Читать книгу Mated To The Vikens - Grace Goodwin - Страница 8

Erik, Planet Viken, Viken United Compound, Transport Center

Nerves made my heart beat faster than I wished as I watched my two brothers-in-arms. Gunnar, with his black hair and blacker heart, stood silent and still as a statue as we waited for our mate to arrive via transport. He’d vowed not to love her, but Rolf and I didn’t need him to do so.

“How long must we wait?” Gunnar turned on the Viken warrior behind the transport station, every line in his body screaming of his irritation.

“For someone not interested in a mate, you’re fucking impatient,” I countered. While the other two stood near the transport area, I leaned against the wall.

Gunnar regarded me over his shoulder with a look that screamed fuck you.

“Not long, sir,” the attendant said. “The transport signal is strong. Your mate should arrive in the next few minutes.”

“Relax, Gunnar,” Rolf said. He could always calm our friend. “Earth is a long way from here. A long, long way.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder. Next to Gunnar’s darkness, Rolf looked like a beacon. Always smiling, his pale blond hair and bright green eyes nearly made him glow in the transport room’s artificial light. His easy smile and natural charm had served us well over the years. Women took one look at Gunnar and either ran away or lay down at his feet like slaves awaiting orders from a master. But Rolf? They hung on his every word, offered him everything. They fell in love with him as easily as rain fell from the sky. One was light, the other dark.

Females fell at their feet, but neither warrior loved in return. I’d fought by their sides for a decade in the Hive war. We had bled and killed together. I knew these men better than I knew myself, and they did not love.

Neither did I. We were all broken. But when the Queen you’ve sworn to protect, the leaders you’ve laid down your life to keep safe, ask you to take a mate, to help them unite the three sectors, refusal is not an option.

“Did you two see her profile?” I asked. Less than an hour ago, our mate’s information had been transmitted to us from Earth. Sophia. We knew her name and that she was some sort of smuggler, convicted of crimes on her home world. But that mattered not, for we were not perfect men. We’d killed, and worse, during the wars, and learned to live with it. Sophia promised us a new beginning, a new chapter in our dark lives. The report stated she was twenty-six years of age, young but ripe. I had stared at her image, looked into eyes nearly as dark as Gunnar’s, and my cock had grown hard. It was impossible not to want her as we looked at her Earthen beauty. I’d been stunned to discover an alien female that stirred my cock.

“No need.” Gunnar crossed his arms over his chest.

Years ago, when we’d first met, he’d been dressed head to toe in the black, as were all warriors from Sector Two. The sector uniform had been replaced by the space camouflage of the Coalition Fleet. Years later, we now served and wore the uniform for Viken United, the one bastion of peace on the planet, and our capital city. While we served the same command, he wore the black once more, as I wore brown and Rolf dark green. Each uniform’s color represented the sector in which we were born. But on each of our arms a bright red band made us brothers. Red for Viken United, for our future queen, the beautiful baby Allayna.

Rolf laughed. “No need? What is wrong with you, Gunnar? Were you not curious?”

I shook my head as I pushed off the wall to move beside the attendant, to watch over his shoulder at the controls. I already knew exactly what Gunnar would say.

“No,” he replied. “She is our mate. Her appearance is irrelevant.”

Rolf smacked him on the shoulder as he rolled his eyes. “Right. So if she’s covered in warts and hideous to behold, you’ll close your eyes and rut into her tight little pussy anyway?”

Gunnar raised his brow, clearly not amused. “She comes from Earth. The planet of Queen Leah, who is lovely. She was also matched to all three of us using the Bride matching program. I have no doubt I will find her adequate to our needs. She has to be. That’s what the fucking testing was for.”

Adequate to our needs. Right. We needed to fuck her, get her pregnant, and fulfill the Queen’s decree. That was hard enough, but we also had to make our mate happy. With Gunnar a cranky bastard and the three of us not too keen on becoming emotionally involved, that would be the much more difficult task.

Clearly annoyed, Rolf turned to me. “I assume you could not resist temptation, Erik, and read her profile. I was on patrol and could not learn about her. Tell me everything.” He bumped into Gunnar with his shoulder. If anyone else treated him with such casual disrespect, Gunnar would have ripped him to pieces by now. “And tell Gunnar, too. He’s only pretending not to care.”

Gunnar scowled but did not refute Rolf’s claim. I stared at the empty transport pad and thought of our mate. “Her name is Sophia. Her hair is long and golden, like the bark of a Nerbu tree. Her eyes are dark brown, nearly as dark as Gunnar’s.”

I stopped speaking then as my cock hardened in my pants. Her body was small but well curved, her breasts just large enough to fill both my hands. Her small, tight ass begged to be spanked a bright pink. Her lips were full and a deep rose color I hungered to taste.

“Erik?” Rolf leaned forward, amusement on his face, waiting.

“What?”

“Golden hair and dark eyes. What else?” He circled his hand to get me to continue.

I shook my head and adjusted my cock in my pants. “You were too lazy to look for yourself, you’ll just have to wait.”

“Transport imminent,” the attendant said.

Gunnar shrugged and turned to stare at the platform. We all did as the familiar humming vibration started. The buzzing sensation traveled up through my boots and into my legs as the transport pad powered up, ready to receive our new bride.

“I hope this isn’t a huge fucking mistake.” Rolf’s worry was one I shared. But the Bride Program’s testing was practically infallible. It matched not only to obvious likes and dislikes, but subconscious ones as well. And considering she’d also been matched to Gunnar, I eagerly awaited our first chance to fuck her. Gunnar belonged to an exclusive order of warriors who needed to dominate their lovers. If Sofia had been matched to us, then I couldn’t wait to discover her reaction to my firm hand on her bare bottom or my cock filling her from behind as Gunnar or Rolf claimed her wet pussy.

“If this is a mistake, we will endure and honor our Queen’s wishes.” Gunnar’s grumbling response was typical. Do what needed to be done. That was Gunnar. His philosophy made him merciless in battle, and in bed. We’d shared women before, many times, but it was always Gunnar whose quiet and ruthless temperament broke them open, who made them writhe and beg and scream for release. I had neither the patience nor the desire to own any woman’s soul. Gunnar had a collection, a pool of pets eager to answer any time he called. He loved none of them, had sworn to turn them all away once we claimed a mate. And he would. He might be a surly bastard, but there was no one more honorable.

I sincerely hoped our Sophia would be able to handle what Gunnar would demand of her. She would. The matching would see to it.

Me? I wanted to fuck a beautiful female, to fill her with my seed and mark her as my own. Having both Gunnar and Rolf to help me protect what was mine—ours—made our forced match easier to accept.

No matter what happened, she would be safe. Protected. Civil war brewed on Viken, and I would not take a mate knowing she might be left unprotected like my mother had been. My mother’s fate would not befall another.

“Receiving transport.” The technician’s voice held excitement, anticipation. The arrival of an Interstellar Bride was always celebrated on Viken, for it happened rarely, and only once before from Earth. That had been the Queen. Most of our warriors mated before they came home from the war with the Hive, or chose a bride from their home sector.

I stepped forward as her outline took shape on the transport pad. Luscious curves wrapped in a dark red dress. As the transport light faded, Gunnar stepped forward to inspect our bride, but I lifted my hand to stop him. He stilled feet from her.

“Don’t. Something is wrong.” The woman’s back was to us, but her hair was a dark auburn instead of nearly black. And before her, I saw movement, as if she were not alone.

Sophia

I expected being transported to be something like watching an old Star Trek TV show, where Spock disappeared in one place and reappeared in another. For me, it was like being put under for a surgery and waking up somewhere new with no memory of how I had arrived. The last thing I remembered was the warden counting backwards. Now, I was being dragged across a cold floor. My brain too sluggish to react, I did not resist.

“What the fuck are we going to do? She’s not the fucking Queen. Where’s the damn baby?” one man shouted from just above my head as he dragged me by my arms. Seconds later, the cruel grip of the unknown man released me and I slumped back onto the floor, my head striking just hard enough to make me wish I were still unconscious. The air was cool, but not cold. Humid. It smelled like churned earth, as if a garden had been tilled. It was an unexpected scent, but it was obvious I wasn’t in the antiseptic testing center in Miami any longer.

The panicked tone of the man’s voice had me thinking something went wrong. I opened my eyes, blinking them a few times, trying to regain my wits after what felt like a really long nap.

“Obviously, something went wrong during transport.” There was a second man. His voice was calmer, deeper, and came from the direction of my feet.

Something went wrong? Obviously, if I was being dragged about, unconscious. Or, they at least thought me that way.

I assumed I was in the transport center on Viken, but it was not as I expected. No Star Trek space deck. The walls were painted dark gray, the ceiling low. There was a window on the far wall and beyond the glass all I could see was green. All green, as if I were in the middle of a forest. Directly in front of me was a tall platform with strange symbols and buttons, screens with data flowing across them that I could not read. The language was odd and unfamiliar. I had to assume it was the alien control station for transport. Just beyond it was a raised platform, the shiny surface empty. Was that where I’d arrived? Had they dragged me off that platform and dropped me like garbage on the floor?

I could see their legs. Both wore dark pants and black boots. I was afraid to move to see more of them, for their focus was not on me and I had no wish to draw their attention. After dealing with the Corellis, I knew it was sometimes best to be completely invisible. Surely, these two brutes were not my mates. If so, where was the third?

“Where is the Queen, Ensign? Where the fuck is the princess?” the second man asked.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? What the fuck am I supposed to tell Vikter?”

“There was no indication of a malfunction.” The panicked man with the low rank appeared to be the poor guy who worked here, wherever here was. The other, the angry one, I had no idea about.

“Then who the hell is this female?”

There had been some kind of problem with transport. It sounded as if they’d been expecting someone else. Where in the world was I? No. Where in the universe was I? Had I really been transported to Viken?

“I don’t know, sir. Are you sure it’s not the Queen? She’s clearly human. Look at her skin. No Viken female has skin that soft.”

“Is her hair red as flame?”

“No.”

“It’s not the fucking Queen, you fool.”

“I don’t know what went wrong. As you saw, she just…just appeared.”

“Yes, but from where?” I heard the anger. The men moved a few steps toward me and I saw an arm point in my direction. Long sleeve, black shirt, a man’s hand. The rest of him was hidden behind the table. “Find out who she is. She’s not Queen Leah, but perhaps Vikter will have a use for her.”

No, I wasn’t a queen. The men were obviously up to no good. And they’d called me human. Mentioned Viken. Clearly, I was no longer on Earth. Which was bad. But at least I knew where I was, and it wasn’t some crazy planet I’d never heard of.

“Yes, sir.”

It was obvious who was in charge of the duo. “Whoever was expecting her will trace her transport to these coordinates. I can’t be here when they arrive.”

“What? I can’t be here either!” The ensign’s voice went up an octave, his words hurried and clipped, panicked.

“This was your mistake. That female, and whoever comes looking for her, is your problem.”

The guy in charge pointed again, this time the cuff of his shirt rode up and I saw a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. It looked like a three-headed snake.

“Transport me to the Central City transport station as planned. No one will track me among that crowd.”

“But what am I to do with her?” The ensign came around the control station and I closed my eyes, pretended to be asleep.

His footsteps were close and I felt a vibration in the floor. A deep hum filled the air around me, made the hair on my body stand at attention.

“Transport me and find out who she is. If she’s not royalty or worth a ransom, kill her.”

Kill her?

“What if she’s worth something?”

“Keep her alive. You know who to contact.”

My eyes popped open at that and I stared at the ensign’s legs as a bright yellow light filled the room then went out. The vibrations stopped and the noise cut off abruptly.

The ensign was breathing hard and whispering to himself, mumbling about unification, and a baby, and assholes.

Oh shit. Was he going to kill me? Seriously?

Hysterical laughter bubbled up in my gut but I held it back by sheer force of will. I’d left Earth to get away from corrupt assholes just like this one and the one who’d transported away. Instead, it was like I’d never left at all. This was exactly how the mafia operated back home. The Corellis controlled everything that went on in New York, including me.

Stupid to believe I’d be free of unethical men and organized crime. People were people everywhere in the universe, it seemed, and even the exalted Coalition of Planets hadn’t managed to get rid of criminals like these two and whomever they worked for. I’d been transported across the universe and landed right back where I started, mixed up in something. Something bad. And I was going to pay the price. Again.

He frowned and I had to tilt my chin back slightly to watch as he paced. For a killer, he seemed really nervous about it. That played in my favor. I wouldn’t remain on the floor just waiting for him to kill me.

I looked down, shocked to see that I now wore a dress. Was this part of the bride processing? The gown was long sleeved and the hem, when I stood, would fall to my ankles. The cut was simple but flattering, fitting snugly to my small breasts and flared at the hips to emphasize a woman’s body. The color was a plain blue, but the fabric was soft as silk and clung to every curve.

Not exactly commando gear.

I wiggled my toes inside soft, leather slippers and wished I had steel-toed boots to kick this guy in the balls.

Lying like the dead, I watched him from beneath my lashes as he paced, looked at me, looked away. He laughed maniacally as he ran his fingers through his dark hair. If he was a typical Viken man, then they looked pretty much like men on Earth. He was a little bigger than the men I knew, but I didn’t know if that was a Viken thing or if he was just big.

“Stupid fucking transport codes. Not the fucking queen,” he mumbled to himself.

With the vibrations, the bright yellow light and other man gone, I was positive I was in some sort of transport center, although the room looked old and long forgotten, paint peeling and malfunctioning lights at odd intervals along the gray walls. The room was tiny. The transport pad looked big enough to hold three or four people and the only door in or out was to my left.

I waited for the ensign to turn away from me. I leapt to my feet, making a run for it, hoping I had surprise on my side.

I gripped the door’s handle and pushed. Relief flooded me as the door opened and I raced outside. My dress tangled around my ankles and I stumbled, taking two short steps before the guy grabbed me from behind.

“Get back here!” he snarled, spinning me around.

I faced him, feeling like a toddler as he towered over me. His grip on my arm tightened and he cursed.

“Gods be damned, you’re so fucking small. I don’t want to do this.”

Small? Sure, I was five-two without heels, but I wasn’t going to debate with him if he didn’t want to kill me.

“Then don’t. Just let me go. I won’t say anything. I promise.” My heart was in my throat.

His dark eyes were frantic and I could tell he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. I’d met enough of Corelli’s enforcers to recognize fear when I saw it. He was more like one of the Corelli family’s new recruits, young and wet behind the ears. But often, those were the most dangerous because they’d been backed into a corner with no way out.

He shook his head, debating what to do. “I’d be a dead man if they found out.”

“No one will ever know. I swear.”

He studied me, his grip painful. “Who are you? Who’s coming for you?”

“No one.” At least, no one I knew. Warden Egara had promised me that I was being sent to three Viken mates, but I had no idea if they would even know anything had happened to me.

“You were transporting to Viken United. Why?”

“I don’t know.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’re a bride. A fucking Interstellar Bride.”

My eyes widened when he spat the truth and I shook my head, trying to think of a lie, anything to get him to let me go.

“Don’t bother with your lies.” He reached behind him with his free hand and pulled out a gun. Yes, it was a gun. A space gun, but I’d seen enough to know. It was shiny metal, bright like silver. It was small, too small, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t powerful. I didn’t see a place for bullets, but dead was dead, bullet or not. “You’re a bride. Gods be damned. Who’s coming for you?”

“I don’t know,” I repeated, my voice rising in my panic.

He snarled at me. “Fuck. Your mate will probably bring an entire fucking squadron to hunt me down.”

I shook my head. “No. I’ve never even met him.” I wasn’t going to tell him I had three mates.

“Shut up.” Sweat dripped from his brow to his cheek and the veins at his temples bulged just under his skin. He was afraid, and that wasn’t good for my odds of survival. “It doesn’t fucking matter. Don’t you get it? He’ll come for you. A fucking warrior’s bride.”

I tugged on my arm, trying to break free. “Let me go!” I shouted.

“He’ll come for you, all right. And fucking rip me in half.” His grip tightened until I cried out in pain, worried he’d break one of the bones in my arm, or dislocate a shoulder. “Fucking bride. How did this happen? I’m doomed. Fucking doomed!”

Rage fueled my courage. I’d let the Corellis scare me into cooperating, doing anything and everything they wanted. Even after my mother was dead and buried, they forced me to smuggle for them. Drugs. Money. Technology. Art. Diamonds. They threatened to kill me, and I’d done what they wanted. I’d cowed down and let them rule me. And for what? All I got out of it was a prison sentence and a one-way ticket to this ass-backward planet. Fuck this.

I pulled back and kneed him in the groin with every ounce of strength I had. “Asshole!”

He dropped like a stone, but wouldn’t release his grip, nearly dragging me to the ground with him. The gun was in his free hand and he aimed it at my face where it hovered mere inches above his own. I grabbed his wrist with both hands and shoved, hard, forcing the point of the weapon away from me. It fired once, the sound like a bottle rocket exploding between us. A white blast of light shot out and pulsed toward the trees.

Growling, he rolled onto his side and tried to push me to the ground, but I held on to his wrist with all my might. I was breathing hard and my feet were tangled in the dress. With my arms busy, I used my legs again, kneed him once more. Either Viken men had bionic balls or his adrenaline was running as high as mine. All the strike did was make him suck in his breath and allow me to come down on top of him where he lay flat on his back. I loomed over him, looked into his dark, angry eyes, but he still had the gun.

“I’m going to kill you,” he growled.

“Go ahead and try, you asshole.” Something inside me snapped, and with it went all my fear. If I died here, so be it, but I was tired of being afraid. Bullied. Used by powerful men who treated me like an expendable pawn. I bent down, sinking my teeth deep into the flesh of his hand until I felt my teeth break through flesh to meat and my mouth flooded with blood.

He howled in pain and pulled his arm away from me, toward his chest and I pushed my advantage. I had no idea where my strength came from, perhaps my rage at the Corellis poured out of me, but I was able to bend his wrist at an odd angle and push down. His arm collapsed at the odd angle and I fell on top of him. The hand he’d used to hold the gun lay trapped between us. I arched my back, trying to keep my body out of his line of fire as I twisted his wrist even more, hoping to hear bone snap.

I heard a pop, saw a slight flare of bright light. Not his wrist. The weapon had been fired.

Had I been shot? For a split second, I panicked, worried my rage and shock would block the pain of my injury. I gritted my teeth and tried to focus on my body, but I felt nothing but the racing beat of my heart as I fought to draw air in and out of my body. I shook, each shuddering breath a struggle as I blinked slowly, trying to understand. Everything felt like it was happening in slow motion and I watched with a detachment I could hardly fathom.

His legs became lax as the fight left him. Beneath me, his body softened as his muscles relaxed. His hold on my arm loosened and his hand slid to the ground. He looked at me with wide eyes, as if stunned. Pushing away from his chest, I grabbed the gun and scrambled backward on my hands and knees, away from him.

The light shining through the uppermost canopy of trees filtered down to dance on his chest, the blood coating the front of his shirt spread in a bright red bloom over the dark green fabric.

So, the Vikens bled red, just like humans.

I watched him fade, the taste of his blood in my mouth twisted my stomach and I rolled to my side as my body was racked with dry heaves. I hadn’t eaten in long hours, and for once, I was thankful for an empty stomach.

Chilled to the bone, I turned away from him and climbed to my feet. I stood on shaky legs and saw that his eyes had become glassy and blank. My heart thundered in my ears but the rest of me felt completely numb.

He was dead. I killed him.

I jerked my head around, left then right, looking for more enemies, more threats. We were in the center of a clearing with only the small building, squat and covered in what appeared to be moss. I turned, slowly, and felt like I’d stepped into a magical forest. Tall trees loomed like skyscrapers overhead, so thick and green I could barely see the color of the sky beyond. The ground was soft beneath my feet, springy with a mixture of moss and thick, lush grass.

I felt as if I'd walked into a Monet painting. I longed to have my paints so I could put the incredible beauty to canvas. It was… perfection. Everything was damp, as if it had just rained. Verdant and humid, sweat gathered on my brow as the sounds of animals I didn’t know chirped and squawked from their hidden roosts. Climbing vines wound their way from tree to tree, and every few inches along their length an exotic flower, larger than my open palm, decorated the forest with vibrant pink and purple, orange and gold petals. Viken was lovely. Colorful. Strangely beautiful and I wanted to paint it all.

Except for the dead man at my feet.

I looked down at the strange weapon in my hand, pointed it at the ground a few feet away and squeezed. Nothing happened. I tried again and again, but the weapon was useless.

Irritated, I tossed the gun aside and turned my back on the small building. I needed water, something to get the taste of death out of my mouth, but I couldn’t go back into the transport center. What if the man with the tattoo came back to finish what the ensign had started? What if someone else did?

I had to get away. I wasn’t safe here, even with this man now dead. Even with nature all around me. I had no idea where I was. There could be others about who would find me. How would I explain the dead body?

Walking into the woods, I didn’t look back. I was an alien here. They’d see the dead Viken and I’d be looking at a murder charge. Why would anyone listen to me? I was from Earth. I was on another planet. Were there any laws governing the right to kill in self-defense on Viken? God, I couldn’t go to prison. That was why I volunteered for the Brides Program in the first place.

First things first, I had to put as much distance as possible between myself and this fucking horror story.

The woods closed around me and I kept walking until the small building disappeared from my view. Looking around, I saw no obvious path and had no idea which way to go. The forest looked the same in every direction.

It didn’t matter which way I chose, as long as I ran far, far away.

I picked up the hem of my dress and dashed through leaves and vines, wound my way past trees and flowers, and kept moving until my legs ached and my lungs burned.

I’d survived on Earth with the Corellis. I would keep going until I found some people who looked friendly enough to ask for help. The language thing that giant needle had poked into my skull as part of my processing on Earth must have worked, because I’d understood the two men who’d wanted me dead all too well.

Yes, running was a risk. But staying, waiting for tattoo man to come back and finish the job, seemed worse.

I found a small stream and rinsed my mouth, splashed water on my face and kept moving.

Yeah, I might die out here. But at this point, I had nothing left to lose.