadn’t noticed?

Now the adrenaline was wearing off, a serious wound might be catching up with her.

And we’d left all the medics behind us.

“Holy shit,” I said. “Don’t move.”

I pulled her arms out and scrutinized them. Then, I hit the sidewalk on all fours and pored over every inch of her legs. There were no tears in her clothing, and no trace of blood.

“What are you doing?” There was a laugh in her voice, but I wasn’t letting that comfort me just yet. Delirium could be a sign of major trauma. Back on my feet, I gripped her shoulders and scoured her back. That done, I started picking through her hair, looking for gashes on her scalp.

“Seriously, cut it out,” she giggled.

“Can’t. What if you’re hurt?”

“Hurt? What are you talking about?”

I was in front of her now, covering and uncovering her eyes to check her pupil dilation. If she had a concussion, I wanted to know about it.

“Zorath, hang on.” One of her hands came up, and she cupped her fingers around my palm. Stopping my examination, she nestled her cheek into my hand. “I’m alright.”

“But, if you’re hurt, I have to take care of you.” There was just a bit of panic still lingering in my blood. In truth, it felt strangely unreal to be safe again after all the running we had done.

“I’m not hurt, but, there’s one way you could really take care of me.”

“Anything,” I said. And I meant it.

“I think I could use a drink!” She let out a burst of laughter that chased all the fear right out of me. I smiled, the stress and fear finally fading, and we ambled easily down the walkway.

“This’ll do just fine,” she said as we stepped into a low, smoky dive. One of the advantages to drinking in the middle of the day was that we didn’t have to jockey for a place at the bar. Or for the attention of the woman pouring drinks.

“What’ll you kids have?” she asked in the raspy voice of a professional smoker. For a second, I wondered if she alone was responsible for the haze hanging in the air. She was a Gorgalian, tentacled hair writhing around her face, so I wouldn’t have put it past her – they were famous hedonists.

“I’d love a martini, actually. Dirty as you can make it.”

“That’s pretty dirty, toots. Olive juice is cheaper than gin.”

“Sounds perfect.” Nadia gripped the bar and leaned back, looking at ease at last.

“What about you, handsome? Thirsty?”

“I’ll have the same, actually.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Nadia rocked forward and put her hand on mine. “No gin for you today, Mac. I’m going to need you later.” The wicked invitation in her words lit up the warm spot just under my heart. A new feeling spread through me – I was gonna have to tell her. It couldn’t wait.

“Make mine a bourbon then,” I said.

“You got a kind?”

“Do you really have more than one?”

“Fair enough,” the bartender smiled with a shrug. “You doing doubles, hon?”

“I’ll take a bottle,” I grinned at her.

“Big spender.” She smirked over her shoulder and slithered away to get everything ready. Nadia had left her hand on mine, and I looked down at it, breathing in deeply. This was my chance.

“Nadia, listen…”

“Actually… I’m sorry to interrupt? Can I say something? I mean, there’s something I’ve been needing to say.”

Oh, fuck. She knew where I was going and headed me off at the pass. I could hear it already. ‘Thanks for everything, but…’ or, ‘You’re really great and all…’ Maybe it would even be the worst one – ‘You’ve become such a good friend since we’ve been here.’ That bourbon couldn’t arrive fast enough.

“Alright,” I said, taking my hand back from under hers and gripping the bar. What do you have to say?”

“It’s just that, the last couple of days have been unlike anything else in my life. When you add that to everything from the last three weeks…

“Okay, kids, here we go.” Our croaking hostess was back, and clacked everything down, heedless of how much she spilled. “One martini for the blonde with the nice eyes, and a bottle of our finest well whiskey for Big Red.” She unscrewed the cap with a flourish and dropped it on the bar next to the bottle. “Anything else?”

“We’re good.” All I wanted was a little bit of privacy so we didn’t have an audience to watch Nadia let me down easy. As soon as our chaperone was gone, I tipped up the bottle and took a generous slug to cushion the news.

“Jesus, Mac, slow down. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, breathing into the burn. “It’s fine. It really is. And, I get it. In spite of everything, it’d be too much to ask someone like you to actually spend your life with someone like me. I mean, you’re funny, smart, and startlingly beautiful…”

“Wait, wait, wait,” she had her hands up. “Slow down. What exactly do you think is happening right now?”

“Well, you’re going, right? You’re going home.”

“No. How could I do that? Zorath, I love you. I’m in love with you.”

I sat stunned, staring at her like an idiot. The words were so welcome, I almost couldn’t hear them.

“I’m sorry,” I shook my head. “I’m going to need you to say that again.” Thankfully, she laughed.

“Look, I’ve known for a while, okay? At least, I think so. When our last day together came, I wasn’t even sure then if I was actually going to be able to go back or not. Then, after everything that happened over on Vyrlis, I just knew it. Mac, I can’t live without you.”

I opened my mouth. Then I closed it again. For a crazy moment, there was nothing inside me to come out. Instead, I reached over, picked up my bottle and held it out to her. She chuckled out a small laugh, then lifted her martini glass and clinked it to the neck of my bottle.

“Son of a bitch,” she said, sputtering after her drink. “That lady wasn’t kidding.”

“What?” I patted her back lightly as she coughed into the back of her hand. “I’m not even sure there’s any gin in this thing.”

“Perfect for me, then,” I said. Then, centering myself, I took both of her hands. “Nadia, I never imagined I could feel like this. When other people talked about love, they always sounded crazy to me. Well, if they were crazy, then I must be absolutely insane, because if you don’t spend your life with me, then I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

“Fortunately, I don’t think you have to worry about it.”

“Well then, let me make this official. Nadia, will you stay with me? Will you marry me?”

“You’re funny. I said yes before you even asked.” She tipped forward and kissed me like it was the first time. And, in some ways, it was. Because it was the first time our lips had met when we both knew every bit of what it meant.

When she leaned back from me, there was a glint in her eye that called back to her admonition to steer me away from gin.

“You know,” she lingered over her salty glass, “I still have a few hours left on my hotel room. It’d be a shame to let those go to waste.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ve never been one to waste anything if I can help it.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed.”

“To that end,” I pushed back my stool and called down the bar. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

“Whatchu lovebirds got?” I lifted up the bottle of whiskey and rattled it in the air.

“I don’t suppose we could get a to-go bag for this?” She smirked over her glasses and balled up her fists on her hips.

“Who are you kidding? Get out of here, you two. It’s on me.”

NADIA

We were tearing each other’s clothes off before we could get inside the room. I struggled with the digital key, trying to line it up to the receiver panel. Zorath laughed as he reached between my legs, teasing me through my pants. I clamped my thighs shut and squirmed, trying to remember what the fuck I was supposed to be doing.

The door made a soft beep and swung open, so I must have finally lined up the card right. Neither of us were ready for the sudden movement and we fell through the door to tumble into a pile on the other side.

Zorath was on top of me and my face was pressed to the floor. I waited for him to get up, but he didn’t, just shifted position until he was between my legs. I tried to sit up, but he pressed me down with a hand on the back of my neck.

“The door’s still open, Mac.”

“I know.”

“Well don’t—”

“Don’t what?” He leaned forward and ran his tongue along the back of my ear, making me cry out. I tried to move again but he put one hand on the back of my head and the other between my legs.

I forgot about the fucking door. I forgot about everything. I could feel his hand on my head, gently pressing me down. His hard body was squeezing me between him and the floor but all of this coalesced into a point between my legs where he was teasing me with his long fingers.

“Ah… Hem.” There was a faint stutter. Zorath froze on top of me and I giggled into the carpet.

I felt my lover move on top of me to look over his shoulder. He then burst into laughter that was distracting enough for him to let go. I quickly turned over and saw two well-dressed ladies standing in the hall, watching us with wide eyes.

I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing too. We fell against each other giggling like idiots while the faces on the women turned darker and darker.

One of them had turned beet red by the time I got to my knees and shuffled to the door. I held the edge and winked at them.

“You can act offended if you like, ladies., but if it bothers you so much… Why are you watching?”

Zorath got caught in another fit of laughter, far louder than the last. I slammed the door shut on their shocked faces and leapt on top of Zorath, pulling off my shirt. He went still under me as I wrapped my thighs around him, watching my breasts bounce as I hurled my shirt across the room.

I wriggled and he leaned back, thrusting his hips up. I could feel his enormous weapon through his pants and my pussy was already wet so much I could feel my pants getting damp.

I leaned forward to run my hands over his chest, enjoying the silky feel of his skin underneath the fabric. I might have been quite happy to explore him like that for hours, but Zorath wouldn’t wait.

He sat up suddenly, grabbing my hands. It was incredible, but I kept forgetting how strong he was. He was always so gentle with me that I tended to think he was just like any man, but he wasn’t like a human man at all.

I grinned as he kissed me, letting him hold my hands. He ran his fingers up my arms and held on to my shoulders as he tumbled us to the ground.

I twisted as I fell, and he took advantage of the movement to press me to the floor on my face again in front of the wall mirror.

He reached around to unfasten my pants before yanking them off my legs. I was gasping with anticipation as I heard the soft, whispery movements of him quickly me getting out of my own clothes.

I stayed on my face, relaxing and stretching my arms out in front of me. His hot, rough palm rubbed my ass cheeks and I slowly got on to my knees, keeping my head down while I invited him to look at me, touch me, and fuck me from my most vulnerable position.

His hands pressed gently to my ass cheeks as I felt his tongue flick up and down my crack. I jumped in his strong grip as he teased the edges of the lips and darted his tongue inside. He kept up with the teasing, light touches until I was almost screaming, caught on the edge of orgasm.

He moved behind me and when I felt his hard cock pressing against my soft, wet pussy a moan slipped through my lips that came from deep in my chest. I was feeling everything in such a heightened state that even the barest pressure of his cock was making my pussy clench and spasm, begging for his hardness.

He moved his hips forward a little and I felt his hard, bulbous cock parting my lips and curling the inner petals as he slipped inside. He was so big that I felt tight soreness at the edges of my pussy, but he kept up his gentle pace, giving my body time to open up for him.

When he finally met the end of me, he leaned forward over my back, gasping. I could feel him trembling. Knowing that he was in rapture the same way I was made the moment even more intense. Even though neither of us moved, my core spasmed and came alive, rivers of juice pouring out of me.

He started to thrust, slowly at first, then faster. I bent my head forwards, my forehead resting on my arms. I closed my eyes, I tried to relax through my hips and back. As soon as he felt me relax, Zorath picked up the pace.

“You’re mine,” he growled. “My mate.”

“Yes,” I breathed, unable to deny it, unable to deny him anything. “Yours.”

He was a force of pure male sexuality. Every single part of him was hard and hot and in control. I was a tiny boat tossing on a stormy sea, a little bird caught in screaming, gale force winds. My body was tiny, weak, and insignificant in the face of his raw, dominating male energy.

As my body shuddered, goosebumps flew across my skin like prickling fire. I gasped into the floor, trying to hold my ass up and keep my knees steady. Soon that didn’t matter—Zorath gripped my hips tightly and slammed his body forward until I could feel his balls pressed against me.

He stretched up, looking at the ceiling as he kept the pressure on, his huge cock splitting me right to the end. As he pressed forward harder and harder my pussy responded with waves of clenching, clamping on his cock, and pumping it. He let out a little satisfied moan and I realized my body’s expressions of satisfaction were incredibly pleasurable for him.

“Zorath,” I gasped, somewhere between a whispered and a prayer.

He drew himself back out and the sensation of loss inside me was so great that I cried out. When he slammed himself in again another cry burst from my lips, one of complete pleasure.

Now he set up a punishing pace, thrusting in and out, faster, and faster. His hips took on their own rhythm and every slam forward hit me deep inside and made me scream.

My orgasms rolled over each other, multiples becoming one. My pussy wouldn’t stop pulsing and throbbing and his hard cock in the middle of all those kept stroking me, touching me everywhere at once.

I heard his cries slipping out through gritted teeth. I felt his body getting harder all over, every muscle focused on claiming me, owning me, taking me. Just as I knew I could take no more and my body fell limp against the floor he shoved his hips forward, pressing against my cervix and stretching my pussy wide as his cock pulsed and spurted as deep inside me as it could possibly go.

The sound of our breathing rasped through the room, my own panting broken by tiny, whimpering cries. Zorath didn’t move for a second, leaning forward from the hips and making tiny thrusting motions, like he was on autopilot. He slid out of me slowly, my body lingering, letting him go slowly, inch by inch.

The second he let go I collapsed against the floor; all my strength gone. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move, but none of that mattered.

His hands reached for me, just like I knew they would. I was completely powerless as he wrapped me in his arms and pulled me against his chest. I knew that I could let myself go like this with him anytime that I wanted to, because no matter how hard I fell, he would always be there to pick me up again.

EPILOGUE: NADIA

“When I look at this piece, I see the struggle between modernity, and our deeper primordial instincts. Between the older, primitive, Earthbound human civilizations, and the way we are today.”

“Mm-hm.” Honestly, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her jewelry. She may have been one of the wealthiest women I’d ever laid eyes on, and I had started running in some pretty high-class circles.

The gallery had pretty much seen to that.

“What must you have been thinking when you painted it, darling?”

“Hmm?” I don’t know why Carole Wolfson’s question caught me so off guard – it’s the same one all the moneyed socialites asked. But, looking at the canvas dense with teeth and mayhem, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that it was just about me fighting the Suhlik.

So many of my paintings were.

The commendation he’d received had helped us open the space, and the publicity from our ‘daring battle’ had piqued enough people’s curiosity to launch the gallery.

But it was the paintings themselves that kept buyers coming back.

“Actually…” I looked into her watery, expectant eyes, then back down to the gaudy array of precious gemstones speckled around her neck. “You’ve hit it exactly.” She rewarded me with a warm smile that told me I had a sale on my hands. “Most of my life was spent on Earth, you know. It wasn’t until I was being courted by my husband that I even made it as far as the moon.”

“Oh!” She gasped at my provincial upbringing, and dramatically put a hand to her mouth. “You poor thing,” she cooed. “But, of course, you’ve traveled extensively since?”

“Naturally,” I patted her sleeve and twinkled out my practiced cocktail laugh. I’d never even been past the Moon’s orbit. Just back to Earth a few times to tie up my life there and get the things I needed to settle in the SCLB. As long as Zorath was at my side, I was where I needed to be.

“Tell me,” Carole leaned in with a surprisingly confidential tone – as if we were old friends. “You’ve married one of those Mahdfel men, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“How is it?” There was a wicked, desperate gleam behind her eye that told me how much she needed just a whiff of fantasy. Widowed rich by some pudgy human financier, I’d seen the look innumerable times.

“It’s heavenly,” I answered truthfully. “Better than I could ever have imagined.” Allowing just enough innuendo into my voice to give her what she wanted, Carole leaned back looking thoroughly envious and satisfied. She turned back to the piece she had been pining over.

“I think I’ll take this one,” she said. “Who would I be in society if I didn’t have a Nadia on my wall?” As if caught out, she gripped my forearm, “and I love it, of course.”

“Of course.”

“I don’t suppose you and your husband have any evenings free? I’ve got a small gathering coming up, and I would so love to get to know you better.” Invitations like this weren’t particularly rare, but there was something so genuine in the last bit of what she said. Money has a way of making people lonely, and I could feel in her relaxed grip that what she wanted more than the art was someone to talk to.

“I would love that,” I said. “Just be sure to write down your details for me.”

Several thousand credits and one potential friend richer, I watched Carole push open the glass doorway to my gallery and step back into the street. In the months since Mac and I had settled in Shackleton, I had managed to kick up a minor amount of celebrity. It was simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting.

“Did I see one of your paintings walking down the street, my love?” The door had pushed open again, and Zorath sauntered through with Rekker close behind him.

“What are you doing off work?” It was the middle of the day, which meant they should have been on patrols. Neither of them were in uniform, so something had to be up.

“Undercover work,” Rekker whispered quietly, and started pacing around looking at my stuff.

“Is that so? And you think you’ll find something suspicious on Artist’s Row?”

“Not likely.” Mac scooped me up and kissed me. He might have wanted to make it a professional on-duty peck, but I got my arms around his neck and made it count. His boss might have wanted to feign shock, but I’d seen Lila more affectionate back at headquarters. None of us were particularly coy about things.

“You’re going to need to get your suit cleaned,” I grinned up at Zorath.

“Again? What is it this time – another opening?”

“Nope,” I laughed lightly and shook my head. “Mrs. Wolfson was just here and invited us to a little get together she’s having. I told her we’d be delighted.”

“Wait, Carole Wolfson was just here?” Rekker looked over from the far wall, impressed.

“You just passed her with Vyrlis Midnight under her arm.”

Zorath whistled through his teeth. “Big spender. Well done, sweet.”

“She can afford it,” Rekker had turned his attention back to my paintings. After another quick glance, he stood upright with a small shudder. “Personally, I wouldn’t want one of these in my house. Lila and I have seen enough of the Suhlik to last us a long time.

“Oh, is that what you see? That wasn’t my intention at all.”

“No?” He looked momentarily befuddled.

“Not in the least.” I turned my husband loose and moseyed over to Rekker with my best Artist Voice. “My work deals with the internal struggles between innate, animal desires, and the moral rectitude imposed upon us by an imperialist, multi-galactic construct. Suhlik? How very gauche.”

Behind the counter, Sergei stifled a laugh, but Zorath was far less reserved about it. He doubled over and let loose. After several black tie events, he absolutely loved when I put on phony gallery-speak.

“Oh, shut up.” Rekker tweaked my nose and headed back for the door. “We’re on the job, but thought we would stop in. Come on, Mac.” He gave Zorath a pat on the shoulder. “Let’s hit the street.”

“Alright,” Zorath grumbled. He hated that my little pet name for him had been picked up by the rest of the crew. It was maybe the only thing he hated about giving up his pilot position with The Golden Meridian. He pined over ‘Goldie’ sometimes, but he wasn’t fooling me.

Now that he was stationed here, he’d even started taking cooking classes, surprising me with any number of surprising, and usually tasty, combinations.

It was clear to everybody that ever since we had gotten involved, he was much happier with his feet firmly on the moon.

“Hey, before we get out of here,” Rekker turned back to me. “Cedroc is bringing Coralie over to meet us at The Ventulian for happy hour. If you close up early, I know she and Lila would love to see you.”

“Count on it.” I loved those girls.

In truth, I loved all of them.

Rekker was never one to lord his authority over anyone, which made him excellent company. He and Zorath had become fast friends, but it was Cedroc who really stole our hearts. He had a wicked swagger about him that was absolutely irresistible, and he and my hubby were more or less joined at the hip.

Every time he cracked a little too wise, Coralie would cut out his knees in the funniest possible way. The whole of it made them some of the best people to spend time with.

In truth, all of them were. As a girl, it never occurred to me that I might one day live on the moon of all places, but it had become the kind of life I had always wanted.

Taking a moment to look around my gallery, all I could do was breathe in my good fortune. None of it was like anything I had planned for my life, and yet in hindsight it all felt so inevitable. I’d be tempted to have used the word ‘fate,’ except that it brought back all that distasteful stuff about DNA and ‘destined matches.’

I wasn’t with Zorath because of any of that crap – I was with him because I loved him. You could call it whatever you wanted, but he had earned my love fair and square. Anyone who insinuated otherwise was bound to get an earful.

Sauntering slowly back to the far end of the gallery, I opened the storage room and looked at all the canvases waiting to be seen. Now that I had a bare spot on the wall, something needed to fill it. Fortunately, my experiences since leaving earth had provided fertile ground for my imagination to play in.

Flipping through several from my Suhlik series, I found one that seemed like it would be an excellent complement to the ones flanking the empty space. But, before I could pull it out into the gallery proper, I looked at a stack of work at the far wall.

Indulging in a faint smile, I tiptoed through the narrow path between all the stacks of art, and peeked at a few.

Spilling out in front of me were images of Zorath and me, twined around each other.

Two bodies melded into one in the darkness of a cave. The passion captured on the canvas almost made the pieces hot to the touch.

A flush ran through me.

Maybe I should take one home, see if Mac would like to reenact anything.

Not that he needed any prompting.

But after the surprise of my life, finding my love and my mate in the stars, I enjoyed surprising him.

And we’d spend the rest of our lives surprising each other.

Best holiday ever.

I HOPE you loved enjoyed spending some time with our Vaznik Warriors again as much as I did!

If you missed how Rekker and his crew met their mates, you can get caught up by clicking here.

And more Vaznik goodness will be out next year!

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RESCUED BY HER ALIEN MATE

I thought being kidnapped by four-armed blue apes was as weird as life was going to get.

Boy, was I wrong...

We've crashed, our captors have fled, and now we've been rounded up by a group of tall, horned men. With scales. Who don't understand a word we say.

So why does my heart flutter when their leader touches me?  When his eyes flash silver, something deep inside me answers.

But if I lose my heart, how can I keep myself and the other women safe?

Rescued by her Alien Mate is the first book of the Warriors of the D'Tali science fiction romance series. Each book contains a complete HEA for our couple, and lots of steamy SFR fun!

CLICK HERE TO GET RESCUED!

ROGUE MATE

Science fiction romance is the destination of the Rogue Star…. Hop on board!

OUR RESCUERS ARE a group of pirates. Or smugglers. They're not exactly answering questions, either.

More importantly, they're giant, golden skinned aliens...

And their rogue of a captain seems very interested in the little human commander.

Me.

ROGUE MATE IS the first in the Rogue Star science fiction alien romance series. Click now to start the adventure!

KAZAN

A mate is the last thing on my mind.

Especially one as sassy as the human female they say is my match.

Even if her lush curves call for my touch, and her fiery spirit is equal to my own.

I will endure the thirty days demanded by the Protocol.

But with every look, every word, I can feel us bound closer together.

Will I be able to leave her, even for her own safety?

KAZAN IS the first book of the Jorkan Protocol Mates. Click now to spend the night with this perfect steamy, funny science fiction romance escape. There's no cheating, and a guaranteed HEA for each alien warrior and his mate!

Copyright © 2020 by Ava York

All rights reserved. These books or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the Author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Contents

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Zorath

Nadia

Epilogue: Nadia

Are you a STARR HUNTRESS?

Rescued by her Alien Mate

Rogue Mate

Kazan

Copyright