Love. And—Not a— Gemate. Either. Whatever in the ansu bhau that is!” With her last words, Ullyn fell to the floor and didn’t get up.
Wulf signaled two men to guard Ullyn. He approached his tired little warrior who was bent over at the waist, taking deep breaths. She turned her head to look at him. “I couldn’t let him kill Iolyn. You and Huw kept him talking long enough for me to get into position.” Blowing out a deep breath and tossing her midnight dark hair out of her sweaty face, she sighed. “Plus, he had the audacity to announce he’d seen me naked.” She stood taller and arched her back as if eliminating a kink. Shaking her head wearily, she added, “Besides, you and your people need to see that female Alliance military members can be counted on in a fight. We’re not little and we’re not to be belittled with pet names like lubha and gemate lubha.” Wulf smiled as he reached for her. “I can guarantee my men will never call you those pet names.” Or mention the fact all of them have seen you naked.
He swept the men surrounding them with a glare. All bowed their heads in acquiescence.
Satisfied he’d gotten his point across, he swept Melina into his arms and up against his chest, inhaling her unique scent. He whispered against her hair, “You have no idea how special you are, gemate lubha. But all will be explained later.”
“It’s always later with you.” She laid her head on his shoulder and took another deep breath, relaxing into his hold, and sighed. “Why do you smell so damn good?” He didn’t respond. She wouldn’t have heard him anyway. Now that the battle was over, her previous injuries, blood loss, and exhaustion took hold and she slipped into semi-consciousness. The battle-mate connection that aided her in the fight with Ullyn had subsided.
He smiled as she nuzzled his neck. The gemate imprinting was the strongest he’d ever seen. Not even his mother and father’s bond was this close. The more Melina took in his pheromones, the more they touched, saw and heard one another, the more fully realized the gemate imprinting would become. Even now her brain regenerated genetic memory and connections to long-buried survival and mating instincts that had lain fallow while she’d been raised as a Terran.
At the rate she progressed, it wouldn’t be long before he could take his courtship to the next level with her full compliance—total physical possession. He groaned as his cock hardened at the thought.
Rousing at the sound of his unrequited lust, she opened her eyes and yawned, fighting the sleep she needed. “What Ullyn said—is that why you are joining the alliance? Civil unrest?”
His mate had a mind like a trap. He smiled.
Maren had closed in upon them. Wulf asked, “Shall I tell her?” The most senior diplomat of their planet nodded. “She of any deserves to know.” Melina raised her head from his chest. “What does that mean? Me of any? Okay, I know, later.”
He gently shoved her head back to his chest where it belonged. Just having her in his arms and her scent in his nostrils reinforced why it was important to rid his ship of the pirates. Then he could get her alone and make her fully his. That next level of his courtship couldn’t come fast enough for him.
“So,” she said, as she stroked the hair at his neck. “Tell me why you are joining the Alliance after centuries of ignoring us.”
“Our race is dying.”
“How?”
“Between the Antarean attacks over the centuries and the loss of almost sixty percent of our fertile females after a mass evacuation during the last major Antarean attack of the planet, we have a less than zero population growth.”
“So, how does joining the Alliance solve that problem?” she asked, her forehead creased in concentration. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head as she reasoned through the possibilities. All the while she petted his neck as if she comforted him.
A smile crossed her face as she lifted her head and looked him in the eyes. “You want to bring in new humanoid blood.”
“Exactly.” Maren confirmed.
Wulf could say nothing. He didn’t want her to stop smiling at him. It took all his control not to seize her lush pink lips and kiss the sense right out of her.
“So, Ullyn is part of a neo-conservative, keep-our-blood-pure group?” She lay her head back down before he had the chance to do it himself.
“Yes,” Wulf said, struggling to stay on topic when all he wanted to do was carry her off into a dark corner and love her until she screamed with pleasure. “We knew there was opposition, but didn’t realize to what lengths they’d go to stop us.”
“But the pirates?” Melina lifted her head again, this time to look around Wulf at the closely guarded traitors. “Are they stupid? Pirates are the murderous dregs of the universe. They have no honor. The rebels would be killed once the pirates got paid.
They’d sell their own mothers to make a buck.”
“They are fanatics, lubha, who can understand what goes on in their minds?” Wulf walked over to the gurney and placed her on it. “Let’s see what you tore open while fighting. Then we can finish up the plans to retake my ship. I want you on a regen bed as soon as possible.”
Melina nodded her agreement and tapped her ear-com and got a verbal response, finally. “Nowicki, where are you?”
Wulf heard Melina’s second-in-command reply over his ear-com unit. “We’ve retaken all levels of the ship except for the area right outside the engine room. The pirates are dug in pretty tightly and I don’t want to risk high casualties on our end. Most of them are Erians. Any help from your end would be appreciated.”
“What are our casualties?” Melina asked as she winced at Wulf’s probing fingers.
“What’s wrong, Mel? Are you hurt?” Melina’s second-in-command was awfully sensitive to the tones in her voice. Just how close was this man to his mate?
“Ow, Wulf. Can you be a tad bit more gentle? I’m not a tough-skinned Prime, ya know?”
Wulf gave a short abrupt nod and swabbed more lightly at the knife wound that had reopened in her side. He was so jealous of whatever relationship Melina had with her second-in-command that he didn’t trust himself to speak without the anger coming through his voice.
Melina smiled and “mouthed thank you” at Wulf, then said, “I’m fine, Nowicki.
Now report, mister.”
This Nowicki could not keep his emotions for Melina out of even a cut-and-dried battle report. The thrice-damned Terran loved her. The only thing that kept Wulf from picking Melina up and hiding her away from the Alliance troops was the fact that he could see and sense with all their gemate-connectedness that Melina did not return the Commander’s feelings. Her voice and demeanor told Wulf she respected her second. This observation reaffirmed what his brothers had reported—she treated Commander Nowicki like a brother.
Even knowing and observing all that, Wulf was still jealous, envying the man all the years Wulf had lost with his gemate.
“We have no major injuries,” Nowicki reported. “Just a few cuts and some laser burns. The pirates have lost about twenty men, most on the Command Deck. We have twenty other pirates in custody and on their way to join the others we’d already captured.”
“Good. We’ve contained two traitors inside the engine room.”
“Three traitors, Melina,” Wulf corrected. “We killed one before you came in through the tunnels.”
“Captain, who is that?”
Nowicki’s voice was harsh with a strong emotion. Ah, the man was also jealous.
“I’m Kenric Wulf Caradoc, Captain of the Galanti. Thank you for all your efforts in regaining control of my ship. I do believe we can help from this end.”
“How?” Melina asked, shoving Wulf’s hand away from her hip where he stroked the gemate marking.
He laid two fingers across her lips and shook his head, asking for her silence—and trust.
She blinked at him furiously, but nodded.
“Commander Nowicki, go to the fourth level, weaponry and weapons control. You’ll find stun grenades. I believe that there are enough to disable the pirates that are left.”
“That should work. We throw the stun grenades. You’ll open your doors and take out the ones trying to escape your way and we can get the ones coming ours,” Nowicki concluded.
“Exactly. We couldn’t do it before, because they had a highly strategic position and outnumbered us.”
“What about the maintenance tunnels?” Nowicki asked. “Can the pirates use them to escape?”
“No, the traps are deadly and still active,” Melina said, taking back control of the conversation.
Wulf grinned. His lubha did not like being out of the loop at all.
“Okay, we’ll signal right before we throw the grenades,” Nowicki said.
“See you soon, Nowicki.”
* * * *
Mel sat on the gurney in the makeshift medical unit and let the Prime crew assist her soldiers in regaining control of the final pirate-occupied area of the ship. She easily monitored all the activity over her ear-com and the visual monitor Iolyn had set up for her. Ostensibly, she was coordinating the action. Mostly she was staying put so Wulf’s carotid artery would not explode from his neck. He hadn’t wanted her to jeopardize her little bhau, ass, one more time on his or his ship’s behalf.