The Alpha Prime Commander (4 page)

Lena dropped her
silverware, and stopped eating before she had cleared her plate, a first for
her.  Her eyes hit Lo’s with shock.  “You’re not serious?”

“I am deadly serious.”

“What would you even need
one of those for?  The Prime do not age, you are impervious to disease, and you
heal from just about any wound.”

“The Prime do, as are any
who are born and raised on Alpha Prime.  But our mates not born Prime do not.”

Lena sucked in a hard
breath, her eyes trapped in implacable gold.  “You’re here for me.”

“I am most emphatically
here for you.  And the second I get my hands on that stone, you and Jackson
will be on hand to touch it, thereby making you impervious to age, disease, and
capable of healing most any wound.”

Lena sat back in her
chair, the breath leaving her body making her light-headed.  “We will skip over
that part for a moment; we can go back to that and the part where most people
who touch an immortal stone die during the transformation, after you answer my
other questions.  Why Jackson?  And why me?”

“The answer is one and
the same.  You are my fated wife, my Pletar, and I have known this since I
survived my mate vision quest and saw your face in the flames, yours with
Jackson beside you.”

“You saw my face?”

Lo Cordan’s attention
sharpened, his eyes caressing the lines of her face.  “I have seen your face
every night in my dreams since the vision unfolded, over two thousand years
ago.”

“That’s why you didn’t
kill me, why you claimed me instead.”

“Yes,” his voice filled
with implacable resolve.  “You are mine, you have always been mine, and I will
ensure that you always remain mine.”

Lena swallowed hard, “And
Jackson?”

“In the vision, it was
revealed that you would touch a stone and either live immortal or die.  You
will not survive the transformation of its touch without
both
your Roenh
bonded to you.”

“Jackson,” she said
quietly, her eyes dropping. She rubbed at them with both hands.  “And you know
this stone of power I touch is an immortal stone?”

“Nothing else I have ever
heard of grants immortality.”

“And if I don’t want to
be immortal?”

There was a long silence
that seemed to come over the room, until she finally dropped her hands and
looked back into those inflamed golden eyes that had lost whatever spark of
humanity they possessed.  All that was left was the feral beast.  Lena froze in
her seat.  But it was in her head that the dark voice spoke and behind it a
yawning pit of loneliness opened up to swallow them both.
  I will not go
back to existing without you.  Would you truly send me back there?

“No,” Lena finally
answered him, wiping the escaping tears from her eyes and looking away from
him.  “I would not want that for you.”  Then she sucked in a breath and raised
her chin, meeting his eyes once again.  “But I am not the only one that has to
say yes, am I?”

Lena made sure he was
gone from her mind as well as her presence, then jumped up and headed for her thief’s
stash.  She would not have much time before Lo either checked on her mentally,
or came back from his meeting.  She was supposed to stay in the suite; everyone
was here by special invitation and with the agreement that they would abide by
the rules set forth. This included confining themselves as much as possible to
their suites until the auction started.  With all the delegates assured of
Alliance security and forbidden either weapons or guards, the hotel would
either be the safest place she could be, or a huge target for someone.  Either
way, she had questions that needed answers and she could only get them from
Captain Jackson Ambar, and without Lo along to heat things up with his
pheromones.  That meant she had to get out of the suite and past the Alliance
security without raising any flags that would get them kicked out, or
arrested.  She might be out of the assassin game, but that did not mean she had
lost her edge.  And she needed this.  Lo may think she was destined to belong
to two men, but she was still having problems with the first one; she was not
about to take anything for granted.  She also got the feeling Lo was all for
pressing the hot captain into service whether he wanted it or not, and that
would be eternal service, if Lo had his way.  So, she had some questions for
Captain Jackson Ambar, and she was going to get the answers.

First, she had to get out
of this heavily sensored room and find the captain in charge of security, while
avoiding his security detail.  One thing at a time.  She located the sensor
relay position and shorted it.  Eventually someone would notice and fix it, so
she had only a few minutes to get clear.  She was already removing the vent
cover for the air circulator.  She was in it and beyond the room’s axis point
just as she heard the sting of the power slipping back on.  Apparently, the
Alliance security were paying attention.  Good to know, and as there was no way
to short the sensors from outside the room, getting back in was going to be
tricky.

Lena moved through the
ducts with purpose.  She made no noise despite the cramped space, and made no
wrong turns thanks to the mobile sensor she wore under the skin of her right
wrist.  She knew Jackson was probably docked in his marine defender at the space
dock, so that was what she aimed for.  She just hoped she could get there and
do what she had to do before Lo realized what she was up to.  He had warned her
not to make any attempts to contact him telepathically, as The Collector probably
had something that monitored for that.  So here was hoping his meeting went
long.

***

Lo Cordan was not used to
waiting. He especially loathed waiting for beings he detested while leaving his
Pletar alone without the ability to communicate with her by mind.  First,
because he knew The Collector would have sensors that could detect it, and he didn’t
want him to know what she was to him.  Second, the room was shielded against psychic
probes, so even if he gave in to the need to check on her, he was out of luck; his
range did not slip past the parameters of The Collector’s suite, which
incidentally was twice the size of his, and looked even less lived in.

His understanding was
that The Collector had been staying here for some time, which was why everyone
was here rather than on a heavily fortified Alliance flagship somewhere closer
to middle ground.  However, while it was obviously supposed to look like
someone had taken residence, a few trinkets here and there, a discarded coat
over a chair, the air around him was almost void of scent trails.  He could
scent the same cleaning staff worked this room as his own, but that was it. 
The Collector had never even been in this room, that stench he would have
recognized.  Someone was playing games of the lying kind, but for what purpose?

Not that he let any of
this show on his face or body; he could hear the hum of electronics, but even
if he couldn’t, he would know he was being watched, and that he would be
waiting for quite some time.  Lo slid elegantly into a seat and surveyed the
place one final time before slipping into the still hunt of the Prime.  Whoever
was watching them would have nothing to report but him sitting with no
expression on his face.  He did not like to wait, but lying in wait during a
hunt, that he could do without a single sound or movement for a full station
rotation if need be.  The Collector wished to play his games?  The Prime
excelled at them.  They would see who broke first.

***

Jackson was pacing his
hated ready room.  The auction was still six station hours away and his men had
in the last hour alone thwarted three new robbery attempts.  As far as he could
detect, no word of what The Collector was auctioning off had been leaked, so
only the high house leaders who had been invited and himself knew what they were
guarding.  His command didn’t even know.  Their sole reason for the Alliance
wading in at all was to see peace kept at all costs; at least that was the
horseshit reason they had given him, when he asked why they were working for
The Collector.  The only reason he knew about the immortal stone was because he
hunted down The Collector on the first day and demanded to know what his men
were going to be dying for, or else he walked and they could find another dumb
fuck to play guard dog. 

The Collector looked down
at him from his lofty height for the longest time, his black eyes shadowed
beneath the ridiculous cape he always wore.  Then he told Jackson what he was
guarding. 

Jackson had no problem
swearing secrecy.  When he understood what he was guarding he knew he was
fucked, but he kept his mouth shut and tripled rotations.  When asked by
anyone, command or otherwise, he denied like a son of a bitch any knowledge. 
Being human himself, he understood the drive to have such a stone could be
toxic.  Good men would want it to prolong the life and health of their loved ones,
bad men would want the power it represented, and nobody liked how very
vulnerable most of us were to time, disease, and death.  Never mind that no one
could definitively say who would survive the painful prolonged torture of the
transformation.  Or if anyone ever did.

He turned to his comp
station and pulled up the information that came in from the last time he
checked.  He was just narrowing his eyes at a sensor malfunction in
256 Star
Suite B
when a small whisper, more instinct than sound, had him looking
behind him.  Nothing was there, but something drew his eye up and he saw that
the oxygen dispenser was the tiniest bit off-center.  He reached for the sword
at his back and found the fucking thing wasn’t there.  He whirled around,
looking everywhere, hitting the com at his waist.  All he got was an empty room
and static.  Someone had nulled communications. 

What the fuck?! 
His
eyes taking in the empty room, he reached for the knife on his belt, nothing in
the holster. 
How the fuck did they manage to take my damn weapons off my
fucking body?

As far as he could see no
one was present, but every hair on his body was standing on end, and he wanted
a fucking weapon in his hands, now.  He moved to the desk in a blur of speed
that he was known for.  When he got there, she was suddenly sitting on his desk. 
The com he was reaching for was pushed back to the far corner of his desk,
behind her completely relaxed form.  His sword lay across her crossed legs, his
knife beside the electronic null sitting by her right knee.  She was moving her
fingers over the sword in her lap admiringly.  She raised those purple eyes to
his face and smiled.  “Nice sword.”

There were a lot of
things he was expecting.  She was not it.  “You’re not human.”

She shrugged those
deceptively fragile shoulders.  “My mother was human.”

“And your father?”

“Wasn’t.”  She smiled
bigger, the teasing light in her eyes confusing the fuck out of him. 
Is she
here to kill me, or isn’t she?

“You want to tell me how
you did that?” he asked, in case he lived through this, because not knowing
would drive him out of his damn mind.  Of course, if he was dead he wouldn’t
give a fuck.

She shrugged, but he
caught a flash of cold behind the smile.  “Which part?”

“All of it,” he said on
the snarl he could not suppress.  “Let’s start with how you got on the
Jupiter
and go from there.  I know how you got out of your suite, I saw the sensor
malfunction report.”

Her eyes widened in quick
surprise.  “That was fast,” she muttered.  She looked him up and down, her eyes
frankly admiring.  “You already know I came in through the oxygen return.”  She
tilted her head.  “Not many would have realized I was in the room, let alone
how I came to be here so fast, and you move even faster than you think, which
is saying something.  Are you sure
you
are fully human?”

He shrugged with a
nonchalance he didn’t feel.  “You never know, do you?  We humans are adaptable
if nothing else.”  Since she didn’t seem in any hurry to kill him, he relaxed
his stance marginally and sat his ass on the chair before his desk.  It put
them at eye level to each other, close enough that if she wanted to she could
lean forward and kiss him, or skewer him with his own sword.  But he held the
thought only for a minute.  If she wanted him dead, she could have done it when
she was close enough to take his weapons without him feeling a fucking thing. 
Since he wasn’t dead yet, the look of her sitting in skin-tight leather holding
his sword across his desk was . . . distracting.  And because he was a fucking
moron, his dick decided to harden in a less than subtle display she was not
likely to miss, especially when her eyes were already trailing like hot
lavender velvet over every inch of him.

She blew out a hard
sigh.  “I had hoped our response to each other had been Lo playing his game.” 
She licked her lips and met his eyes, hers overly bright and almost shining
with need.  “But it wasn’t him, was it?”

This time it was Jackson’s
turn to study her.  “You came here to find out?  Cordan didn’t send you to kill
me?”

She blinked, and the fire
banked in favor of surprise.  Then she laughed, and a fucking dimple winked at
him, which had him doing a double take.  “Kill you?  That’s the last thing you
need to worry about.”  She caught the serious look in his eye and blinked,
losing the smile once again, and damn him if he didn’t want it back.  She
cleared her throat.  “I suppose I can see why you might jump to that
conclusion.”  She picked up his sword and presented it to him hilt first.  When
he took it, she did the same for the knife at her knee, and then she switched
off the com null.

Her eyes flickered when
he pushed the com at his waist, but she didn’t try to stop him. 

“Yes, captain?” came over
the room clear.

“Any trouble?”

He kept his eyes on the
woman, but was not really surprised by Charles’ answer.  “Nothing you don’t
already know about, sir.”

“Do a ship sensor sweep
and check for anomalies within the last station hour.”

Lena raised a brow at
that, a half smile returning to her lips.

“You got that feeling in
your gut?” the voice asked, going serious.  “Should we be expecting trouble?”

He ticked off the com and
raised his own brow.  “The Prime?”

She shook her head.  “He
has no idea I’m here.”

He ticked the com back
on.  “Morgan, if the Alpha Prime Commander suddenly shows up demanding entrance,”
he started and watched her eyes widen and her mouth open to speak, but he beat
her to it, “let him come.”  Lena’s mouth closed with an audible snap.

Charles was silent for a
prolonged moment.  “Say again?”

“You heard the order; Lo
Cordan shows up, open all the hatches and move the men out of the way.”  He did
not even try to keep the impatience out of his voice.  Not that he could blame
Charles, the orders were ridiculous.  But he was not about to have a rampaging
Prime tearing apart his ship or men because his Pletar was being held.  “Don’t
try to stop him, or question him, just let him come.” 

“To your ready room,
sir?  On the
ship
?”

“Ambar out,” he growled
by way of answer, ticking the com off in mid stutter.

“I don’t plan on staying
long enough for him to come looking,” she explained as soon as the com shut
off.

“You wanted answers.  So
do I.”  This time he was the one who smiled.  It felt inordinately good when
she suddenly looked worried.  “And you aren’t leaving until I get what I want
from you.”

***

Lo smelled The Collector
before he walked into the room with his aid.  He stood fluidly, as if he had
not been completely frozen for half a station hour.  The little man beside the
hooded figure jumped back at the sudden movement, a fear scent wafting bitterly
around the room.  From The Collector there was no reaction, other than one
disgusted glance at his scared man, which had the scent racketing up to sheer
terror.
Interesting.

Lo looked closer at the
little man, pink-skinned, white eyes, and four arms.  A Tarelian – he had not
seen one of those since the slave wars were fought and slavery was outlawed. 
The Tarelians, never having a large population base because of their exacting
biological needs for breeding, had been a slaving race, and most of them died
defending that way of life. The rest he assumed died out eventually, their
planet taking the brunt of the battle.  An inferior species, Cordan showed long
sharp teeth in a small snarl.  They dealt in the misery of others and poison
was their weapon of choice.  A fitting companion for The Collector, though he
looked less than thrilled to be in the man’s service, which was also fitting as
far as Lo was concerned.  He switched his focus to the real danger in the room.