Kira, Sector 437, Battlegroup Karter, Shuttle Bay 9

“Damn it!” Commander Chloe Phan pulled her helmet off and threw it against the side of the shuttle in a fit of anger. “This isn’t working. That’s the third time we’ve gone out there and we’re no closer to taking that barrier down.”

Chloe was a fellow Earth girl, fellow I.C. asset, and my exact opposite. She was beautiful and exotic, with straight ebony hair and dark green eyes. I was pale and colorless next to her with my blonde hair and milk-white skin. But she was human, smart as hell, and right now, she was giving voice to the rage I, too, felt. We’d been out on the edge of Sector 437 three times now, looking for the central command nodes of the newest weapon the Hive were using to control space, an invisible network of mines so powerful they could destroy an entire battlegroup in minutes.

And it had done just that less than two weeks ago.

Since these nodes were undetectable by the Coalition’s current ship sensors, the Coalition had lost an entire battlegroup in a single day in Sector 19. Gone. Completely obliterated.

Because of this, Commander Grigg Zakar had shown up at I.C. Core Command—uninvited, which was borderline suicidal even for an angry Prillon—and demanded an I.C. asset with the brain implants be deployed to his battleship at once to keep the same thing from happening under his command.

The woman who’d gone with him, Erica James, was one of my best friends, a make-love-not-war hippie from Oregon. She was half black and half white…her mother was a hippie and her dad a rocket scientist. The woman was funny as hell, totally different and the most unexpected person I’d ever met on the front lines of our fight with the Hive.

No doubt, she was already rocking their world out there in Sector 17 with all those big, burly alpha-male aliens having to wait for her to hear things through the implant in the base of her skull. I’d spent more than a few hours with a grin on my face wondering how things were going and how the warriors out there were adapting to her obsession with 1970s-era Earth disco music. Thinking of a group of Atlan Warlords grooving to the Village People’s song Macho Man almost made me burst out laughing.

Insane! But dancing or not dancing, Battlegroup Zakar was still fighting and still whole, so I figured she was doing her job. I hadn’t heard of a group of warlords and warriors going AWOL either.

Erica was doing her job, but Chloe and I were struggling. That brought my wandering attention back to the here and now. Sector 437, and the Battlegroup Karter. Especially since Chloe practically had smoke coming out of her ears. This battlegroup had its own problems. They weren’t trapped, but they couldn’t move freely either. I could transport in and out, go back to my day job at the Coalition Academy. Others could transport, too, and they could move supplies, but until we took down that damned barrier, the entire battlegroup wasn’t moving anywhere. It was like being caught on a highway with a fifty-car pileup because of an invisible jackknifed eighteen-wheeler. No one was moving forward and because of the cars continuing to bunch up at the back, we were stuck.

In short, the Hive was winning, and none of us were happy about it.

“Then we’ll go out again and again until we find what we’re looking for, Commander.” The Prillon who spoke to Chloe was a gorgeous specimen, an excellent pilot, and Chloe’s mate. And while on the job, he called her by her title. I loved the way he respected her rank, her knowledge, even while being the blatant dominant. I didn’t know much about her other mate, but knew he must have some serious balls because Chloe needed a strong-willed partner—partners—and a very gentle touch. Per the Prillon custom that they followed—I couldn’t miss the matching collars about their necks—she had two mates, and she’d told me one was human, the other obviously very Prillon. How the hell that had happened, I had no idea. Two was one too many for me. One big Atlan was more than enough to satisfy my every need. I didn’t know how I could survive two. I’d die from orgasm overdose. Inwardly, I shrugged, thinking it wasn’t that bad of a way to go.

I thought of big, gorgeous, strong, sexy Angh. It still broke my heart, even with the depressing reminder of just how badly the war was going—and how much I was still needed—that I couldn’t keep him. Leaving him asleep in his bed had been one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do.

“No, Dorian, we won’t,” Chloe argued back. “I can’t do this alone. And she—” I was the she that Chloe pointed to with disgust— “can’t hear them.” The look she gave me was brutally honest and unapologetic. “Sorry, Kira, but your presence didn’t help like we’d hoped.”

“I can hear the Drones, but nothing else. I’m sorry.” I sighed, knowing I hadn’t been the least bit helpful on this mission. I’d been a failure, a dud and a complete waste of time. We’d discovered that when two of us with the implants were together, the sound was amplified. I was to be the signal boost for Chloe, but it hadn’t worked. My implant hadn’t done shit. I’d done shit for the mission.

“I know. I guess we should be counting our blessings that you heard the Hive trio that came for us on the surface of that asteroid. That saved our ass. I was too distracted looking for the mines.”

I had saved us, but it was more luck than skill. We’d been ambushed, the Hive protecting their asset from the Coalition threat. Which meant we were getting close. But close didn’t count for shit when an entire Battlegroup could go down in a matter of hours. I’d heard them coming and taken a hit on my arm blocking the Hive Scout who’d tried to take me. But that was the last thing he’d ever done. I’d ended him with a blast from my ion rifle while Chloe and the Vice Admiral took care of his two friends.

And I’d been trying, trying to hear the larger Hive network chatter in my mind, as disturbing as that was. Every once in a while, I’d get a buzz in my head, but it always faded before I could grab onto it and go deeper, before I could make it easier for Chloe to hear. Like a breeze whispering to my mind and moving on.

“I’m trying. And they’re right there. I can feel them, their energy, but it stays just out of reach.” I didn’t take her comments personally. It wasn’t as if I had any control over the stupid implant. Or the Hive, for that matter. I was a tool, a piece of equipment, not a person when it came to this kind of mission.

“No one said you weren’t, Captain.” That was my commanding officer speaking, a Vice Admiral from Everis, one of the only women I’d ever met from that planet. She was also the only female Everian Hunter on the Coalition Fleet’s asset list. Her name was Niobe, and she was the highest-ranking officer on Zioria, and in charge of the Coalition Academy, all the officers and cadets, and another of the I.C.’s hidden assets on the planet. We’d been on dozens of missions together, and although I didn’t consider her a friend, I did respect her, and her judgment. “And you did save us today. Good job. We’re getting close.”

“We’ve been close for months.” Chloe shrugged out of her space suit, her mate stepping forward to assist her, but she shrugged him off. “Thanks, Dorian. I got it. I just need a minute.”

He nodded, stepped back. “Anything you need, mate. Ask and it is yours.”

She smiled up at him and pressed her hand to his cheek, a wealth of intimate communication passing between the two that I envied. And missed. I had no doubt if he had the implant, the two of them could get synced and hear everything from the Hive. But that wasn’t how it worked. He was a pilot, an exceptional one, and listening to Hive chatter wasn’t his job.

Angh had looked at me like that. Looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I was there, that he’d gotten me beneath him, that I was the very center of his world. No, of his whole universe. At least, I’d thought so in the moment.

But that could have been orgasm induced hallucinations.

“I will contact Doctor Helion and ask for another member of the team to assist on the next mission,” Vice Admiral Niobe said. She was out of her gear and stacking it neatly for the clean-up crew waiting off to the side. They would search and scan the shuttle for Hive tech and make sure it was ready to go out again. A critical job since we would go out again. And again.

Unless we found a way to destroy this Hive mine network, we’d never regain the ground lost in this sector. The two mining planets, Latiri 4 and Latiri 7, were still active battlegrounds. The Coalition Fleet had been forced to retreat when the explosive weapons were first deployed more than two years ago. We’d gone from a firm foothold in this sector to nearly losing it in a matter of hours.

But Commander Phan had saved the entire battlegroup. Hell, the entire war, as far as I was concerned. And although we both had the experimental Hive tech implants in our heads, for some reason, she could hear the mines talking to one another, and I could not. I could hear the Hive Soldiers. The Scouts. But not their ships or their mines.

Which made me feel pretty fucking useless right now.

Doctor Helion, the Prillon warrior in charge of the experimental brain tech for the I.C., was working on a fix, but at the moment, it seemed there was no logical explanation for hers to work and for mine to fail, beyond basic biological differences in the way her brain was wired.

Since every single brain was unique, the doctor didn’t know who would be able to hear them, and who would not. Who would amplify the sound for someone else. Apparently, for Chloe Phan, that someone wasn’t me.

“That’s great, Vice Admiral, but the solution to this problem is sitting on The Colony right now, bored out of his fucking mind,” Chloe said. She still had the snap to her voice of a frustrated fighter, but it was laced with respect. “I didn’t stay here for my health. I was going to retire, go live the quiet life on Prillon Prime. But Commander Karter asked us to stay, so we stayed. And now I’m telling you, we need Warlord Anghar.”

Niobe watched Chloe stack her armor and helmet with intense interest. Thank God, because they both missed my gut wrenching reaction to hearing Angh’s name come from another woman. My heart skipped a beat as I knew I’d heard her correctly. Chloe knew Angh?

“Tell me about the Atlan. He’s contaminated?” Niobe asked. “How bad is it?”

Chloe sighed. “With all due respect Vice Admiral, he’s a decorated warlord who survived being captured by the Hive. His level of contamination should be asked at about the same time you want to know his shoe size.”

I agreed with Chloe, pleased that she’d defended the Atlan.

The Coalition’s obsession with the idea of their warriors being contaminated once they’d been captured by the Hive didn’t sit well with most humans. But then, we were new to the war. The other Coalition planets had been fighting for hundreds of years.

When Vice Admiral Niobe only dipped her head in understanding of her error, Chloe continued. “Yes, he’s on The Colony. He survived months as a Drone until Captain Mills freed him on a ReCon mission. Months, sir. He’s the strongest person I know, and not because he’s an Atlan.” Chloe lowered her chin slightly and raised her hand to point to her temple. “In here. He’s a tough fucking bastard, and the most honorable warlord, warrior or fighter I’ve ever met. We need him out here. I don’t care what the rest of the Coalition thinks. He helped me save the Sector once. I see no reason he shouldn’t help us do it again.”

“How?” I asked. The word blurted from me before I could stop it. This was something I didn’t know about the warlord whom I suspected I was falling in love with. That was an insane notion, since I’d only spent one night with him, but my lingering reaction to him was far from normal. My body literally ached for him, and from him. My pussy was sore and if anyone got sight of me naked, they’d see the hickeys and other marks of our wild lovemaking.

Discovering more about his past wasn’t helping in that regard. I only liked him more and more. He wasn’t just a quick lay now. He was a decorated, revered and qualified warlord. If Chloe vouched for him, then he’d earned her respect. The hard way.

“How did he help you?” I asked. “He was here?”

Vice Admiral Niobe noticed my interest, her gaze narrowing on me as if she could somehow know I’d spent time in his bed on The Colony just the night before. She knew what was happening at the Academy, but I wasn’t sure if she knew I’d been the one to lead the training exercise on that planet.

“Do you know Warlord Anghar?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes. I just met him during the last training run on The Colony.” I wouldn’t lie, but I could leave out the part where I’d sat on his face and he’d made me come with his tongue.

“That was less than two days ago.”

I nodded, wiped my hair back from my face. “Correct. I spoke with him briefly hours before I left.” And fucked him. And screamed his name. And rode his cock until I dropped into blissful exhaustion. But she didn’t need to know any of that. Good thing, because Chloe moved so she was in my face.

“How is he?” she asked, her voice full of friendly worry. “I haven’t seen him for almost two years.”

Jealousy reared its ugly head, but I knew Chloe was mated. Very well mated, if the prowling Prillon pilot was any indication. I’d heard she’d had a baby, took the requisite leave for that. She wasn’t having a baby with the Prillon and Earth mate while secretly lusting after Angh. But jealous thoughts were irrational ones and I shook the feeling off.

Chloe’s question didn’t seem to bother her mate in the slightest. No jealousy there.

I shrugged. “He’s fine, I guess. He was fighting in the pits when I met him.” I glanced at Captain Dorian Zanakar. “Knocked out a Prillon warrior with one punch to the jaw.”

Dorian burst out laughing. “That sounds about right. If there’s something he wants, he goes for it, even if that’s winning.”

The something he’d wanted was me. I just nodded my head in neutral agreement.

Chloe’s smile was filled with relief and she stepped back, finally allowing her mate to wrap an arm around her waist as she looked at the Vice Admiral. “We need to get him back out here. He helped me destroy the initial network. We need people who can hear those things, and he can hear them. Trust me.”

Vice Admiral Niobe looked to me. “You spoke to him. Do you feel he is stable enough to handle this type of assignment? He is an Atlan. If there’s any chance he is in danger of losing control to Mating Fever, I’d rather know now. The last thing I need is an out of control Atlan beast with Cyborg-enhanced strength.”

All eyes turned to me and I thought of Angh. Was he in control? And what, exactly, was this Mating Fever she was talking about? He hadn’t been in any kind of sickness or distress when he’d been with me. He’d been wild, admitted his beast was on the prowl, but that was all because he was horny, not sick. And I’d sated both him and his beast. He hadn’t had any kind of fever when I’d slipped from his bed.

“He’s strong, as Commander Phan said,” I confirmed. “I didn’t see any sign of distress or illness. If we need him to help us destroy the Hive network in this sector, I don’t see any reason not to use him.”

And maybe, just maybe, I’d get to see him again.

The Vice Admiral nodded, her decision made. “Very well, Commander.” She turned to Chloe. “I will request he be transferred to I.C. Core Command upon my return to Zioria.”

“Thank God.” Chloe leaned into Dorian’s embrace and I was struck by an odd lump in my throat. Those two were so natural with one another. So trusting. There was something there I couldn’t explain or completely believe was real, but I wanted it for myself. The whole mates thing—connecting on the deepest of levels…everywhere—wasn’t something I fully understood. But I ached for the connection Chloe and Dorian shared. And I imagined the bond was even more intense when their other mate was with them.

I wanted that. I wanted that with Angh. My Atlan. My beast. The idea of him holding any other woman that way made my body scream in denial. Made me want to go all beast mode myself.

But if he got transferred to the I.C., they would send him all over the galaxy. The Hive deployments of this new weapon were increasing steadily, more and more battlegroups struggling to hold the front lines in this crazy war.

I wanted him. He wanted me. I knew that. The mating cuffs he’d placed on my chest had been a pretty damn clear invitation. But neither one of us was free to fall in love. He was, but he needed his mate to live on The Colony with him and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t fall in love with a Colony warlord. The Vice Admiral was fairly…flexible, but I doubted that flexible.

We were fighting a bigger battle than the one with our hearts. I had foolishly believed that the Coalition needed me. They did. But the truth was that the Coalition needed both of us. They needed Angh, but had somehow overlooked him and his abilities. Left him to live out a bland, less-useful existence on The Colony. Billions of lives depended on those like us to listen to the Hive and help find a way to win this war. And if that meant we couldn’t be together, so be it. I’d walked away from him because of my job with the I.C. The depressing truth was that I’d never had him to begin with.

We both had a job to do. If he’d still have me, we’d just have to steal our pleasure where we could. Find moments to be together and kiss one another goodbye. Every single mission was dangerous. There was no guarantee either one of us would come back alive. Yet I longed for him, for whatever touches, kisses and hugs I could get.

“Mommy!” The high-pitched squeal was so out of place on the huge battleship that I jumped. A toddler with her mother’s green eyes and dark black hair was running full speed at Chloe, her arms wide open and joy on her little face. She looked like she wasn’t yet two, her chubby cheeks more baby than young girl, and her adorable little legs pumping as fast as they could, which wasn’t fast at all. And quite clumsy. I worried she would trip and fall before she got close.

Chloe’s entire demeanor changed at the voice, the fierce warrior replaced by a doting mother in an instant. She picked up the little girl and hugged her tightly, covering her daughter’s soft cheeks with dozens of kisses as the girl chanted, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.”

All work in the shuttle bay stopped as war-hardened warriors turned to watch the spectacle. Dorian snuggled in close and picked up the girl’s tiny hand to place kisses on her palm. “What about your papa, Dara? I need kisses, too.”

The little one laughed and held out her arms to Dorian, who pulled her from her mother’s embrace and smothered his daughter with kisses and tickles until she was squealing once again. Chloe’s smile was indulgent, her stance relaxed as Captain Seth Mills, her human mate, walked forward and pulled her into his arms for a scorching hot kiss.

Whoa. Dominant, alpha male testosterone made my whole body go on simmer as I watched her melt into his arms.

She might be the ranking officer of the trio, but it was more than clear that she happily submitted to her mates in the bedroom. And the golden collars around all three of their necks? It wasn’t exactly a wedding ring, but it was a blatant and obvious claiming. These three were mates, a family. They were never alone. Never lonely. Never lost.

Chloe pulled away, her breathing noticeably faster than it had been before the kiss. “Where’s the baby?”

Seth smiled down at her. “Don’t worry, tiger-mama. He’s taking a nap in the nursery. But this one—” He nodded his chin in their daughter’s direction. “—was with Commander Karter, monitoring the mission comms. When she heard that your shuttle was back, she was done being patient.”

“I told you I don’t want her in there,” Chloe chided. “She understands what they are saying, Seth.”

“I love Mander, Mommy.”

Chloe was glowing, her love for that little girl lighting up her face. “I know you do, baby. Commander Karter loves you too, but that’s a place for grow-ups. Not little girls.”

She pouted and tapped her ears. “I hear you. I like to hear you.”

Chloe sighed and shook her head, staring up at Dorian for help. “You approve of this? She’s not even two yet.”

“This is war, love,” he replied gently. “She’s safe and protected with the Commander. With everyone on the ship. If it gets too intense, he’ll protect her. But we can’t lie to her either. This is our life, the life we chose. We can’t change things now.”

“I know. I just wish we could end this damn war!” She was fuming again and I felt like I was riding the emotional rollercoaster with her just watching. Listening to them.

“No bad words, Mommy. You get spanking now.” Dara was practically squirming with delight at the idea.

“Yes, she does.” Seth’s voice was full of heat, and my pussy clenched with need as I saw Chloe meet his gaze and lick her lips in challenge.

God help me, things were going to be hot as hell in their quarters after the kids’ bedtime.

That made me want Angh even more. God, did I miss that damn Atlan.

Seth broke eye contact and looked at his daughter again. “When Dara heard you were here, she squirmed off Karter’s lap and starting running.” His smile was all proud papa. “Didn’t you, baby?”

“Dada can’t catch me.” Dara said, making Dorian laugh.

“That’s because your dada is slow, but your papa is fast,” Dorian added.

“Chase me!” She wriggled in her father’s hold. That fast, her greetings were over and she wanted to play. Dorian chuckled but set his daughter on her feet and granted her wish, chasing her—but never catching her—as she ran and played and squealed through the shuttle bay. Half a dozen grinning warriors watched out for her, moving boxes with sharp corners and anything she might trip over before she even got close. She was obviously well loved and very well protected by everyone on the ship. A pang of envy worked its way through my chest until it ached.

I’d given up on the idea of a family, of a real home, when I joined the I.C. But here was Chloe Phan, an active duty commander who’d been sent back to Earth in shame just a few years ago, volunteered to be an Interstellar Bride so she could return to space and now living a life I could only dream about.

How the hell had she pulled that off? Was this kind of match solely for those matched through the Brides Program?

“Shall we, Captain?” The feminine voice came from behind me. I’d all but forgotten that Vice Admiral Niobe was standing there, most likely not missing how I was practically ogling the mated trio and their daughter. “You have a battle sim to run in just a few hours. If we head to transport now, we can still make it back to Zioria so you aren’t late.”

I blinked, got my feet moving. “Yes. Of course.” The Vice Admiral was not a fan of tardiness or excuses.

I was not going to stand here and moon over Chloe and her perfect family. Two hot warrior mates, still making a difference in the war, a beautiful daughter and a baby boy I’d yet to meet sleeping peacefully in a nursery somewhere on the ship.

They were the reason we had to take down the Hive space-mines. Them, and a thousand families like them on the battlegroups, and millions—billions—of families on the Coalition worlds.

As I followed the Vice Admiral back to transport, I swallowed over a lump of cold, hard facts. The Coalition needed Angh a lot more than I did. Families like Chloe’s would be saved by his efforts. Efforts that had nothing to do with me. My heart was screaming for all or nothing, and it sure hurt like a bitch to realize I might get him here and there for a quickie, but that wouldn’t be enough.

I truly would have to let him go.