“I agree. This station is a fucking cesspool.” Helion’s words held a bit too much excitement for my tastes. He loved the chase. The hunt. He thrived on tracing the untraceable. Bringing down the most powerful killers and criminals. An assassin who hunted other assassins. He was bored if he wasn’t knocking on death’s door. I’d followed right behind him for years. Now I was done. Done with that life. Done guarding his back. Done killing. Done fighting. Done.
I had a beautiful, soft mate. A mate to protect and care for. I had a new purpose. If I never saw Dr. Helion after this day, that would be fine with me.
* * *
Quinn, Transport Station Zenith
The fanged asshole who had walked into my dressing room on Earth now paced the small space like he was the prisoner instead of me.
I had no idea how long I’d been asleep or how I’d gotten to this strange room or on this uncomfortable bed. The last thing I remembered was being in the makeup room and him slapping something onto my skirt. I must have passed out during transport and only woke up in this room. I had my clothes on, but my blouse was wrinkled as if I’d been wearing it all day while wrestling alligators. Clean alligators. My heels were on the strange, metallic floor beside me. I was tired even though I’d obviously been out for a while. My head hurt like I had the mother of all hangovers, and I had a sore spot behind my ear. I touched it and winced. Since I was still dressed and hadn’t been beaten or worse, I was going to count this one a win as far as kidnappings went. So far.
I licked my dry lips. “Who are you, and where am I?”
He jerked to his full height at my questions and turned on me with a snarl, fangs now in full view. They were all I could see. It was like coming face-to-face with a bad guy vampire in a movie. Who kidnapped the innocent—and obviously—clueless human. I didn’t know tons about different space races, but fangs? What planet had vampires?
“If you were going to bite me with those canines from hell, or kill me, you would have done so already. So, please, tell me where I am and why.” I kept my voice soft and nonthreatening, because the truth was, I was no threat. He was well over a foot taller than me. Not as tall as Bahre but still huge. Not human. A serious threat. He could kill me with his bare hands. Or those fangs. I didn’t know where I was or why I’d been taken.
He tilted his head when I didn’t look away from him or his fangs, as if considering what to tell me. Eventually he shrugged, closed his mouth, and put those stupid fangs away. If he was going for scary, he had a long way to go before he could make me worry.
Fine, I was scared, but I wasn’t going to show it. He seemed to feed off that.
I had to hold out hope. Bahre would come for me. I knew he would in my gut, at a bone-deep level. This jerk was obviously an alien, too. He’d said as much in my dressing room. If he thought he could take on my warlord, he was going to be dead wrong.
As in both dead and wrong.
The alien bowed like a gentleman at court. “My name is Lukabo. I am a member of Siren Legion of Rogue 5.” His words sounded strange, but somehow I understood him. He must have seen my confusion because he tapped the back of his ear, exactly where I hurt. “I implanted an NPU while you were unconscious. The translation device will allow you to speak to all known races.”
I had a universal translator in my head now? No wonder I had a headache. He’d spoken English in the makeup room but was speaking something else now. Whatever they spoke on Rogue 5 was far from my high school’s foreign language offerings.
Intrigued, I tried to process what I was hearing. “Rogue 5? That’s a moon, right?”
He nodded once. Decisively. “Yes. Rogue 5 is the moon that orbits Hyperion. My ancestors bred with the natives on that planet.” He lifted his hand to his lips. “Hence, the fangs.”
So he was Hyperion, or at least half, so not a vampire.
Fascinating. His words were an odd mixture of growling and guttural words. The newscaster in me wanted to ask a million questions; however, I really only needed one answer at the moment. “So, are we on Rogue 5?”
He gave a quick smile. “Not yet. We are on Transport Station Zenith. A space station near Rogue 5.”
I was on a space station? Like a huge moving ship with lots and lots of people? Holy shit. I turned and slipped my feet into my high heels and stood, walking to what looked like might be a window. No luck. It was dark and gray. Blank. Some kind of screen. I turned to face Lukabo, feeling better with my heels on. Stupid? Maybe, but I wasn’t going to question the smallest ounce of courage I could muster. “Why am I here? I don’t know you. You don’t know me. You obviously don’t intend to harm me, so what’s going on?”
He chuckled, although he didn’t seem to find me ha-ha funny. “You are not my target, that is true. Warlord Bahre murdered my father and my brother. I have been tracking him for nearly a year.”
I felt as if he’d punched me in the stomach. His words couldn’t be true. “What?” Murdered? As in, killed in cold blood? I shook my head. My hair, which Ellen had finished styling for my on-air segment right before his appearance, fell now about my shoulders. “No way.”
If Bahre had harmed
