For one heartbeat, and then two, she heard nothing but silence. Then she heard a roar of such primal fury she wondered if she hadn’t accidentally woken up some sleeping god. The wall to her left exploded.
The noise deafened her, the dust and debris making it hard to see and even harder to breathe. She fired blindly, moving away from whatever the fuck had just taken out the side of a building. A shadow moved in the murky light and she fired again, but it was too fast for her.
Big. Fast. Powerful. It could only be one thing. She was going to have to go toe to toe with an alpha. That was the one thing she taught her soldiers to never do. The bastards were built for war, and bringing one down in a fight like this likely meant she was about to add more scars to her collection.
The alien snarled, the sound coming from somewhere to her right. She spun and fired again. “You missed.”
The voice was dark and dangerous. It was also weirdly familiar. Or maybe they all sounded the same.
“Hold still and I promise I won’t miss next time,” she muttered and backed up another step. The floor beneath her shifted, the ancient structure compromised by the assault on its walls.
She barely had time to form the thought that the whole damned building might be compromised when the roof gave way. Before she could even cover her head, something the size of a small car launched out of the shadows and hit her, taking her down to the floor in a tackle that knocked all the breath from her lungs.
She hit the ground hard, trying to curl up, but he wouldn’t let her. Hard arms wrapped around her, holding her captive and pinning her beneath his gigantic body. Swearing, she came up swinging, or tried to anyway. Lashing out with her fists, knees, elbows, and feet, she raged against the monster who crushed her to the rubble-strewn floor.
A dangerous snarl filled her ear, and she winced at the hint of fangs snapping the air next to her neck. He could tear her throat out any second. Lips pressed together, she grunted as she tried to get the muzzle of her pistol up under his chin. A second later steel wrapped around her wrist, forcing it out to the side.
“No.”
Her scream of fury was lost in the landslide of noise and chaos that crashed down around them as she tried to wrench free of his grip, straining until her wrist gave way and pain laced up her arm.
Shit.
She bit back a gasp of pain and frustration as the gun fell from her nerveless fingers. He let her go immediately. She drew her injured wrist against her body and threw one last kick, managing to clip his leg. It was petty and pointless, but it still felt good.
The noise finally stopped and slowly the dust cleared. She found him looming over her. A mask covered the upper part of his face, concealing his eyes. Blank and black, she had nothing to look at apart from her own terrified expression. No, she rejected the thought. She wasn’t terrified. Fear served no purpose here. She’d run out of it years ago.
“Why will you not…” he growled, dropping into alien gibberish she didn’t understand.
“Get off me, asshole!” She focused on her anger, letting it fill her with a cold, calculating fury that let her see the situation clearly.
She was fucked. Her wrist was likely broken, and she was a lousy shot with her other hand. Not that she had anything to shoot him with. The gun was buried in the rubble, along with her blade.
Desperate, she reached out with her uninjured hand to search of something, anything she could use as a weapon. If she couldn’t find anything, she’d have no other option but to use the mercy blade she wore around her neck. Not on the big asshole pinning her down, but on herself. She could not be captured. She wouldn’t live—or die—that way.
Her fingers scrabbled in the dust and the rubble, but she found nothing even as big as her fist she could use to knock this alien bastard out with. He’d gone still, braced above her, that damn face plate reflecting her own face. She looked grimy, tired, and terrified. No, she almost snarled at the thought. She wasn’t terrified. She was in pain.
“Get off me, you fucking asshole!” she yelled in his face and tried to knee him in the balls.
The smug asshole smirked down at her as he twisted his body to avoid the blow, infuriating her even more.
“Will you cease fighting, female? You have been beaten. Why won’t you accept that?” His voice was deep and rumbled like summer thunder.
“Because the game isn’t over until one of us is dead.” And she was running out of time to ensure the dead body wasn’t hers. In fact, she didn’t understand why she was still alive. He should have torn out her throat by now… or worse.
He moved, and for a moment she thought her time had come, but instead of finishing her, the asshole alien pulled off the strange mask.
“You!” The word came out in a hiss of surprise as she recognized his face. It was the alpha who had chased her through the citadel.
“Me.” His answer rang with smugness, his eyes a surprising shade of blue. She’d never gotten close enough to an alpha… he wasn’t in his battle form. He’d been fighting her in it, she’d been sure of that, but the hideous leathery armor had receded and he could almost be—
“Oh no you don’t,” she hissed, jamming her good hand into his throat as he bent his head to try and kiss her.
This was not happening. Not now. Not ever. She was not like her sister. Even if he was surprisingly handsome and his eyes reminded her of a summer sky…
He snarled at her, the sound entirely human for once. “Why are you like this? What are you?”
Shit. Had he guessed what she was? That was bad. This was all bad. She had to get away from him. Desperation gave her fresh strength, and she threw out both arms, ignoring the pain in her wrist as she cast about one last time for something, anything she could use as a weapon.
The fingers of her injured hand touched something cold and hard. Metal. Yes! She threw her whole body to that side, gaining just enough distance to grab it with her good hand and then bring it down as hard as she could on the alpha’s head.
He stiffened and for a moment she thought that was it. She’d shot her chance, hit him over the head, and all it had done was make him mad. And a mad alpha was not one she wanted to face.
Then his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he slumped over her, out for the count.
She lay there, the air slowly being crushed out of her by his bulk.
“Great! Just fucking great.”
3
Warr returned to camp, still covered in dust and angry enough to tear the head off anyone who so much as looked at him wrong. He’d had her. He’d had her pinned under him, unarmed and helpless, and somehow she’d gotten away from him.
Somehow. A voice in the back of his head mocked him. He knew how. He’d tried to kiss her. The enemy. He’d forgotten every painful lesson he’d ever learned about combat and dropped his guard in the middle of a fight for no good xarthing reason other than she smelled good.
Maybe the blow to his head had knocked some sense into him because in hindsight it was painfully clear he’d misjudged the little female. She was even fiercer than he’d remembered, a warrior through and through despite the way her curves had fit against his body as he’d tried to shield her from the collapsing rubble falling all around them. She could have died if he hadn’t protected her, but instead of thanking him, she’d tried to shoot him and then knocked him unconscious.