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 RICHTER SCALE
SHADOW ZONE BROTHERHOOD
BOOK 1

DALIA DAVIES
Copyright ©2024 Dalia Davies

All Rights Reserved

This book (neither in full, or in part) may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical,
photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. It may not be used for
AI training or learning.

No part of this book was produced with the use of AI.

This book is a work of fiction. Any and all references are used fictitiously. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author's imagination, and any
resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover & Interior Art by Sophie Zuckerman (@dextrose.png)

Editing by Meg at Amethyst Dragon LLC (@opalescent4026)

www.daliadavies.com
 RICHTER SCALE
Tell me you wouldn’t leave Earth behind for the promise of a utopian life with an alien mate.
I dare you.

The Agency plays matchmaker for women willing to travel across two galaxies to a planet in desperate need of them.
Too bad I had to sell my soul to get on that ship.
When the Sian envoy arrived on Earth willing to trade almost anything for the one thing they need, I knew I wanted an alien
of my own, and Richter… he’s perfect.
The Agency has requirements I couldn’t meet without help, and the organization that falsified my records wants information
in return.
Those records might be the reason Richter isn’t the accountant I’d been matched with. If he was, I’d have been able to bore
my handler back on Earth until they gave up on me. Instead, he’s a part of the Shadow Zone Brotherhood.
The paramilitary group tasked with protecting their world from the monstrous creatures that wiped out the female
population three decades ago has plenty of secrets I could send back through the comm channels.
And even though he wasn’t supposed to be mine, now that the bond’s in place, no one can take him away from me.
The man who should have been my mate is determined to try.
 For Sara C
Who loved these characters loudly enough, I heard her across an entire ocean.
 CONTENTS

Want to Skip Straight to the Spicy Bits?

Author’s Note
Glossary/ Pronunciation Guide
Trigger & Content Warnings
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
About Dalia
More books by Dalia Davies
Contemporary Romance as Andi Simms
Spice Menu
 WANT TO SKIP STRAIGHT TO THE SPICY BITS?

If you’re just here to bang an alien, I totally respect that.

There is a secondary table of contents at the end of the book (a menu, if you will) that will get you to each of the spicy scenes.
Just flip to the back and you can skip ahead.
I’d recommend reading the book through chronologically first, but I’m biased.
Enjoy this book however you want.
 AUTHOR’S NOTE

A much shorter version of this book was published in 2019 as “Alien Passion” when I was writing under the pen name Elise
Jae. The novel in your hands has been completely rewritten, reedited, and reshaped into a story that is miles and away better
than it was.
Bringing Richter & Laurel’s story back to life in this way has been an act of love and I hope you feel that in the following
pages.
 GLOSSARY/ PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

Azhibka (ah-zeeb-ka) mistake

Cavrinskh (kav-rins-k) monsters inside the Shadow Zone
Dajzha (dah-\zha) an archaic Sian honorific for “lady”
Isia (ih-see-ya) Sian home planet
Kisimb (Key-seemb) fate
Lasap (Lah-sahp) a military grade metal composite
Nyac telum (Knee-ack Tey-loom) I can’t lose you
Nawt melum (Not meh-loom) you won’t lose me
Sian (Sigh-an) alien race galaxies away
Susre (Soos-rey) Soulmate
Weeun (Ween) baby/small child
Zurgle (Zoor-gul) a domesticated, cat-like creature
 TRIGGER & CONTENT WARNINGS

SOME ELEMENTS of this book may be triggering to readers. Please see the following list of CWs to ensure that you are
comfortable reading this book before you continue.

Abduction/Kidnapping
Breeding
Explicit Human/Non-Human sex (bipedal aliens)
Fluid Kink
Gender Essentialism
Mentions of Femicide (historic, extinction-level & recent, singular. Off page)
Hunting Animals (invasive population, not food)
Pregnancy (Planned, 1st trimester, main character and secondary characters)

If you feel something was missed in this list, please contact Dalia at authordaliadavies@gmail.com
 CHAPTER
ONE

LAUREL
I CAN STILL REMEMBER the day the Sian envoy arrived.
April thirteenth.
Twenty-thirteen.
My tenth birthday.
The news went apeshit.
My parents thought it was the end times…
And I couldn’t stop staring at the spaceship suspended in low orbit.
That moment is what put me here, fifteen years later, sitting in an oddly comfortable chair at the space terminal signing
another sheet in the mountain of paperwork that will get me on a nearly identical ship.
I glance at it out the window behind the Agency rep who’s processing my transfer of citizenship.
The woman takes the finished form and feeds it through the same scanner the rest have gone through. Full page going in on
one side, itty-bitty shreds coming out the other, straight into the recycler.
My copy of the digital scan populates on the tablet beside my left hand as they go.
All neat and tidy.
That first ship was all dark metal and clean lines and glowing blue light.
It had only been the ships that fascinated me at first.
Then there were the whispers.
And at seventeen, I’d learned the real reason the Sian had appeared on our proverbial doorstep. A reason quite obviously
not told to little girls.
But, a friend snuck her older sister’s Agency login, and I finally saw a Sian man.
Their images were hidden behind paywalls and my eyes went wide as saucers when I caught my first glimpse.
The subscription fee would have been worth it.
Every image I saw of Sian men was one created by a marketing department. These were, no doubt, the proverbial cream of
the crop.
And they were stunning.
Something in their physique… the way their planet’s gravity affected their musculature… I don’t know what it was, but at
seventeen I remember immediately thinking, “I want one.”
And each of those images had the same stamped watermark: IBA.
My friend had dubbed it the “Interplanetary Breeding Agency” since the government name was utterly boring in
comparison.
But that was why they were here. I kept copies of those photos hidden away and pulled them out in the dark hours of night,
imagining what it would be like as I explored my own body.
By the time I was in college, the industry had figured out that Earth women who were horny for Sian men didn’t need the
muscular physique to like what they had on offer.
I’d cataloged all the words thrown around to describe them: enormous, monstrous… scaled and scary.
The truly ill-informed likened them to gargoyles.
They were all incomplete ideas of a people too many still thought of as creatures.
They might not be human… but compatible physiology said they were close enough.
 After I saw that first photo, Earth boys couldn’t compare.
They tried, of course. And I certainly used them to get the awkward bits out of the way.
“Please sign here,” the Agency rep tapped the lower half of the pad in front of me. “To confirm that you understand the risks
associated with this agreement.”
I skim through the list, making sure it was the same one I’d read a month ago. The risks of intergalactic flight were
expected.
The pre-boarding risks had caught me off guard the first time through.
There were, of course, hate groups who thought women like me were fetishists. They demanded we come to our senses, to
God, to whatever else might make us stay here instead of signing our lives away to travel a galaxy away where we’d be
“cattle”.
I think the group with signs outside right now had screamed the words “breeding stock” at me as the Agency security
escorted me from the car they’d picked me up in.
Keeping my head down, I’d bitten back a smile. Another time, without the armed guard at my side, I probably would have
shouted back at them that that was just what I wanted…
I liked the idea that one or more of them might faint if I detailed exactly what I was looking forward to on my bonding night.
At seventeen, the idea of being a bondmate to a Sian man had been pure fantasy.
A fantasy I’d been willing to do anything to bring about.
Now.
Here.
With a pen grasped firmly in my hand, and my luggage already on the cart being loaded onto the ship…
It was a reality just a few more sheets of paper away from being mine. And I was going to take hold of that opportunity and
make sure no one else tried to take it from me.
The terms and conditions page was the same too.
LIFETIME COMMITMENT was written in all caps in multiple places.
Because that’s the only way to get out of a Sian bonding… one or the other has to die.
I had been matched with the equivalent of an accountant. Boring. Not likely to find himself in harm’s way.
Easy.
I sign the final form with a flourish and it goes through the scanner too, turning to confetti a moment later.
“Congratulations!” The rep’s smile is wide and warm. “You’re all set to go. Take off is in an hour and… twenty-three
minutes. Go ahead and make your way to the staging area. Everything is complimentary, though I do suggest drinking lots of
water. The air on the ship is very drying.”
She holds her hand out, pointing me in the direction of the lounge-like waiting area, and I go, knowing there are at least
three other women waiting behind me.
“Good luck!” She chirps.
“Thanks.”
I’m not going to need it.
Not for the other-planet part of this, anyway.
I grab a water bottle and an enormous brownie—why the hell not—and sit in one of the wide, plush seats, saying hello to
hold a dozen other women waiting for the very same thing I am.
There’s only one thing left to do.
With the bright daylight streaming in through the windows—even with the dark hull of the Sian ship filling half of them—I
read through the email again.
It’s the fifteenth time, but there are some things that can’t be said in a hasty line or two.
I ignore the tiny knot coiling in my stomach as I go over the apology I know my mother won’t accept and my sisters won’t
believe.
In the end, there’s nothing else I can do to polish the email to my family.
So, I set the delivery delay and press send.
By the time it’s delivered, it’ll be too late for any of them to try to stop me. I’ll be on that ship, on my way to a whole new
planet. A whole new life.
My computer vibrates in my lap and I all but jump out of my skin; there’s no way I accidentally sent the message.
That didn’t make it any easier to open the screen to see what had come across.
The simple missive—a question from someone who should know better than to contact me—isn’t one I need to worry
about.
I tap out the response and, by some miracle, manage not to roll my eyes.
This time, I close the laptop and slip it into my bag before it can buzz at me again.
Sitting in this chair had always been the plan.
 Getting here had always been the problem.
The resume required was long and polished.
As soon as I’d gotten my hands on the requirements, I’d done everything in my power to make sure I met them.
While my family had remained oblivious… others had not.
They’d approached me in my sophomore year of college. A beautiful woman in a crisp suit had offered to help… in
exchange for a few simple things.
Things we all knew I would probably have no chance of doing once I got there.
I hadn’t realized until two years later that they had thought this was all their idea. They’d thought I was doing this for “king
and country”, as the movies my mom liked to watch would say.
They’d thought this was entirely their idea. That I just happened to fit the requirements.
A happy coincidence.
Maybe they thought they were using me.
Maybe I’m using them.
The call to board the ship elicits excited murmurs and I line up with the others, not sure exactly how my life was going to
change, only that it already had.
Only one intergalactic flight to go, and I’m officially an alien mail-order bride.

RICHTER
Human women. “They shouldn’t be here.”
The comment muttered under my breath gets me a censorious look from the brother beside me.
I don’t mean that we don’t need them. Our species most certainly does.
It was a miracle that the scouting parties found the backwater solar system with their planet when they did.
Without them, we’ll die out. There’s a reason there are no Sian women. A reason—a threat—we haven’t completely
removed yet.
They shouldn’t—No. It’s not about what we need or where they should be. They don’t deserve us. Especially not us.
Core and I aren’t like the other Sian men standing here, waiting for the bondmates we’ve been assigned by the Agency.
It’s why they stand apart from us, watching us with sidelong glances.
They know we’re different just by looking at us.
Well, by looking at Core. There aren’t many ways to wind up with as many scars as he has.
And yet, we were politely asked to put our data into the system to see if we might find a woman we want from the many
they spit out at us.
The only consolation to this whole farce is the fact that Core is standing beside me. My best friend joked about this being
the event that truly separates us… something I’d only ever expected from death in the wastes of the caldera.
But here we are, waiting for the women who will be a sort of wedge between us.
The dark ship—delivering women to our planet on a regular schedule—drops its wide landing gate and the air seems to
shift.
It’s not ionic interference from the FTL equipment. It’s desire and need wafting off the men to my left.
Even Core stands a little taller.
Because those delicate human women are finally in view.
Delicate.
The thought makes my jaw tic.
That’s the real reason I have this sick and sinking feeling in my thorax.
They’re breakable, and any woman who goes home with either of us gets to walk up to the edge of disaster and, as they say
on Earth, wave a red flag in front of the cavrinskh’s faces.
The creatures that hunted the women of our species to extinction have a taste for human women, too. The only thing that
keeps them inside the icy interior of the Shadow Zone is us. Core, me… and two dozen other members of our brotherhood.
Two dozen freaks.
Each woman is led from the ship by an Agency representative. Human women who work for the Agency now that they’ve
been bonded. They’re a buffer, I suppose. Better to set foot on the planet with your hand locked in a familiar one, instead of one
like mine.
Our fingers come to points, our skin bearing a faint pattern they’ve likened to scales.
 But they all know what we look like. They’ve been made well aware of what to expect. Just like we have.
One by one, the women on that ship are led down the ramp and to the male waiting for them.
Some scoop up their women and head for the exit as soon as they get her bags. There are a few hourly hotels nearby that
give those men the opportunity to cement their mating bond without having to drive back to whichever province they came
from. Without even having to drive across the city to their home.
One fuck is all it takes to create an unbreakable bond with a human woman.
The lack of patience grates at me, so I ignore the pairings happening beside me and instead focus on the ones still waiting
in the shade of the ship.
I know what mine looks like and woman after woman… I start to wonder...
The woman led to Core stares up at him with wide-eyed admiration, something I’m not sure he deserves.
She’ll get to see what a slob he is soon enough.
Ten minutes later, every woman on the ship has been shuffled off to their waiting mate… and there’s no sign of the woman
I’d been told to collect.
The three Agency women still on the ground are huddled together, comparing notes on the films in their hand and glancing
my way.
Maybe she had second thoughts.
Maybe I’m off the proverbial hook.
Beside me, Core looks down at the woman he’s been contractually assigned. His smile is something I haven’t seen in ages.
Something that speaks of hope.
I’m not sure I could muster that anymore.
They share quiet words. Something said I can’t quite understand and then she goes to collect her bags.
The fact that Core lets her go on her own is encouraging.
The others haven’t let their women out of their grasp since they were handed over. Except he stays put, watching her get her
bags.
I’ve wondered what they bring with them.
Part of the trade-off these women signed up for was never wanting for anything again. If they ask, we provide.
“I’m so sorry, commander.”
I flinch away from the woman who’s managed to sneak up on me.
“That is not my title.” They confuse us for actual soldiers, too often.
It’s her turn to flinch back from me and I regret the words immediately… well, I regret their tone.
“I’m so sorry.” She looks down at the film in her hand and stutters a moment before she says, “Your bondmate was
scheduled for the next transport. Our error. I’ve already received notice that she is on board.”
I force myself to keep a blank face.
I doubt she’d appreciate the relief I feel, knowing I have a few more days to get used to this. As if a day or two would sort
out what’s been roiling through me for the last month.
“Then I guess I’ll come back.”
Again, she apologizes profusely, and then she hurries away. Maybe she knows why our own kind shy away from us.
Maybe she’s heard the rumors. Not all of them are false.
Around me, the others—the ones who didn’t bolt the second they had their mate—have begun to disperse.
Core’s woman—Cindy, he’d called her—comes back to him and when he’s touching her again, he finally takes his focus off
her.
His eyes narrow when he notices there are only three of us instead of four.
Brows quirked, he looks from me to the closing gate. “What’s going on?”
“Looks like mine’s running late.”
Core says something I don’t understand in his mother’s tongue.
Cindy looks up at him, curious. “You know I can understand you, right?”
He drops his head.
She’s tall for a human woman, but he still has to look down.
“You can, but he can’t.” Core says, “Richter is from the southern hemisphere. His mother taught him their language. My
mother taught me mine.”
“But everyone knows Standard, right?”
Standard isn’t a “universal” language, but, “Almost everyone.” I assure her.
I don’t need to hang around if there’s no one waiting for me. Not that there’s anyone waiting at home.
So, I clap Core on the shoulder and say, “Enjoy in good health, brother. I’ll see you when you come up for air.”
I hear Cindy question what that means as I go, but I leave that for him to explain.
I’ll have someone to explain everything to, soon enough.
 The long drive home—a route I could navigate in my sleep—gives me too much room for thought… room to question if I
have any right to bring a woman back to this desolate place.
Thick blue flakes of snow start to fall again as the garage slides closed behind me, but the thermal currents pulsing through
the walls and floors drive away any chill.
I’d raised the temperature in anticipation of my bondmate.
Humans like it warmer than I’ve gotten used to and acclimating to this temperature has been... interesting.
They’re delicate, they don't do well in the cold, they’re social creatures...
And I live in a hellscape encased in ice.
Her nearest human neighbor will be Cindy, almost twenty kilometers away.
There are bags and boxes arranged around my home, little concessions to the things she’s sacrificing by living here.
I tidy them, moving them into her room and putting away things I don’t really understand, but that the nexus said women
like.
When I’m done, standing in my home, alone, looking out into the bleak expanse of snowy tundra that spans from the ridge of
the outer caldera my outpost is dug into… to the inner caldera where monsters roam, I feel, oddly, like I’ve lost someone I
never had in the first place.
But that is a specter I’ve long since become accustomed to.
 CHAPTER
TWO

LAUREL
I DON’T KNOW ENOUGH about their technology to even guess at how the ship covered the distance between our
galaxies as quickly as it did. I’m not an astrophysicist and, to be honest... I wouldn’t want to be. I’ll just use my limited sci-fi
movie knowledge and call it a warp drive. We traveled for a while in normal space away from Earth, blipped through some fun
green lights for another indeterminate amount of time, then normal space all the way to the Sian homeworld.
It’s been approximately twenty-seven hours since I sat down on the plush sofa—no airplane seats on this ship—and the
automated voice overhead had announced our departure from Earth.
And now... we’re here.
I rearrange my carry-on and ignore the rumbling nerves in my stomach.
I don’t have my phone to distract me.
But that’s a good thing.
My phone would have a response to my email. It would probably have a few “coded” messages and an update from the
man who insists on calling himself my CO. But soldiers have commanding officers, and I’d have made a terrible one of those.
Still, my handler never gave me his real name—I’m sure of that. He’s just a man on the other side of a screen. Not exactly
the loyalty-inspiring type.
Now that I’m here, they can wait. It’s time for me to finally get what I want.
“Ah, yes!” The agency rep—her name tag says Mary—hooks her arm in mine and flips her fingers across the flimsy piece
of plastic in her hand. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
I snug my bag closer to my shoulder, looking at the readout that scrolls across that plastic. I only catch bits and pieces, but
it looks like someone told my bondmate I’d be here on an earlier flight. That note is in a bigger, bolder font. In both languages.
Whatever else it says, I’m too distracted to read. She walks me out of the dim lights of the ship and into the bright glare of
my new home planet.
The air is crisp and cold and I breathe it in like it’s the first air I’ve tasted in years.
It’s so clean, it threatens to make my head spin.
Or maybe that’s just the slightly higher oxygen saturation here.
The landing pad is on the outskirts of a city. Glittering white buildings stretch away in front of me… deep blue-green grass
spreads out in the other two directions not blocked by the ship.
But the scenery is eclipsed by the veritable wall of Sian men waiting on the other side of a thick white line.
Each of them is gorgeous in the way Sian men all seem to be.
Each of them looks at me in a way that should scare me… like they might eat me whole before we get back to their home.
I let my eyes pass over all of them, looking for the man from the photo in the Agency file, but none of them—
Mary stops in front of one that looks down at me with those deep orange irises, and something in that unwavering stare
steals my breath.
He makes me feel small—a novel feeling—I might be five-foot-ten, but there are eleven inches between us.
Six-foot-nine isn’t an average height, it’s a rule with very few exceptions.
Nine and a half is another “rule”, but I can’t confirm that yet.
“Your signature?” Mary says, holding out the film, and he presses two fingers to it without looking. “Thank you, Richter.
And again, I am so sorry for the inconvenience of yesterday’s mix-up.”
Then she’s gone and I’m alone with this man who belongs to me.
 Not alone. But now that they know I’m not for them, none of the other men are looking at us.
Richter is definitely looking.
Richter.
I’d sworn his name had been Victor, albeit a strange spelling of it. Vikter? Yes, that’s what it was.
But I guess that was just a translation error.
He’s certainly sending some tremors through me.
I’d been prepared, of course. But knowing what to expect and actually being presented with the man of my literal dreams...
Richter wears far more clothing than the men in Agency propaganda, but everything else is what those clips and pictures
promised.
Faint texture on his skin that might be orange or it might be red. There’s a metallic tint to it that could be copper. Their suns
are too bright, but I can’t look away from him long enough to grab my sunglasses out of my bag.
I want to reach up and run my fingers along the lines of hard protrusions that replace where eyebrows would be if he was
human, and that spread down from his cheekbones. Spines grow from his ears, very like the silver studs pierced through my
cartilage.
They have similar spines and ridges all over, but those are covered by his clothes, and I’m very interested to find out where
the rest are tonight.
I’m not the only one who’s making a study of their new mate.
Richter’s eyes rake over me. What he sees, I can’t guess.
Whether he approves...
His hand slips into mine and he draws it to his lips.
The softness of his skin, the fullness of his lips... anyone who calls them lizard men has no idea what they’re talking about.
A gasp from my right pulls my attention, and I step closer to him, instinctually. But there’s no danger.
One of the women who was on the ship—a shy one who’d kept entirely to herself—has been swept off her feet and her
bondmate has locked her in a kiss so flagrant, I have to look away.
But not before I realize this staring match Richter and I were in the middle of is not the common reaction to finally meeting
your mate.
“I promise I won’t maul you on the pavement.” He says, his voice deep and sultry.
“No, you seem to have a certain control they lack.”
I would never guess this man was an accountant. He feels like a predator.
Not the icky kind.
The hunt-you-through-the-woods-and-fuck-you-when-you-beg-for-it kind.
First thing I’m going to do when I get to his house and have access to their version of the internet is look up where the
closest forest is.
That could be fun.
“I’m glad you finally made it, Lauren.”
“Laurel.” I correct him, ignoring the uneasy feeling—we both got each other’s name wrong—and offer him a smile I hope
makes it clear I’m not upset about the mix-up. “Don’t worry. It happens all the time.”
Head dipped to the side, he watches me for a moment and then nods. “I’m Richter.”
I don’t say I know even though the words form on my tongue. “I’m glad I’m finally here.”
This time, he’s the one who smiles.
Maybe I’m a little jealous of the woman who has already disappeared with her overzealous bondmate.
Maybe I’d like Richter to have “mauled me on the pavement”.
But that’s not the reception I’m going to get.
“Let’s get your things and go home.”
There are still dozens of flagrant PDAs going on, and he hasn’t done more than kiss my hand.
I try not to let that burrow into my mind. That’s a seed of doubt I do not want to let sprout.
I find my bags—they only allowed us two each—in the row of so many others, and Richter takes them before I can extend
the handle.
“They roll.” I say as I follow him toward the exit. “You don’t have to carry them like that.”
“They’re not heavy.”
I don’t have the chance to argue again. His car—and that’s the closest analog I have for it—is right at the exit. He stows
both bags in a rear compartment that slides out of one side and eases back in like it’s on hydraulics.
“Fun.” I watch it close as the front section pops open.
There are a pair of seats separated by a console, but there’s no steering wheel, no pedals.
Richter takes my hand, steadying me as he sits me in what should be the driver’s side, but when he sits in the other seat and
the completely glass roof closes over us, the car moves, seemingly on its own.
 We ease through the parking lot and out on the city streets, and then we’re shooting down a long, winding road, into the
blue-green landscape of the countryside.
“I thought...”
He looks at me, just for a moment, and I see the faint blue glow in his pinprick pupils. It shifts when we take a sweeping
curve.
My confusion about where he lives goes right out of my mind. “Eyes on the road, mister.”
He laughs and takes my hand, but he does as I ask.
He starts to swirl patterns on my wrist with his thumb as the road begins to climb.
Over the river and through the woods... more like through the valley and into the sky.
The road climbs into mountains that look like they’re made of ice and crystal. Sharp, jagged points that catch the sunlight
and refract it in blues and purples. Hard craggy lines of orange and yellow split through them. Rocks that remind me of the
sulfur stone in Yellowstone.
Richter moves his other hand across to the console between us and what had looked something like leather turns into
another screen.
A few buttons later, and my seat warms.
Snow spirals at the windshield and drifts rise on either side, making my toes curl.
I’ve never enjoyed the feel of icy slush on my skin.
We take a sharp curve and I reach out to steady myself just as the seat squeezes me tight. It molds around me, no seatbelt
needed.
“Don’t worry, I’ve never gone off this road in my life, and I’ve been coming back and forth to the city for fifteen years.”
“You’ve never gone off this road. Does that mean there have been others?”
His smile is sly. “Too many to count.”
He looks at me, and for a moment, it feels like he might be able to see straight into my soul.
So, I point at the road again. “Let’s make sure today’s not the first crash, then.”
Let’s make sure I don’t jump you in your car before we get there.

RICHTER
She’s not what I expected.
She still looks soft and delicate and not-made-for-this-world. But she’d held my hand in a firm grip when I helped her into
the car. She’d slid into the seat like a dancer, and now I can’t stop myself from wondering how she’d move with a blade in her
hand… how she’ll move in my bed.
But she’s right. Eyes on the road. I might be able to navigate this route in my sleep, but it’s harder with her here.
She’s distracting in the best way, but I have gone off a few too many corners in my life to trust my distracted mind to trace
the road ahead of us with any certainty.
Eyes on the road, but I don’t let go of her hand.
And she doesn’t try to take it from me.
Her skin is soft and such a strange shade of pinkish beige. Her hair is darker than it was in the picture, and she has metal
spikes punched through the top of her ears that mimic the ones that grow from mine.
No, she’s not what I expected at all.
“You’re very colorful.” I say, wanting to fill some of the silence that settled over us. Not because it was uncomfortable, but
because I want to hear her voice again.
“That’s a nicer way of putting it. I’ve gotten ‘you look like a little kid dressed you’ several times.” She looks down at
herself and laughs quietly as she pulls the hem of her shirt forward. “My little sister and I used to see who could wear more
colors at once. The official competition ended back when we were kids, but we both gravitate toward ‘bright and loud’ when it
comes to what we wear. She’s more adventurous than I am.”
Laurel smiles at a memory and I want to ask about her family—the file didn’t have any information on them—but we have
time.
The teal fabric has the round face of an animal on it and the yellow sweater she wears over it isn’t enough for the cold of
the landscape I’m leading her into.
I hope her bags have something more substantial, or I’m going to need to place an order before I can let her leave the house.
She leans forward when we turn up the drive that leads to my outpost and her eyes go wide. “Okay, definitely not what I
was expecting.”
“What were you expecting?”
“I don’t know, a little ranchette in the valley?”
I don’t know what that means, but before I can ask for clarification, she sits back in her seat and asks, “Do you live in a
bunker?”
“Not technically.”
My home cuts into and through the mountain. Built under the supervision of the man who was supposed to get rid of the
cavrinskh for good, the myriad outposts all follow a similar pattern. Secured entrances from the exterior of the dual caldera,
unimpeded views of the valley between us and the inner caldera.
We pull into the garage and the car slides into its docking station automatically as the heavy door descends and cuts out the
ice-bright light.
She watches as the other automations click into place with an amusement that’s utterly adorable.
The lights switch on and the charger blinks to the “home setting” for the car.
I slip the neural connection from its place over my ear and pop the roof open as the bot hurries over to plug in and run a
maintenance cycle on the vehicle.
She shivers as soon as the garage air touches her.
The storage compartment opens with a press of my hand, and she takes one of the bags from me, giving me a look that says
she’s not going to let me take it back.
I like that.
I like the way she smiles at me even more.
But she shivers again and I’m very happy I adjusted the temperature inside when she steps through my door and the tension
eases from her shoulders.
“Welcome home.” I say.
It feels strange to say that to another person.
Strange, but right.
As if the space has always needed her. As if it’s been waiting for her.
As if I have, too.
She gives me a wide smile before she sweeps a glance over my outpost, spinning in a slow circle. I watch her instead of
following her gaze. I know exactly what she’s looking at, but I have no idea what she sees.
“Okay,” she says, walking straight to the wall of glass that separates us from the sharp drop down to the valley of the outer
caldera. “I’m not going to lie. I’m starting to wonder if they mixed up your file, but I am so not disappointed.”
She looks back at me over her shoulder and this time, her smile could stop my heart.
I am in so much trouble.
“You’re probably going to have to teach me to use everything in there.”
“I’ve asked a few people who are already bonded. Most things are similar to what you have on Earth and if you can read
Sianese it’s self explanatory. You can, right?”
I thought her file said she could, but I feel like I’ve misremembered hers too.
“I can.”
Good. “Well, if there’s anything you’re not sure of, please just tell me.”
“I should be able to manage that.”
With one last glance out the window, she turns to me, a bright splotch of color in my bland home.
I hadn’t realized how lifeless it looked until now.
She walks to the half-round sofa in the middle of my living area and flops down onto it with a wide smile on her face. It’s
delightful… like she’s a second away from laughing.
I still haven’t moved from my place beside the door.
I shrug my coat off, hanging it up, and join her on the couch. That smile flickers for a moment when I sit.
Maybe it would be better if I acted like the men at the airfield. Maybe I should have already cemented the mating bond and
stolen that choice without making sure she understands.
But maybe—just maybe—I’m not the brute that stories of the brotherhood paint us as.
“We should probably talk about what you can’t do.”
“Uh oh, is this the part where you tell me the east wing is forbidden?”
I have no idea what that means. “The whole house is yours. You can go anywhere in it, use anything. Everything that is mine
is now yours.” That was part of the deal.
“Okay.” She’s still smiling, but I can see the concern in her eyes.
“But you have to stay inside, unless I’m with you.”
She glances toward the window. “Honestly, I did not pack cold weather gear, so I wouldn’t be heading out until I get some,
or spring hits.”
“This is the mild season.”
“Oh.” She looks out the window. “Okay then.”
I’m not selfish enough to “forget” to get her warmer clothing, but the longer I can keep her indoors, the better.
Her attention finally turns from the pale swirls outside, back to me. “Honestly? I don’t think it’ll be hard to stay inside.
Unless you want to have a snowball fight or something.”
And that’s when I know I’m in trouble. The way she looks at me… it’s intoxicating.
Clearing my throat, I stand, going back to her bags. “I’m going to put these in the back. Why don’t you call whoever you left
behind to let them know you’re here?”
I go before she can stop me and when I’m in the dark hallway that leads to the bedrooms, I pause. Deep breaths don’t do
anything to help me; she’s already permeated my lungs.
Yesterday morning, I’d moved the last of my things into the spare room and left the main bedroom for her.
I’ve been told there are bondmates who sleep in separate rooms. That—especially at the beginning—it can be too
distracting to share a bed.
Glancing back down the hall, I catch another glimpse of her as she goes to the window again.
She’s not in my head yet, but she’s already under my skin.
I step into the main bedroom and set her bags by the closet that is built into the wall. It’s my turn to look out into that
endless blanket of snow.
For the past fifteen years, I’ve gone out into storms and icy clear nights to deal with literal monsters… and it’s a small
human woman that has me terrified.
There’s a place in the city that caters to unbonded Sian men. For a membership fee, bonded human women are more than
happy to teach us how to satisfy our future bondmates.
It’s an Agency scheme, of course. They’re paid to entice us to put our name in the database so we can be matched.
But the few times I’d been, I’d gravitated toward women who were bigger, who looked less breakable.
I’ve never heard of anyone hurting their mate before. I don’t think it’s possible after the bond clicks into place.
The Agency information says it’s all instinct after that.
Taking another deep breath, I head back to the living area and my fate.
But I stop at the end of that hallway, not wanting to move until I have the image of her burned into my mind.
If Drift knew, he’d laugh his ass off. But my boss had always been certain the universe gave us exactly what we need when
we need it. The man might have extraordinary vision after what was done to us. But he can’t see the future.
He couldn’t have predicted this.
But maybe she is all I’ve ever needed.
At the window, with her head tipped to the side, she looks up at the darkening sky.
We’ll get even more snow tonight.
I wonder if she has enough blankets.
I could be her blanket.
Core would tell me to get it over with. To claim her now, so she can’t get away.
Not that there’s anywhere for her to go.
Especially with the storm that’s started to swirl.
It doesn’t matter that it’s exactly why she’s here. It doesn’t matter that I want to tear those bright clothes off of her, spread
her legs and sink into the perfection of her body.
If her file was as full of holes as mine was, I’m not going to trap her here until I’m certain she knows what’s going on.
We need to have that conversation that feels like it’s too much, too soon.
 CHAPTER
THREE

LAUREL
THERE WAS A VERY good reason I wasn’t going to “call who I’d left behind”. A few, actually.
Number one, he didn’t need to hear my mother scream at me. Number two, I need to get my head around all of this before I
talk to my handler.
I need to figure out how I plan to lie to him.
Because when I thought Richter was a boring old accountant, I thought I’d be able to string my handler along for a few
years while they got bored with me.
But Richter isn’t an accountant.
Whatever he does out here, I have a feeling they are going to be very interested.
The landscape out the window is like an enormous snow globe. Frozen and swirling.
Richter keeps calling it a caldera and my primary school education lumps that word in with “volcano.” But he doesn’t look
worried about living on the edge of destruction, so I’m not going to worry about it either.
Yet.
Like Earth, this planet has dozens of different climates. I’d clearly packed for the wrong one.
“We call it the Shadow Zone,” Richter says from behind me, still keeping distance between us. “You can’t see it right now,
but there’s a second caldera out there in the storm. That is what our media likes to call the Forbidden Territory to scare the
people who’ve never been up here.”
“Sounds ominous.” I turn back to him, and my follow up joke dies in my throat and I clench my fists around my thumbs to
keep from fidgeting at the dark glare he’s fixed on the window behind me.
Oh. He’s serious. Like serious serious.
“Okay,” I say, cautiously. That low anger in his tone isn’t directed at me and he softens the moment his focus shifts back to
me. “I don’t plan on hiking across open tundra, even on a clear day. So we should be good.”
“There are... things that live out there. We keep them contained in the interior caldera, most of the time. But they are
dangerous.”
“Here be dragons,” I say under my breath, not quite able to be serious after all.
“What?” His head cocks to the side.
“Sorry. It’s from really old Earth maps. They had monsters drawn in places where ships disappeared or things went wrong.
Superstitions, but useful when you’re avoiding danger you can’t see.”
“This is a danger we can see.” He steps beside me, and I sway a little toward the heat of his body. “The walls of the inner
caldera provide a sort of natural barrier, so, most of the time, we don’t have to worry about them creeping over the ridge.”
But he said we keep them contained.
Oh shit.
I’m exactly where my military contacts want me. “And the brotherhood keeps them from getting out, too.”
He nods. “There are enough of us spread around the exterior caldera that none of them have gotten past our line in over a
decade.”
I glance back toward the door, at the blades I’d thought were decorative when I came in.
“What do you do when they get out of the interior caldera?”
“We hunt them down and deal with the problem.”
He says it so matter-of-factly, I can’t help but wonder, “How often do they get out?”
 “Not often. Not anymore…”
He’s hedging around something, but I don’t know what to ask to get him to tell me.
“There was a problem once, but we’ve sealed up the crevasse that had let them escape.”
“And that’s your job… protecting the rest of this world from those monsters.”
“It is.” He tips his head in something like a nod. “Or, it was.”
“Right,” because now it’s baby-making, technically.
Taking my hand, he draws me back to that half-round sofa and, again, he sits further away from me than I expect.
I almost scoot closer to him, but I’m willing to give him a few hours to get used to this.
A fire puffs to life on top of what I’d thought was a coffee table, and the warmth makes me melt against the sofa. It wasn’t
cold before per se, but I definitely appreciate the additional heat.
Even if I’d rather take it from him.
But our other job...
He hasn’t even tried to kiss me.
Maybe I’m not what he wanted.
After all, the Agency made promises, and every one of them painted salacious pictures of insatiable appetites.
But he didn’t whisk me away to a by-the-hour motel.
He didn’t throw me to the floor as soon as the door shut behind us.
This is not a man unable to control his base instincts now that he has—basically—free use of my pussy if he wants it.
Maybe I didn’t fit his expectations, after all, he’s not what I remember from the file. Maybe I’m not what he remembers
from mine.
They got to lay down certain preferences—and even after we matched, we were able to say no.
Maybe I’m not what he requested, and he’s waiting to decide if he wants to turn me in for a refund.
I kick off my shoes and tuck my legs up under me.
I can’t ask him that outright. I mean, I could. But if the answer is “yeah, you’re going back where you came from” I’d rather
ease into the rejection.
“Have you been bonded before?” I ask. Maybe that’s part of it.
“No.”
So, whatever has him buttoned up so tightly, it’s not a heartbreak.
Unless—
Before I can ask if one of the women at the local club stole his heart before I got here, he clears his throat. “What did you
do, back on Earth?”
I wince, but he takes my hand, tracing my palm with his thumb, and I want to inch closer to him. “Um… nothing, actually. I
mean, I had a few jobs here and there, waitressing, a bookstore, dog walking. But, I’ve always wanted to come here, so I didn’t
make any commitments.”
This was the commitment.
Him.
And I can’t help but feel like he’s moments away from bolting.
“I do have a degree in early childhood education.” I hesitate, because… “Did you read my file?”
His lips twist in something like a grimace. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t.”
“Oh...” He just took whatever the computer spit out at him.
I mean, so did I and I read the file wrong, so I guess I can’t complain.
“Was it hard to leave your family behind?”
I look down at my nonexistent watch. “Yes, and no.”
They’ll have gotten the email by now.
“They’ve all got their own lives. I wasn’t really a part of them after I left for college. Home for the holidays and video
calls, group chats.” I shrug. “Me being here isn’t going to be much different than being on the other side of the same planet.”
It was different. In some ways, it was easier.
“What about you?” I ask. I hadn’t seen anything, but again, I read it wrong. “Does your family like you being all the way out
here?”
“I don’t have one.” He smiles ruefully. “I—none of the brotherhood have parents anymore. But, we’ve known each other
for decades. So, I suppose we are more family than friends.”
“Family is what you make, not who you come from.”
His face clears and then, the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen parts his full lips.
“Then, I suppose I do. And now, you’re a part of it too.”
“Yes, I am.” Maybe he does want me after all.
That weight that had tugged at my heart snaps and I feel incandescent when I return that smile.
RICHTER
I don’t know what I said, but after we move on from her family, she relaxes. Her smiles come easier. She laughs.
There’s nothing I want more than to reach out and drag her across the small gap between us.
But then she yawns, watching me with sleepy eyes, and I register the time. We’ve been talking for hours.
“I didn’t feed you.”
“That’s okay.” She glances toward the kitchen and back at me with a little smile. “I’m not really hungry. Travel, nerves...”
She brushes the words out of the air as if they don’t matter, but the mention of nerves has me inwardly cringing.
I should have taken her to a hotel.
Because now I know she’s soft as well as delicate. I know the way she smiled when explaining that the creature on her shirt
is a cat—an earth version of a zurgle.
But more importantly, I know I’m not going to be gentle if I take her tonight, and she deserves gentle. She deserves control.
She deserves a bonding as sweet and lovely as she is.
And I definitely can’t give her that tonight.
“We should get some sleep.” I stand and ignore the way her brows raise. “I’ve obviously never experienced intergalactic
travel, but I’ve been told it’s exhausting.”
Lips twisted in something like an amused scowl, she holds her hands out to me.
Her skin is warm, and her grip is firm when I pull her upright.
Her smile is shy and her cheeks rosy.
She is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen, and soon, she’ll be mine.
But not tonight.
She laces her fingers in mine as I lead her down the hall. She doesn’t look into the doors we pass. Her eyes are locked on
me and I can’t return that stare. It would be too easy to get lost in those molten brown eyes and do something I can’t take back.
The doorway to the bedroom that was mine before yesterday glows with a dim amber light. I wave my hand over the sensor
and it slowly brightens.
“This is your room. If you need anything, I’m just down the hall.” I point toward the second largest bedroom, but she
doesn’t follow the line of my finger at first.
She looks from the door we’ve stopped in front of, to the darkened one further down the hall. “My room.”
“For now.”
Brow furrowed, she looks down at the floor and lets out a long and low breath. “Okay...”
I don’t know if it’s an agreement, but I can pretend.
Her bags are here, everything she might need is here.
I need to not be here.
“Good night, Laurel.”
She doesn’t let go of my hand.
Turning to me, she looks up and her eyes meet mine for a brief moment before they fall to my lips.
“Can I at least have a goodnight kiss?”
Rough desire wars with common sense inside me. I should find an excuse.
Retreat is the far better strategy in this case.
But I don’t want to.
If I trusted myself at all, I would claim her as my mate in my bed behind her instead of leaving her to sleep in it alone.
And again, I wonder if I shouldn’t have taken care of this earlier, like all the other men who’ve done so before me.
But I’m not like those other men.
There’s a reason the brotherhood is all but exiled here.
Orphans were easy prey for the man who tortured and twisted us and turned us into what we are today.
We each walked away from the Maker’s experiments with different gifts… different curses.
I don’t know what else he left behind. We can turn rock to dust with a squeeze of our hands.
She is far more delicate.
The smile that has quirked her lips falters and I can’t stand the lost look that fills her eyes.
Dipping my head, I take her lips and know it was a mistake.
They’re soft and sweet and I pull back before I can forget myself.
It’s barely a kiss. I know it. I know she knows it.
 She looks at me like I’m a little boy pretending he doesn’t know his letters.
“Is that what you call a kiss?”
She takes a step, closing what little distance there was between us. Fingers warm on my jaw, she gently grips and drags me
down as she presses up onto her toes.
This time, her lips are sweet and sinful. Even though I know better, I can’t help but drink her in.
She opens to me and I greedily surge in to claim the rest of her mouth.
The clothes I put on this morning are too thin.
I can feel every inch of her against me.
She’s soft and strong and still so breakable.
I have to lock my muscles to keep from pulling her in. I want to crush her to me.
That baser part of my brain tells me to claim her. To seal the bond between us before she can figure out I’m not what she
wants and get away from me.
But logic outweighs lust.
I’m too big, too strong. If I hurt her in any way...
The thought stabs through me like a sharp spike of ice.
I want to drown in her. I want her tongue to tease more parts of me than just my mouth.
A shiver wracks through me at the thought.
It’s that image, the idea of her on her knees, looking up at me, licking her lips, that snaps me out of the hold she has on me.
Someday, I will ask for that.
But not tonight.
I pull away from her. Locking my arms as I set her back down on her feet.
“I will see you in the morning.”
Retreating before she has a chance to see the massive erection that kiss gave me, I don’t even breathe until I’ve crossed the
threshold to my temporary room.
I want her.
And I’ll have her.
Just not tonight.
 CHAPTER
FOUR

LAUREL
I STAND—ROOTED to the spot—and watch him disappear into a dark doorway further down the hall.
But nothing closes.
This place doesn’t actually have any doors.
So why do I feel like I’m being shut out?
The lights in the living areas dim to darkness and I finally step into my room.
He left my suitcases beside a dresser that runs along one wall. It’s big enough for all of my clothes, and then some.
It’s big enough for two.
Everything in this room is big enough for—was made for—two.
Made for two Sians.
So, the dresser is chest high on me and I’ll probably swim in the bed once I climb up onto it.
Shoving away the odd ache that comes with that, I square my shoulders. I’m not a small abandoned thing. And I refuse to
act like it.
There’s a line of new devices on the top of the dresser. Their version of a cell phone, what looks like a bluetooth earpiece,
and a new watch along with a few things I don’t recognize.
It feels like a strange welcome packet. Like something that was provided to him to provide to me.
I almost don’t unpack my suitcase. But I don’t want to give any impression that I plan on going anywhere.
When I open the bottom drawer closest to me, I freeze.
It’s lined with neatly folded shirts.
Because this is his room.
He made all this space for me and then… fled.
What is going on?
I intend to find out.
I force myself to take a breath and exhale the tension that tries to cling to my shoulders.
Now that I know this is where we will eventually sleep—together—I finish putting away my clothes without that feeling of
abandonment.
He’s simply giving me space.
I move into the bathroom and find places set aside for me here too.
While I brush my teeth, I consider giving him one night to get over whatever it is that’s keeping him away from me.
But no. That’s not who I am. It’s not who he’s going to get.
Mouth rinsed, toothbrush put away, I stare at myself in the mirror for a moment.
I’ve never had to seduce anyone before.
It’s always been something I could get with a few nudges and suggestions.
I fuss with my hair for a minute, but there’s nothing I can do to it without taking a shower, so I leave it in the messy bun I
shoved it into before we landed and go back to the room.
A little voice in the back of my mind tells me to just get naked. But if he’s going to reject me, I’d rather have something on.
So, I pull a slip dress nightgown from the drawer I claimed for my underwear, and slide it on over my skin.
It makes me shiver, and I hope I’ll get to feel it come right back off.
I pause to look in the floor-length mirror before I go to him.
 It’s black—the only item of that color that I own—and plain, but I’ve never been a fan of lingerie in any form, so it’s all
I’ve got.
The tiles are warm under my bare feet as I turn off my room’s light and follow the dim lines on the hallway floor to the one
he’s claimed for the night.
There’s a faint chill in the air, but I’m going to have to get used to that.
I pause on the threshold of that room.
The same storm of flurries swirl outside the windows of this smaller bedroom and the faint light from outside filters in,
eerily blue-gray.
Richter isn’t asleep yet.
He shifts, propping up on one arm as the blanket, slung over his body, pools at his waist, and I see his eyes run over me.
“What’s wrong?”
Even though I know I should wait for him to tell me to come in, I walk to the bed and sit on the edge closest to the door.
He’s still out of reach.
“I didn’t come here to sleep alone. And you didn’t sign up to have a roommate.” I swallow back that little sliver of fear that
still pokes at my throat. “Am I not what you wanted?”
He curses in Sianese and in a single movement, he throws the covers back, scooping me into his arms as he kneels in the
center of the bed.
I barely have time to register that he’s naked before his lips find mine in a kiss so searing I almost forget to breathe.
His arms are a hard cage around my hips as he holds me to him, like he thinks I’ll try to wriggle away.
This is exactly what I want. I’m not about to fight him… even for room to inhale.
I’ve wanted this for years. I’ve wanted him since I saw him.
The kiss before had been a mere shadow of what this is.
He’s ravenous and I’m starved for his touch.
I hadn’t been able to explore his tongue the way I wanted earlier.
It’s forked at the tip, the surface of it a line of smooth ridges that span from side to side. Soft and hard all at once.
Friends had joked that they were “ribbed for her pleasure.”
As his tongue coaxes mine now, I think that joke might have been prophetic.
His skin flickers beneath my hands as I sweep them up the thick cords of his neck.
“Why haven’t we been doing this for hours already?” I ask, when I draw back to take a breath.
“I didn’t want to scare you.”
“You don’t scare me.” Maybe he should, but he doesn’t.
“I could hurt you.”
“You won’t.” I wiggle in his arms and he lets me go, but I don’t move away. I sweep that slip off over my head. Warm skin
to warm skin, it’s my turn to grasp his face in my hands. “I’m yours, Richter. So, why haven’t you taken me?”
He curses again and I chuckle at the word I’ve only seen spelled before. I like the way it rolls off his tongue.
He lifts my legs, and I wrap them around his waist as he turns us, laying me down on the mattress and running his hands
over me.
Being in someone’s arms—in their bed—has never felt so right. It feels like this is where I’m supposed to be.
Which makes no sense, because I’ve known him for barely half a day.
I’m not going to fool myself into thinking it’s love that’s fluttering in my chest.
This is lust and chemical reactions and years of fantasies waiting to be fulfilled.
“I want to see you.” He whispers the words against my cheek, but instead of moving away, he draws a line of kisses down
my neck, pausing to lick the tattoo between my breasts.
Then his lips coast over my stomach, and I can’t help but writhe at the promise of his tongue on my pussy—of those ridges
on my clit.
His thick, warm cock drags down my leg as he settles between them.
I want to see him too… but I don’t ask. He’s worried he’ll scare me. Better to do this once, so he knows I can take him
before my eyes flare wide and he starts having second thoughts.
But I don’t have second thoughts. Or first. Or any thoughts at all when his tongue slides over my already wet pussy.
The Agency put us on supplements the day our matches were confirmed. Along with some other interesting side effects,
they leave me positively dripping when I’m horny.
Like… change-my-underwear-three-times-a-day wet.
The better to take a fat alien cock with.
But Richter doesn’t seem to care that my body’s ready for him. He doesn’t seem to notice the way I already clench around
his tongue, wanting more.
“I don’t know how I thought I’d manage to sleep tonight.” He rakes his sharp teeth over the inside of my thigh. “The thought
of you, alone in my bed.”
The sound he makes is like a growl, but it’s muffled as he dives into my pussy again, adding two fingers and stretching me
wide.
“What would you have done if I hadn’t come to you?”
“After my imagination ran wild?” He asks, barely pausing in his worship of my pussy. “I would have imagined this, and
fucked my hand instead of you.”
I don’t like that.
Not one bit.
“You have to give me everything I want, right?” I gasp when his teeth nip at my clit. “That was part of the deal.”
“Yes it was.”
“Good. If you try to make me sleep alone again, I’ll tie you to this bed and I won’t let you go until I’ve had my fill of you.”
“Is that supposed to be a deterrent?”
Before I can answer, he fills me with another finger and all I can do is whimper with need.
Need for more of his tongue, need to be filled by him.
“Please, Richter. Bond me.” I don’t want to wait anymore.
He licks me, one more time and then his fingers leave me.
But I don’t complain, because his hands scoop under my hips and he positions me...
“I’ll give you anything you want, Laurel. Everything. All you have to do is ask.”
“I want you.”
He presses into me in a slow slide.
But he doesn’t push all the way.
Just the tip.
Oh God.
Even that has stretched me wide. It’s a fullness I want more of, but he drops over me, onto his forearms.
“I’ll try to be gentle.”
“Don’t.”
His brow ridges quirk and I trace my fingers over that line of confusion.
“I want you.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but I don’t push that permission on him again. He’ll fuck me how he wants to this time. And
next time, I’ll fuck him how I want.
Kissing me before his hips flex, he tries to distract me before he presses into me in a long, slow slide.
It doesn’t work. I pull back from him on a gasp, trying to fill my lungs.
No silicone facsimile could have prepared me for this.
I’m so full of him it makes me want to weep. His hips press to mine, and I spread my legs wider, somehow trying to get
more of him.
“Saints, you’re perfect.”
I look up at him, fingers tracing the lines of his lips. “We’re perfect.”
Yet the bond hasn’t clicked into place.
He moves his hips back, slowly drawing out of me and my eyes cross. Their cocks have ridges on the underside, like hooks
meant to make it harder to get out than it is to get in.
They pop against me and the whimper that falls from my lips is a shattered thing.
When I open my eyes again, Richter watches me, concerned again. He’s only pulled halfway out of me. And the look on his
face...
“You didn’t hurt me.” I reach between us, until I can draw my fingers along the underside of him, feeling them and relishing
the way he shivers when I do.
“I want this.” I say, reaching up to slide my hands behind his neck. “If you hurt me, I’ll tell you. But you won’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because a man who was going to hurt me would have dragged me to a hotel, torn off my clothes and shoved his dick in me
without a second thought.”
I hope to God that no one has to go through that.
“Have you ever hurt a woman you’ve been with?”
“No.”
“Then you’re not going to hurt me.” I pull him down to my lips, but I don’t kiss him, not yet. “Fuck me. Claim me. Bond me
to you, and then, you’ll know exactly how much I want you.”
Can’t lie to him about that once the bond clicks into place.
I kiss him, and finally—finally—he thrusts into me with a hard stroke. I pull him closer, kissing him more deeply.
 Richter’s hand moves to my breast, his fingers pinching at my nipple. That sharp sensation makes me smile against his lips.
His thrusts are slow, but hard and deep and it only takes a few more before we both freeze.
Something inside me clicks.
The bond.
I can feel him.
Every inch of him, every molecule seems to vibrate inside of me. Every wisp of emotion wraps around me and I almost
drown in his desire.
He can feel me.
He can feel what I truly want.
And he’s finally going to give it to me.
Each thrust drives me into the bed and each withdrawal makes me want to beg to have him back.
But I don’t have to ask. His lovemaking turns brutal now that he trusts what I want. It’s a pummeling my pussy happily
accepts.
My every nerve spins tight with pleasure.
Now, it’s a race to completion.
That peak is just out of reach, but Richter is dangerously close and so am I. His pleasure spirals into mine and mine into his
and the overwhelming sensation breaks over me.
My nails dig into his back and I shatter on a scream as he spills his cum inside me.
Legs trembling, I lock them around him, not wanting to let him go, even though I know he doesn’t plan on going anywhere.
“You,” he says through labored breaths, pushing up so he can look down at me. “Are not what I expected.”
“Same.”
Nothing about this has been what I expected.
It’s been so much better.
“Are you okay?”
“What do you feel?” I ask, palm smoothing over the textured skin and corded muscles of his chest.
“I feel like you’re not done.”
I shake my head. “There’s a term on Earth. ‘Fucked senseless.’ I’m not quite there yet.”
His hips shift and his cock slides in my very messy pussy.
Sian men have a lot of perks. Coming twice each time is one I didn’t realize I’d be so into.
“Just how senseless do you want to be?”
I rock against him. “If I can still walk and talk when you’re done… have you done your job right?”
His smile might scare me if his need wasn’t washing over me at the same time.
“I like a challenge.”

RICHTER
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I start to second guess them.
She might be the challenge that kills me.
Smiling up at me like she’s forgotten my teeth are sharp and my skin has random spines and spikes that pose every risk of
damaging her... I could very easily dive into her and lose myself in the heady rush of the emotional bond.
But if she is the challenge that kills me, I’m going to enjoy every second of it.
“Tell you what, I’ll fuck you until you can’t talk. We’ll save the rest for later.”
“Deal.”
But she’s not ready when I pull myself from her—feeling every ridge on my cock as it comes free—and she squeaks when I
flip her onto her stomach.
But the surprise that filters across the bond has no apprehension in it.
I’m going to ask if she has any sense of self preservation.
She’s mine now, completely, just as I’m hers. I don’t plan on letting her forget it.
When the bond clicked into place, it was a startling rush of her into me and me into her.
I hadn’t expected to feel how much she wants me.
I’m not sure why she wants me as much as she does.
She’s all slick heat as I press into her again. My own cum leaving her wetter than she already was.
 The sweet little oh that leaves her lips makes my cock twitch.
And that’s what makes me ease even slower.
I could take her hard and fast again. Her body would allow it.
Fulfilling that promise to fuck her senseless would be easy. But I want to take my time with her this go around.
I’ve claimed her.
Now, it’s time to explore.
She stretches her arms out over her head and turns it to the side, looking at me with a soft smile on her lips.
That coy little look, the sound she makes as she licks her kiss-swollen lips… everything she does makes my cock hard. And
I know she can feel it twitching inside her. I could easily ride her until I came again—but that wouldn’t take long.
Certainly not long enough to get to “senseless”.
The memory of my name on her lips as she came, of her delicious pussy as a vice around my cock... That’s burned into my
brain and I know it’s going to spring to the front of my thoughts when it’s least convenient.
I want this woman. Now and always.
Dipping down, I nip at her shoulder, my teeth leaving faint scratches on her skin and another shiver wracks through her,
straight into me.
That is what I’m truly exploring right now. How much actually passes between us.
Each breath she takes is still ragged. Her heart flutters in her chest. I know she wants to keep going, but I need to get my
head around all of this.
I pull back from her and my cum spills onto the sheets in a dark pool. I should care. But I can’t be bothered.
There’s a disappointment filtering through the bond, but it’s mixed with curiosity.
“I feel like I have all of my senses.” She says, wiggling her ass to tease me.
“You’ll get everything you want.” I smooth my hand down her legs and back up again. “And I will too.”
She presses her lips together and I feel what might be a demand percolating inside of her, but she doesn’t say another word.
She only gasps when my lips find the base of her spine.
Drawing my tongue up the line of it, I love the way she shivers.
I want to taste every inch of her skin.
But when my tongue finds her throat, she lifts her hips and my cock slides into her like it knows where it belongs.
“Don’t tease me, Richter. I’ve waited decades to have you.”
I want to give her everything she needs, but, “I can take hours and leave you senseless, or I can fuck you now, hard and
rough, and it will all be over before the first moon hits its zenith.”
“We can take hours tomorrow.” She rocks against me, hands twisted in the sheets, trying to fuck herself with my cock. “I
can feel how much you want me. Prove it.”
I thrust into her, meeting her ass with my hips as she presses back, and the chirp of surprised pleasure that leaves her lips
makes me grit my teeth.
Which feelings are hers and which are mine, I can’t tell anymore. We’re both run through with such desire, it doesn’t matter
anymore.
On my knees, I move her so I can get as deep into her as possible and a whispered “yes” falls from her lips.
Her hands grip her ass, holding herself open as my cock fills her with each thrust.
Eyes screwed shut and mouth open wide, her ragged breaths are punctuated by moans that get sharper and sharper the
closer we get.
Now I’m the senseless one.
I’m the one who can’t control the pace or the sharp sounds from my throat.
I’m the one whose fingers dig into her skin and whose mind flares when it amps her pleasure.
Each thrust results in a keening moan that threatens my sanity. Each withdrawal fills me with the need to dive further into
her, to find ways to bind myself to her all over again.
The ridges beneath my cock stiffen and flare and when they hit her clit on the next thrust, that invisible edge sneaking up on
me.
She cries out, shaking as every last ounce of me spills into her.
A piece of my soul goes with it.
I almost collapse on top of her, but manage to turn to the side at the last moment, dragging her over with me.
“Jesus,” she says, taking big gulps of breaths. “I knew it was going to be intense...”
I nod against her hair, relishing that sated feeling.
Then she moves, disconnecting us—though not, I think, on purpose—and my cum spills out of her.
“Shit, I didn’t think.”
I kiss her before she can apologize.
“This bed’s a mess, let’s go back to our room.”
 A warm and fluttery feeling brushes through the bond when I say the word “our”.
“Okay.” She trails her fingers along my lips. “I need to use the bathroom too.”
I manage to turn us so she’s sitting in my lap when my feet hit the floor, and her arms wrap around my neck when I stand.
I don’t set her down again until I stop in my bathroom. Something about this process has always felt private, so I drop a
kiss to the top of her head and leave her.
There’s no point in putting on anything for the short walk to my kitchen. My skin is still so warm from her, I don’t feel the
chill.
Half of the fridge is filled with glass bottles of drinking water. They need it to survive, so it’s now on a regular delivery
schedule and there are cases of it downstairs if this isn’t enough. I grab two, just in case.
A sharp chirp makes me recoil as I walk past the wall screen. A message, but not the usual kind that wakes me at this hour
of the night.
Curiosity gets the better of me and I open it instead of leaving it until the morning.
The Agency.
But it’s not a welcome note or a canned congratulatory letter.
No… it’s an “oh shit we messed up again,” message.
I hadn’t read the name wrong. They’d mixed Lauren and Laurel up on the airfield.
The woman I belong to. The woman who has half of my soul isn’t the one who should have come home with me.
I stab the X in the corner to close it. I’ll tell them they can’t have her back in the morning.
Because she’s mine now, and nothing but death can separate us.
Laurel waits for me in the middle of my bed—our bed. Her arms are wrapped around one of her knees, and she’s put on a
small pair of shorts, but nothing else. She takes the water bottle I offer her with a wide but cautious smile.
“What’s wrong,” she asks.
“Absolutely nothing now that you’re mine.”
Her cheeks turn rosy and she takes a long drink. “I didn’t know which side you sleep on.”
Before, I slept squarely in the middle of the mattress that looks twice as big with her in the middle of it.
Now… “Closest to the door.” The better to protect her from anything or anyone who might come for her.
“Okay,” she caps the bottle, crawling to the far side and setting it on the nightstand.
She drank barely a quarter of it, so I place the other bottle on my side and climb in with her, waving the lights off as I do.
Laurel is all softness when she snuggles close to me, and I swirl my fingers over the warm skin on her back.
When I shiver, I know I’m not the one who’s cold. Dragging another blanket over the both of us, I pull her tight to me.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, her words thick with the sleep that threatens at the edges of my own mind.
How did I think I’d be better off waiting when this was what I was giving up? When I would have lost her if she hadn’t
come to me before I read that message.
Every part of me tingles.
It makes sense now—why some chose to sleep separately. Her every thought is like a poke to my mind.
I don’t know what those thoughts are, just that they’re there.
“Sleep, my little azhibka.”
She flinches, looking up at me. “I’m a mistake?”
“Someone made a mistake. But it wasn’t us.”
Her brows quirk and I feel an unasked question.
“Sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” I kiss her forehead and pull her close.
I’m not going to let her go, ever again. She is mine. Tomorrow I’ll tell her she was never supposed to be.
And then, we’ll move on.
Each other’s until fate parts us.
 CHAPTER
FIVE

LAUREL
I DON’T LEAVE Richter’s room for three days.
I barely leave his bed.
The bond creates this feedback loop that amplifies everything, and by the time we’re done fucking each other’s brains out,
our exhaustion loops together and then one or the other of us is so horny we wake the other up and the cycle repeats itself.
It’s a deliciously vicious cycle.
Thank God the Agency welcome packet came with like a gallon of lube.
We barely have time to breathe, much less talk. This morning, I managed to wake before him. Drowsiness tickles through
the bond as his sleep filters through to mine, but I don’t want to go back to bed.
I feel like a mess.
The showers we took were either ineffectual because we couldn’t get through them without getting dirty, or because his
delicious, dark cum spilled in or on me shortly after we’d finished drying off.
Biting my tongue, I slip out of Richter’s bed. The sheets had magically changed while I was in the bathroom each day. A
blessing I haven’t gotten the chance to ask about yet.
Just imagine if most of it hadn’t wound up in you. I chuckle at the idea of that mess.
The bathroom is fairly similar to one I’d expect to find on Earth. But none I’ve ever seen have this kind of a view.
The Shadow Zone as Richter called it is beautiful and desolate.
I tear my eyes away from the expanse of blue beneath a sky tinged with orange and greens as one of the suns rises.
I’ll look my fill when I’m neck deep in water.
The tub is carved into the floor near the windows and I snatch a towel from a pile of folded ones in the corner. I don’t
know what the fabric is, but it’s amazing.
I don’t have to wait for the water to heat. Instead of pouring from a faucet, the water bubbles up from below with the push
of a button.
The dark stone of the tub glitters as I step into the hot water, and sink down, letting it soothe my aching muscles.
Three days is a long time to be caught up in someone else. A long time to shut out the outside world—worlds—entirely.
I can’t remember the last time I’d been this disconnected.
Maybe I never have been.
I let the steamy water wrap around me, rocking me gently as the tub pumps in a continuous flow of new water. I trace the
lines of the spiky mountain ridges out the window with my eyes, counting peaks and watching enormous birds descend in lazy
swooping spirals.
It’s deathly quiet and I think I might love it.
Maybe I could ignore any messages from my handler and pretend I didn’t sell my soul for this.
I feel Richter wake and know he’s gone into his kitchen.
There’s a little tug, like a sting that connects our souls. A reminder that he’ll always be there.
My sister would be horrified.
Jess could walk me through any biology related question I have, but once bonding and emotions get involved, she taps out
and runs in the opposite direction.
I think the last three days are all the biology lessons I need.
I look up at Richter as he comes to join me. His eyes are heavy and he hasn’t bothered to put any clothes on yet.
 God, I want to climb out of the tub and jump him all over again. Somehow I manage to keep myself under the water. “Good
morning.”
“Good morning, my little azhibka.”
He keeps calling me that, but the possessiveness that comes through the bond makes it sting less.
Holding out a water bottle, he sinks to his knees and when I take it, he presses down, laying on the floor perpendicular to
me, chin resting on his hands.
“Drink.” He says, “You have to stay hydrated.”
He has been adamant about that.
There’s a thread of concern in the bond and I do as he asks, but, “I’m not a houseplant. I know when I need water and can
ask for it.”
“You cannot blame me for wanting to care for you.”
“Even if I’m a mistake?”
Something fuzzy transfers across the bond, and I’m not sure what it is... shame? That doesn’t make sense.
“What’s wrong?”
“Before anything else, you must know, I will not give you up. You are mine now.”
The laugh that leaves me is incredulous. “We’re bonded. I’m not going anywhere.” Silly man.
“Yes. But we weren’t supposed to be.” He reaches into the water, plucking my hand from it and drawing my knuckles to his
lips. “A mistake was made, and we were paired to each other, instead of the ones we’d been matched with.”
“What?” That’s not possible. It shouldn’t be possible. “What does that mean?”
“It was the Agency’s mistake. They will not punish you.”
I feel the unspoken words… he won’t let them.
“Will they punish you?”
“No. It just means that we’re going to need to figure out how to make my life work for what you were promised.”
“I mean, I was mostly promised lots of orgasms and cum and eventually babies, so, we’re already on track to make that
come true.”
A computer may not have matched us, but maybe a higher power took over.
Or maybe… maybe my handlers made this happen. An accountant is boring, the brotherhood on the other hand…
“What is it?” Richter squeezes my hand and I shove that worry away as quickly as I can.
There’s no way my handler would have been able to cause this mix-up. I don’t think so, anyway.
“We might need to go shopping.” It’s an easy distraction.
His brows quirk.
“You got one of the ‘favorite things’ lists from the Agency for the other woman, which means we’re going to need to figure
out what you need to get for me instead.”
“I can take you shopping.”
“Good.” I sink down under the water and shake my hair until it’s all wet.
When I surface again, he watches me with a curious smile. “I,” he pauses, “am going to go put on clothes, so that I don’t
immediately topple you back into our bed.”
I move to the side of the tub, slinging my elbows over the side and resting my chin on my own hands, so we’re barely
inches apart. “We would have burned out, eventually. Better to pace ourselves by throwing some ‘real life’ stuff in there too.”
He closes that tiny gap and kisses me. If the water wasn’t steaming before that, it would be now.
“Go,” I say, pushing gently on his shoulder. “Or else we won’t get anything done.”
I watch him leave, eyes tracing the line of his back, over his ass that makes my hands clench from the memory of how it felt
to grab hold of.
Both of us in clothes might not be enough.
When I climb out of that water that was never going to get cold and wrap myself up in that towel that’s huge on me because
it was made for him, I’m glad that it’s super absorbent. I get dried off and into clothes fast enough that I think we’re safe.
Especially since whatever he’s doing out in the living area has faint irritation fluttering through the bond to me.
He glares at an enormous screen on the wall and a pattern I recognize as a radar map from my Earth weather app—though
the land beneath it is completely unfamiliar.
“Is another storm coming?” I ask, stopping a couple feet away, just in case.
I’m going to try to hold out for another hour. Who knows, if I make it to an hour, maybe I’ll try for two.
“The other side of the caldera is getting hit pretty hard.” He takes a deep breath and taps the corner of the screen, making
the map disappear. “You have some messages. Do you want to read them on the wall, or should I transfer them to one of your
devices?”
“No, the wall’s fine.”
If there’s something in these messages that Richter shouldn’t see, that’s the sender’s fault. And my handler isn’t that
reckless.
When I go to tap the message icon, it’s replaced by a white sphere and I jump back from the screen and the enormous
version of my mother’s face. She scowls in the preview.
“Jesus.”
I expected her to call, but on that first day.
Richter looks at her with a curious tip of his head. “Do you want to take the call? I can decline it for you.”
“No, this is a conversation I need to have.”
Now that a couple more days have passed, maybe she’s had time to cool off.
I hit the sphere and her scowl deepens.
I don’t even have the chance to say hi.
“What the hell were you thinking?”
“Mom—”
“Don’t ‘mom’ me like I’m the one being unreasonable. I’m not the one who ran off to another planet because she couldn’t
decide what to do with her life.”
“I was going to say I could explain. But since you’ve already decided you know what’s going on—”
“If not that, then why?” Her face contorts into a mask of disgust. “This is some fetish, isn’t it? You know you can’t come
back, right? He owns you now.”
Her voice breaks and she disappears from view, but the sounds she makes make it clear that several tissues have been
sacrificed for this strange show of emotion. When she comes back into view, she’s more composed, but no less angry. “How
could you do this to me?”
And there’s the kicker.
Little Laurel, the problem child, making her look bad to the blue-haired ladies at church again.
“This is why I didn’t tell you before I left.”
I feel the faint twinge of anxiety and look at Richter, standing in his kitchen, having to hear all this… holding another bottle
of water.
I’m going to have to tell him about water intoxication after I get done with my mother.
“He’s there, isn’t he? Is he telling you what to say? Has he hurt you? Blink twice if you need me to send help.”
“Mom!” I stop her, swallowing back the strange nausea that hit me when the bolt of pure disgust rocketed from Richter to
me. “He hasn’t hurt me, he’s not going to hurt me. That’s not how this works. Maybe if you read the articles I sent with my
email, instead of listening to the fearmonger down the street, you would understand. Or maybe, I don’t know, talk to Jess. She
can explain things. It’s kinda her job.”
My mother huffs, wrapping her arms around herself in a hug. “I just can’t believe my little girl would do something so
stupid.”
“I’m not your little girl anymore. I haven’t been for a very long time. There’s no difference between me coming here and
bonding to Richter than if I’d moved to Newfoundland and married some guy named Steve.” There was a lot of difference, but
nothing she needed to think about. “You can’t come visit me here, but you wouldn’t have gotten on a plane either.”
She doesn’t argue with me—because we both know I’m right.
Coming here was a risk. Possibly the biggest risk I’ll ever take. But it’s paid off in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
Sniffing, my mother glances away from the screen. “You realize you’re interchangeable to them, right? They kept sending
me to a different woman when I tried to get connected to you.” She huffs and then looks me over. “At least you look better than
she did.”
The woman probably looked fine… just exasperated from having to deal with my mother.
“Are you happy?” she asks.
The question doesn’t sound genuine, but I choose to answer it as if it is.
“Yes. I know it’s going to be hard for you to accept, but I am happy here.” Warmth floods through the bond and I look over
at where Richter waits. Still with that ridiculous bottle of water. “I’m happier than I even thought possible.”
It takes ten more minutes and countless reassurances she doesn’t accept, but finally I get her off the phone and the screen
goes dark.
It takes long enough that I take the bottle of water from Richter without arguing about whether or not I need it.
“You didn’t tell them you were leaving.” Richter sits beside me keeping a fluffy pillow between us.
“You heard that whole conversation. Do you think it would have gone better or worse in person?”
“Much worse.” His lips quirk and I know he feels my frustration and is trying to feed warmth back through the bond.
I’m not making it to the hour. Capping the bottle, I set the glass on the table in front of me and turn, slinging one leg over
him and rising onto my knees, hands pressed to his chest.
“Want to remind me what a good decision it was?”
His lips tug with a smile and I know he’s going to say yes, but the screen flashes a faint green and he sighs. “We’re about to
have company.”
“Good company? Or bad company?”
“If he had given us warning, and if my cock wasn’t trying to burst out of my pants… yeah, Core would be good company.”
“Does he have a bondmate?”
Richter nods.
“Then he should know better.” I press a quick kiss to those lips I already crave, but Richter doesn’t let me get off of him.
Arm locked around my hips, he picks me up and carries me across the room. He groans when I finally slide down the front
of him, feeling every inch.
Then he curses, hauling me back against him—a shield for his cock—as the lock clicks and the front door swings open.
The bond is a strange thing. Core is big, scarred, and looks brutal, despite his skin being an almost pretty shade of deep,
rosy pink. But I recognize him instantly. He is Richter’s friend. He’s safe. And that feeling extends to the woman with him.
Which is good, because she just barrels straight into our home and holds her hand out to me. “Hi, I’m Cindy, it’s so nice to
meet you, Lauren.”
“Laurel,” I correct, not wanting to explain why she had the right information, but is still wrong.
Her brows quirk and Core places his hands on her shoulders, drawing her back. I thought the height difference between
Richter and I was remarkable. Cindy is maybe five-foot-five, if that.
“To what do we owe this interruption?” Richter asks.
He’s not truly irritated, but it’s still there, fluttering under the surface.
Core looks at him with sharply raised brow ridges and then down to me.
“Nice of you to finally show up.” Core says, his hands still on his tiny bondmate’s shoulders. His grin splits some of the
scars on his face and I feel Richter roll his eyes, even if I can’t see them.
Core’s poking fun, that’s all.
“Any and all mistakes,” I say, “Were made by the Agency, not me.”
“Why don’t you two go talk. I have some boring business I need to dig into before we can go back to doing things we’d all
rather be doing.”
“It is absolutely wonderful to meet you.” Cindy grabs my hand and pulls me away from them, all but dragging me onto the
couch.
“So!” Cindy sits close enough she can whisper. “How is life on the new planet treating you?”
Mother aside… “Pretty great, actually. How about you?”
“Wonderfully. I mean, aside from having to sew up my bondmate twice now.” She shoots a half-hearted scowl at Core. It
only elicits a smile in return. “I’m a nurse.”
“Ah.” I say, not sure I needed to say anything at all.
Cindy’s my favorite kind of person. She carries the conversation all on her own.
“Apparently, they’re special, able to ask for specific professions on top of everything else, and my big alien man has a
habit of coming back from patrols scraped and bloody. What did Richter pick that got you?”
I have no idea what the woman who should have been here would have done for him. “Ah… random chance as far as I
know.” A mistake.
Glancing over my shoulder, I meet Richter’s unwavering gaze.
“The Saints are as kind as they are fiendish.” I say it in their language.
“That they are,” Cindy agrees, touching her stomach, a content smile on her face as she lets out a sigh. “Far kinder than I
ever imagined.
“I thought—” I sort through the conversations that managed to happen between orgasms. “You’ve only been here a day
longer than I have.”
“Yeah.”
“Already?”
“Those supplements they give us are no joke, and Core was ready, so he got off the stopper—what a silly name for it—as
soon as he found out I was on my way.”
I haven’t even asked Richter if he’s still on it.
The Sian stopped looking for a replacement for their female population when they found Earth. As soon as they confirmed
our physiological compatibility and realized that there were plenty of women like Cindy and me, it was a free for all. They put
all their efforts into the best ways to get us pregnant. They’d stumbled on the best way to not get us pregnant too.
“If the way Richter is watching you is any indication, you should be right behind me, if you aren’t already.”
“I’d guess so.” That stirs a war of emotions inside me.
I came here with that as my plan; I’ve read all the most important pamphlets. Twice. Gestation is accelerated between our
species. Cindy is having that baby—weeun, they call them—in five months, maybe less.
I want more time with Richter all to myself.
 And I need to figure out how to sever my ties to Earth.
Quick.

RICHTER
I hear every word Core says, but I don’t take my eyes off Laurel.
It’s not that I think Cindy is going to hurt her, but something in their conversation has a faint anxiety that isn’t my own
prickling under my skin.
If it gets any worse, I’m not above scooping her up and carrying her back to our bedroom so the two of them get the hint that
it’s time to leave.
Laurel looks at me with eyes wide enough… she might not know what I’m thinking, but she knows.
Honestly, I’m not sure why Core isn’t staring at Cindy too, but maybe it’ll be easier tomorrow.
“How’s it treating you?” Core nods toward them, as if I need the visual aide. “Bonded life?”
“I considered leaving you to freeze in the snow and go back to bed.”
That gets me a booming laugh.
“It’s a good thing the Agency gives them a stipend on top of everything else.” Core says, shaking his head. “It’s not my fault
her clothes are so delicate, or that getting them off usually means they wind up in more pieces than they started.”
“Why does that sound like you’ve been ripping them on purpose?”
“She should really just stop wearing them at all when she’s home.” He winks at me. Of course he does.
“Or maybe you should try harder.”
He chuckles and looks at Cindy who’s cheeks have turned pink like his skin. “Maybe... but I don’t think I want this to go
away.”
I know what he means.
“This is actually the first day we’ve left my bed for more than a few minutes.”
He chuckles and drops his head, but not fast enough to hide the smile full of broken teeth.
Core is like a cavrinskh magnet.
The woman on that couch is a nurse with as much Sian medical training as she could get before she left Earth. At least three
of us in this room know how much he needs her.
I ignore the fresh scar I can see on his neck.
“How many?” We’ve had this conversation so many times before, I don’t need to finish the question.
“Six.”
“What?” The icy tingle that washes down my skin is colder than the air outside. “It’s been five days.”
Core shrugs a shoulder and I catch the faintest hint of a wince. “We knew bringing women up to the caldera was going to
draw them out.”
But six in one sector?
Most weeks we didn’t see six in the whole Zone.
The numbers had diminished. The incursions had slowed.
I would never have brought Laurel—
“Hey.” Core’s head is ducked low, his eyes locked on mine. “We knew they would come out for bait. This isn’t a surprise.
They’re going to be safe.”
“But?” I know that look.
“But it has gotten worse now that she’s pregnant.”
“Already?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you read anything I sent you before you signed your name?”
“I read some of it.”
“Saints, Richter.” Core rubs his jaw. “If you’re not on the stopper, I’d bet you’re only one day behind us in that too.”
Except I am.
I took my weekly dose the day before she was supposed to arrive.
And I’ll take it again when the day rolls around.
Core claps me on the shoulder. “We’re gonna go and you can start working on making our weeun a playmate.”
“Only ever thinking of yourself.”
“I don’t know about that. I think you’ll like feeling this happy.” Core holds out his hand, and his tiny human woman hops up
from my couch, skipping to him.
“It was nice meeting you, Laurel. And now, I’m sure you’ll thank us for getting out of your hair.”
Core bundles Cindy up and hustles her out the door as Laurel comes to my side, wrapping her arm around my waist and
holding tight.
“They seem nice.”
“They’re our closest neighbors. You’ll meet the rest of the brotherhood, eventually.” Tipping her head up, I bend down to
kiss her. “But for right now, you’re all mine.”
She makes a muffled sound against my lips and when I pick her up, she wraps herself around me. Arms around my neck,
legs locked around my waist.
I feel the same rush and need in the bond that I feel in my bones.
She’s aligned perfectly, if only she wasn’t wearing pants.
I definitely consider tearing them off to get to her.
But not out here.
Cindy and Core might be gone, but some deep part of my mind—one with sharp teeth and claws—gnashes at the idea of
sharing her, even with their lingering memories.
Tightening my grip on her legs, I go to our bedroom on autopilot.
For the first time in all the years I’ve lived here, I wish my room had a door so I could kick it closed.
Laurel has her shirt off before her feet touch the soft rug. She tosses it to the foot of the bed and doesn’t spare the bright
fabric a second thought as her hands go to my waist.
Even if her eyes are heavy with lust, there’s something uncertain on her mind.
I tip her head up, forcing her to meet my eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
She chews her lip. The faint feeling of… embarrassment filtering through. “Are you still on the stopper?”
“Yes. Do you want me to get off of it?”
Reaching up, she pulls me down to kiss her again and I feel her relief as she draws back, pressing her forehead to mine,
shaking it gently.
“I only just got you. I want a little more time.”
“You can have all the time you want. I’ll take it until you tell me to stop.”
She shivers when I draw my hand down her shoulder, so I hit the sensor panel on the wall, and the fireplace puffs to life.
She flinches away from it before looking up at me with a fiendish smile. “Okay. Who told you it’s always been a fantasy of
mine to be fucked on a rug in front of a fireplace while it snows outside?”
I chuckle, slipping her pants off her hips and nudging her backward. “No one. But tell me all of them and I’ll make them
come true.”
With a coy little smile, she lays down on that rug and pinches her nipples, tongue caught between her teeth as she waits for
me.
“I am the luckiest man on this planet, my azhibka. What could I possibly have done to make the Saints think I deserve you.”
She shrugs, her eyes on my hands as I get my lounge pants off.
“I have a feeling we both got very lucky. But why,” she asks, one brow raising, “are the Saints making me wait to have you
again?”
With a chuckle, I join her on the floor, pressing her knees wide so I can settle between them.
My lips take the place of her fingers, teasing one of her rosy nipples as I test how ready she is for me.
“Always so wet,” I say, slipping my fingers into her.
“I thought it was the supplements,” she says, gasping as I work my fingers inside of her. “But I wasn’t gushing like this
when I was on Earth, so it has to be you.”
I pull back, looking down at her as I suck the sweetness of her pussy from my fingers. She rocks her hips, dragging the
slickness across the tip of me.
Licking her lips, she spreads her legs wider and her hand finds my cock, stroking me.
There’s a contentment in the bond. She wants me to fill her, but she’d be happy to stay like this too. Because we both know
I’m going to fuck her any and every possible way.
We have the rest of our lives to play out her fantasies, and mine too.
But I’m not as patient as she is.
I want every inch of her touching every inch of me.
Caging myself over her, I sink into the bliss of her and hold myself still inside her.
The words won’t sound right in her language, so I say them in mine, lips to the soft shell of her ear. “You are everything I
didn’t know I needed.”
She responds in my language too. “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted… and so much more.”
 Hooking one leg around mine, she moves herself beneath me, and my next thrust drives a moan from her lips that makes me
want to sink my teeth into her. I want to tighten my grip on her and drive that sound from her until it’s the only thing I can hear.
I spill my first load into her quickly. I’m convinced that orgasm hits as quickly as it does each time because my body wants
to fill her up and keep her full. That little voice at the back of my mind—the one screaming at me to breed her and solidify this
connection even more—is behind the controls.
I know she can feel this frenzied desire within me. Whether or not she actually knows why...
Kissing her so she doesn’t have the chance to ask questions, I let my imagination spin with those thoughts. We’ll wait as
long as she wants, but some day...
 CHAPTER
SIX

LAUREL
HOURS LATER, I’m wrapped up in Richter and one of those ridiculously soft blankets, half asleep.
I’ve never been able to take naps, but he’s very good at wearing me out.
If he wasn’t curled around me, I might have moved us to the bed, but I don’t feel inclined to go anywhere.
The rug is padded enough I’m comfy, and even as I watch the thick flakes of snow fall out the enormous window, I’m warm
as can be.
Laying here with him, like this… it feels like the perfect way to spend the afternoon.
Richter isn’t asleep either. He traces soft circles over my belly and I know that our visitors have left the same thoughts
swirling in both our minds.
Thoughts that remind me we’re not who each other thought we were getting. He never read my file and what I read wasn’t
his.
“How many kids do you want?”
Vikter’s file had said four. But that was a minimum. And I was fine with that. I’d seen women whose potential matches only
wanted one.
I can’t imagine raising an only child. Especially out here, all alone.
Behind me, Richter hums sleepily. “I don’t think that’s up to me.” His lips coast over my shoulder. “As many as you’re
willing to have?”
Something warm flutters across the bond and I ask, “Is there an upper limit?”
“It’ll get crowded once we hit six.”
I choke on a laugh, or maybe it’s disbelief. Somehow, six feels like such a big number compared to four.
“You’re the one doing all the work,” Richter says, turning me on my back and leaning over me. “You’re the one taking the
risks. I will happily apply myself to the task of making them, but when we start and stop is up to you.”
“I guess we’ll have to see how the first one goes, won’t we?”
We fall into lazy kisses, but they don’t translate into a fourth fuck on the floor. He turns me back on my side, pulling me
against him, and snuggles his face into my mussed hair.
I have no idea what these days would have been like if I’d wound up with the man I’d been intended for… but I’m so happy
someone fucked up.
Eyes on the snow again, I pull the blanket up to my chin and my eyes flutter with the heaviness of sleep.
At least, they do until something dark flickers between the flakes.
I sit up, dragging the blanket with me and Richter’s hand drops to my hip, confusion in the bond. “Do you see that?”
Something moves in the distance. A faint smudge against the snow and then it’s gone.
“Maybe I imagined it.” But I don’t think so.
Richter is tense behind me, hand tight on my hip as he searches through the flurries and down into the Shadow Zone.
“Don’t ever second guess yourself.” He leans forward, tapping the glass and it flares to life, a transparent screen with all
kinds of data scrolling across it.
“Where was it?”
I point, and he touches the glass, magnifying the area.
“You were right. It’s there.”
“What’s there?” All I see is a dark smudge moving through the snow.
 “A cavrinskh—the monsters.” He flips through line after line of information.
I can’t see it anymore, even with the magnification.
He rolls away from me, twisting and standing, managing to tuck the blanket back around me in the same motion.
I struggle to unwrap myself enough that I can sit up.
“I have to go deal with it.” He presses a tall panel in the wall and it slides out. A dozen hangers hold things that look like
wet-suits mixed with swat gear—except they’re pale gray, not black.
“Cause that’s what you do up here.” I look from him out into the snowy landscape. “You go out and stop the monsters from
getting out of the Shadow Zone.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have to kill them?”
He hesitates, strapping the suit closed, he turns and looks down at me. “They don’t give us any choice. If we ignore them,
they ignore us. But if they get out of the Zone and into the cities, women and children will die. They only attack me if I get in
their way. But if they do attack, they won’t stop until one of us is dead. I just make sure I’m the one who survives.”
He’s dressed before I manage to untangle my legs, and I grab the riotous silky robe from the chair by the dresser, following
him into the main rooms.
“You’d better come back to me in one piece.” I tie the belt around my waist while taking a good look at him.
I’m wearing every color on the rainbow and he’s covered neck to toe in white, gray and glacial blue.
I won’t be able to see him out in the snow.
Another panel in another wall—this one by the garage door—pops open and it’s a rack full of knives and pistol-sized guns.
I don’t like how short the blades are. Don’t like the idea of him getting up close and personal with those monsters.
“Promise me you’re going to come back in one piece.”
“I will always come back to you.” He closes that weapons locker and draws me to him for a kiss before hitting the screen
beside the garage door.
I don’t see him type anything in, but it connects a call to a Sian man who’s thicker than Richter and whose eyes are
transparent and full of veins. The unnatural color makes me shiver.
“How many?” The other man asks.
“Just one.” Richter glances at me and his smile is soft. “Laurel saw it before it tripped the sensors.
The man’s smile pulls to one side in a smirk and he chuckles. “I guess Core was right. She is going to be good for you.”
“Yes she is.”
“Thanks for checking in. Keep me updated.”
Richter gives him a curt nod and kills the call. “Drift’s the one in charge. If something happens—”
“Nothing is going to happen. Right?” I don’t want to hear the end of that sentence.
“No. It’s just one of them. I’ve done this hundreds of times.”
“Shouldn’t you take someone with you?”
He shakes his head. “By the time they get here, I’ll have handled it.”
He kisses me one last time and my fingers grip at that suit. I don’t like how thin the fabric feels beneath my fingers.
“I just got you.” I say when he draws back. “Don’t make me give you up.”
“Never.”
I pull the robe more tightly around me as he opens the door and the cold air from the garage hits me.
When it locks with a heavy clunk, I stare at it for a little longer than I should.
This isn’t what I signed up for.
But getting what I want, it seems, comes with a different set of sacrifices than I agreed to.

RICHTER
I’ve never enjoyed going out into the snow-covered wastes to kill another creature. But now I actively hate it.
I snap the helmet closed over my face and ignore the faint gnawing sensation of being trapped again. Those are memories
that don’t need to surface.
The chill bites a little harder as I guide the bike out of the Zone-side of the garage and plunge into the valley between the
caldera walls. The outpost finally feels like a home and Laurel is safe inside it. Safe from the cavrinskh I just want to
disappear.
Coordinates come to me through my neural key. That device that lets me drive my car and access random parts of the
outpost also keeps me from getting lost out here.
When I reach the bottom of the slope, I risk a glance up at the bright window.
Laurel’s silhouette is just barely visible. Watching.
Waiting for my return.
For the first time in my life, someone’s waiting for me to come home. But I won’t make it home if I’m distracted.
I steer the machine around the craggy rocks that peek out of the snow. They look black behind my visor and the protective
glass on the outpost windows, but they’re strangely yellow against the blue ice.
The visor keeps them from looking like dead bodies hunched against the frozen caldera wall.
With a tap to my ear, I trigger the helmet’s microprocessor and the landscape turns to a blue grid of vectors. I scan those
lines ahead of me, searching for any anomaly.
The change is subtle. A faint trail leaves the smallest artifact in the grid.
I’ve covered this part of the valley between the calderas a thousand times. I’ve scanned the ever-shifting landscape twice
as many times, if not more.
There are things the snow just doesn’t do.
I kill the bike, hopping into the soft powder and head for a familiar ridge. It’s one of my favorite vantage points, and if I can
find it before it gets too close…
The easiest way to kill these monsters is from a distance.
If you get the chance.
There’s no sign of the creature when I step up onto that rocky crag.
They blend into the snow better than we do in our suits.
But I can feel when one of them is near, and that prickling has started along my shoulders.
I’m not the only one stalking a killer in these wastes.
Vaguely aware of my visor searching out movement, I have to rely on my own eyes.
And that’s why I see it a moment before the visor triggers its warning.
It’s why I have a chance to react.
It jumps up from my right, and I catch it under the throat, twisting away from its trisected jaws.
A tuft of its iridescent fur tears out in my glove and I jump off the ridge, sliding in the fresh snow, to get far enough away
from it so I have a chance to pull a knife.
It’s too close for my gun.
Hand wrapped around the curved blade’s hilt, the pressure initializes the humming current and gives it its laser sharp edge.
I feel the vibration in my bones. The screaming wind cuts around me, drowning out any other sound. The snow swirls and I
look for the one that’s stalking me.
My visor searches in frantic jerking movements and in the end, I slap my helmet again. It’s worse than useless right now.
The cavrinskh’s black, beak-like muzzle is all I see when it stalks toward me.
That’s another reason they’re easier to kill from a distance. The camouflaging hair is easier to spot from afar.
Up close, it’s just shifting light and shadow. But those black jaws, hard and shining like an oil slick, with claws made of the
same substance… those I have no problem seeing as they snap and swing at me.
The powder here is too soft; I can’t shuffle back fast enough.
Claws score the front of my suit. Not close enough to tear through it, and I manage to bring my knife around in an arc that
grazes the cavrinskh’s front limbs.
The blade will cut anything but this suit and that slash went straight through the bone.
Snarling, the creature takes one faltering step forward and almost buckles into the snow. It gives me the chance to pull
myself out of the drift and get onto a pale patch of ice.
The spikes on my boots descend immediately. I pull my gun and I watch as the cavrinskh bites at the limb that I’ve all-but
severed. In a jerking motion, tears it free, tossing it into the snow in a bloody pile.
It has five more to work with.
Losing a single limb never really slows them down and it barrels at me across the icy span.
I get two shots off before I have to dive out of the way. Each bolt hits the creature.
Glowing ends of the bullets pulse beneath the fur. This one’s skin is thick.
Hopping to my feet takes too much time, and it’s on me. The spikes clatter on the thick sheet of ice and rock beneath me as I
catch it by the throat and shove it back.
The creature doesn’t give me any breathing room. It advances, slashing and chomping. It’s herding me and I’m not going to
let it put me where it wants me.
This time, the claw that gets me is close enough it shreds through the suit. Freezing wind hits my skin—colder now as I feel
the slickness of my blood.
That’s when it hits.
 The thing in my blood that put me here with the rest of the brotherhood. The chemical inside me, exposed to direct air, is
intense like adrenaline and as sickening as thallium.
That chemical does something a little different to all of us.
Shot through my veins, the pinpoint focus it provides me, and the bump in speed and agility…
Does absolutely nothing for me when the cavrinskh sweeps its long tail to throw sharp chips of ice at me and then pounces.
I hit the hard packed ice and snow on my shoulders.
It drags me, even as we fight, away from my bike.
We roll.
And there’s no way I’ll wind up on top.
It’s bigger than I am. Heavier.
My gun goes flying, and I use the momentum of the tumble to get my knees up to my chest, to kick at its underbelly with the
spikes on my boots.
I feel them catch, but I have no idea if they tear.
Thrashing, the creature’s muzzle smacks into my helmet and the visor cracks.
But it doesn’t shatter.
One hand keeping the thing off me, I pat and rake at my own legs.
My knives are gone.
It’s just one cavrinskh.
Killing just one isn’t supposed to be hard.
I twist and roll and shove.
The cavrinskh attacks me like it’s in a blood rage. Like it can’t think beyond needing to tear out my throat.
But that frenzy gives me just enough room to kick it off and away from me.
Just enough time to get to my feet before its bloody claws grip into the ice and it starts for me again.
My gun lets out a low chirp. Head snapping to the side, it takes half a second to find the dark metal in the pale snow and I
bolt for it. Grabbing it from the drift and twisting as the cavrinskh pounces. It bites.
My arm is buried in its throat, its teeth crush my chest as it tries to devour me.
I’m wedged in its jaws in a way that it can bite, but it can’t tear, and its teeth only sink so deep.
I’ve never been in this position before.
I never want to be again.
But it’s the best possible outcome, considering.
Its throat contracts around my wrist as it tries to swallow me. But I still have ahold of my gun.
My finger tightens on the trigger.
One shot…
Two.
Three.
It collapses on me.
Oozing dead weight.
The silence is eerie, the stillness numbing.
There’s no more wind howling against my helmet.
Just me and the dead thing on top of me.
I shove it off and it flops into the snow, an ugly mess of fur and gore.
I don’t look much better.
The green blood from it mixes with the black that’s already drying on my chest.
Scanning the glacial floor and the walls on both sides of the calderas, I catch my breath.
I snap a quick photo of it, sending it to Trench and ask if he wants it for his records. He doesn’t. Which means, it’s still my
problem.
The cavrinskh can’t be left out. The carrion birds it would attract are just as vicious.
The ground is too hard to cut through with a shovel. And I can’t just bury this one in the snow.
This part of the caldera melts and refreezes too often. I’m going to have to carry it out.
The hike back up to that ridge is a slow one, and the wind starts to bite at my chest. I should have brought a second suit.
Changing in the ice isn’t fun, but I don’t want Laurel to see the slashes and cuts. I don’t want her to ask where the dried
blood came from.
I scrub at my chest, the skin beneath that torn open fabric is back to the way it was before the cavrinskh’s claws tore me
open.
Because that’s the one ‘good’ thing I got out of the Maker’s grab bag of side effects.
Explaining the ugly intricacies of the brotherhood’s shared upbringing to Laurel is something I’ll have to do soon… but I’ll
hate every second of it.
I take a deep breath and feel for her through the bond.
She’s there. A gentle and inquisitive tug in my mind. She feels me reaching out. If this is holding out my hand, she’s placed
hers in it.
Safe, warm, and far from here.
Exactly where she should be.
I guide the bike down the slope and pull the thin tarpaulin out to wrap up the cavrinskh, ignoring the green blood that trails
after it like slime.
I do bury that.
The shovel strapped to the side of my bike pulls off with a snap that echoes in the cold air. And I turn the snow over so the
ice drowns the dull scent of their blood. The birds aren’t the only thing I want to avoid.
Dead monsters attract live ones.
So I kick the bike to life, and the chain track bites into the snow, flinging us into the bright haze.
It takes longer than I thought to get home.
After I drop the carcass at the disposal point—a chamber that fills with magma twice a day—I have to run the sensor line at
the base of the inner caldera wall.
That cavrinskh didn’t trip one, but none of them are down.
I let Drift know—I’ve done my due diligence, it’s his turn now—and pull the bike into the garage that looks exactly as I left
it.
Laurel is on the other side of that door, and I know she’s going to have questions.
She came here expecting a safe, normal accountant, and she got me.
The remnant of a genius’ criminal experiments—born to be sent to die.
Protecting the people of this planet has been my duty for so long, protecting her is now the very core of my being. Failing is
the only fear I know.
 CHAPTER
SEVEN

Laurel
I feel like all I’ve done for the last two hours is watch the clock.
Distracting myself has been an exercise in impatience.
I’ve washed my face. I’ve put my hair up in a bun, taken it down and braided it. Torn that out and put it back up in the bun.
I’ve opened and closed the fridge door about a hundred times and the inside of my cheek is suffering.
I’ve also ignored two notifications from my handler. He wants a check in, and I don’t know what I’m going to tell him when
I make that call.
Only the bond reassures me that everything’s okay—or at least it’s not bad.
I definitely wasn’t prepared for this.
Each time I go to that window, I expect to see something. What? I don’t know. But I’m standing at that plate of glass, trying
to find some sign of him against the white landscape when the door behind me opens.
Richter’s suit is half off, hanging around his waist, and although I like the view, I don’t like the questions flopping around in
my head like dying fish.
I shove them away and run across the room, flinging myself at him.
When his arms wrap around me, lifting me, and he kisses me, relief washes through me like a sedative, and I sag against
him.
But I don’t say the thought that pops into my head. I can hate his job, but he doesn’t have to hear about it.
“I need to get out of this suit.” He whispers the words against my lips and I nod, looking down at the black streak on his
chest.
“And cleaned up.”
His skin burns hot beneath my hands and I hope that’s normal. I might quiz Jess about Sian physiology when I call her to
undo whatever damage mom’s done.
But for now...
I slide down him and trace my fingers over pale lines there. “I felt this.”
His hand catches mine, but he doesn’t pull my hand away. “I didn’t think that was part of the bond. I’m sorry.”
“It felt worse than it looks.” When it happened, I thought knives had cut straight through his skin. I’d felt it, but in the way
I’d felt movie injuries—more in my stomach than the actual point of the injury. The actual pain is just a psychosomatic
response: dull and detached.
He draws my hand up, brushing his lips across my knuckles. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
That’s a promise I know he can’t keep.
He lets me lead the way to the bathroom, but he shakes his head when I ask about a first aid kit.
“I just need to shower.”
When I try to help him get his suit off, he pops open another one of those hidden panels and literally cuts it off.
“Not worth mending?”
He shakes his head again, and I don’t like the way he’s gone quiet.
Turning on the water, I let him step inside first, but as he scrubs himself down with his strange smelling soap, I pull my
clothes off again, and I feel his faint surprise when I step in beside him.
I take what I thought was a sponge—but feels like wood now that it’s in my hand—from him and scrub at his back.
It is the strangest sensation to feel his needs through the bond. It’s why I scrape harder than I probably would have, and why
I shiver when I get to that one part of his spine that really needed it.
After a minute, Richter catches my hand and draws me in front of him.
“I’m sorry that you have to feel my pain.”
 “I’m not.”
I’m glad the words don’t sound weak when I whisper them. They’re absolute truth.
“I don’t love knowing you’re hurt, but it tells me that you’re only hurt. That you haven’t been gobbled up by a monster.”
Hands in my hair, he uses that tight grip to force me to look up at him. “I’m not about to die now that I have you.”
When he kisses me, it’s long and sweet but his hand doesn’t loosen its grip on my hair, and his fingers are hard against my
hip.
“I didn’t know you were what I needed until you were mine.”
He looks down at me with a darkness in his eyes I wouldn’t be able to interpret without the bond.
Some day, we’re going to be able to interrupt this feedback loop. Until then...
“I want something,” I say.
“It’s yours.”
The tiles are hard but warm on my knees and I look up at him, feeling his arousal flood me as I wrap my fingers around his
thick, hard cock.
He knows exactly what I want, and his forked tongue slips out to lick his lips. I wonder if his mouth is watering too.
Hands on my head, he doesn’t try to move me as I kiss the tip of him. As my tongue circles that strange and beautiful head.
The clean taste of him covers my tongue, and I spread my knees a little wider, letting the splatter of the falling water flicker
across my pussy.
I knew this was something I wanted to try, and I had a silicone option that was just as thick. I’d deny it to my dying day if
anyone ever asked, but I’ve practiced.
Even still, I can’t unhinge my jaw, and when I get my lips around him, I don’t get very far.
“Why are you frustrated, my azhibka?”
I try to get just a little further, but to no avail and when I pull back from him, it’s with a frustrated groan.
“I want to take more of you.”
“This is not something we do, nor is it something I require of you.”
One glance at his teeth is a good reminder of why they wouldn’t be used to this.
“It’s something I want to do.”
“Then we will see what we can do. Won’t we?”
His fingers spear through my hair wrapping between my skull and my bun, and this time, he’s the one who presses slowly
into my mouth.
Richter doesn’t break eye contact with me as he moves, holding me still so all I have to do is keep my jaw relaxed and
breathe through my nose.
Inch by slow inch he slides his cock into me, watching me all the while. I can feel his caution through the bond and I let him
drag this out until that blunt tip touches the very back of my throat.
That silicone toy practice got rid of my gag reflex.
There’s more of him, of course, but this is as far as we’re going to get. Wrapping my hand around what’s left of him, I take
over, long strokes with mouth and tongue meeting my hand, working him closer and closer to the edge.
Every time I slide him into my mouth a slice of lust runs through me until it’s almost too much to bear.
I don’t get to drink his cum. Hand on my chin, he draws me off of him. I don’t have the chance to do more than pout as he
lifts me to my feet before his mouth takes mine, his tongue delving in, tickling at mine while his fingers find the slick line of my
pussy.
Backing me against the warm stone wall, it’s his turn to go to his knees.
One hand between my breasts, holding me to the wall, he slings my leg over his shoulder and that forked end of his tongue
pinches my clit.
A moan escapes my lips, even after I clamp my jaw shut. Head between my legs, tongue buried in my pussy, Richter looks
up, meeting my eyes and I feel the sharp pang of lust and desire.
I pinch my nipples, trying to relieve some of the pressure building as he works me toward the orgasm that would have
mirrored the one he didn’t take from my mouth.
But he stops before we get there. Dropping his head to my stomach and breathing heavily against me.
He chuckles as he presses a kiss to the top of my slit. “I am going to come just from the smell of you on my lips, Laurel.”
Growling, he moves my leg from his shoulder and looks up at me. It’s his frustration I feel now.
“I need to be inside of you. Always.”
He stands—so quickly I flinch—and turns me. His hand goes to the back of my neck, pressing me against the wall. Rough
stone against my breasts, I hold on to it as best I can as his other hand holds me open to him.
He slides into me so easily—so ferociously I gasp at the invasion. But my body is getting used to him.
My senses are not.
He mutters words in his own language, calling me a gift, questioning whether he’s worthy. I answer the latter.
 Because, yes. Our pairing might have been a mistake. But it was the right mistake.
“You’re mine, Laurel. No one will take you away from me.”
I shake my head, because there’s no one who could.
“You’re my mate, my azhibka. You’re going to be the mother of my children.” His next thrust is a little harder, a little more
ragged. “I am going to fill you with my cum every chance I get. You’re mine and I will breed you and keep you and protect you
until the day I die.”
My orgasm crashes over me as I feel the heat of his cum flooding me—as I drown in the combined delirium of our
climaxes.
“Mine.” He says, biting my shoulder, teeth scraping across skin.
I can’t speak to agree with him, or to remind him that he’s mine as well.
He draws me back, holding me off the ground in a way I don’t quite understand. Fingers against the wall, barely touching it
now, I try to fight through the waves of sensation crashing over me.
He drives into me, relentlessly and I reach the point where all I can do is sob his name as each thrust threatens to break my
mind or vocal chords or bones.
That need bursts like a bubble and everything is bright and sharp as he says a word I don’t understand and that second load
gushes into me.

RICHTER
I had no idea it would be like this.
No idea I could possibly want to drown in her.
I feel almost feral with the need to keep myself inside of her. Maybe that’s why, when I finally let her off my cock, I press
my hand between her legs, holding as much of my cum inside her.
She leans back against the wall, breasts heaving. Her skin is slicked with sweat and steam and her eyes are heavy.
I vaguely remember the required reading from the Agency saying something about the need to be gentle—the need to work
them into constant coupling.
Exhaustion, they said, was a danger.
But those documents didn’t take into account that my sweet human mistake would want it rough, that she’d be rocking
against my palm, grinding her clit against the heel of my hand, even now as that sated feeling washes through the bond.
Laurel is possibly more dangerous than I imagined.
If those alarms went off right now, I’d ignore them. A pack of cavrinskh could come to roost on our roof and I’d let them so
long as I was in here with her.
I’d let the whole world burn to come inside her again.
She smiles and I wonder what part of that she picked up through the bond.
Her smile dips to the side and amusement tumbles through her to me. “I shouldn’t have changed the sheets. We’re just going
to get them filthy again. Aren’t we?”
The shower shuts itself off and we both look at the spout and its lingering droplets.
Shaking my head, I pick her up and she wraps her legs around my waist, her arms circling my neck. “We’re going to be
thoroughly clean before we go back.”
“Is that right?”
The question is soft, but her lips coast across the hard line of my jaw, close enough I hear it.
I move her around, just a little, and then set her down on my cock. It’s a miracle that I’m still hard.
She arches her back as she takes me, like she’s trying to get closer and further away all at once.
“I don’t like to think I’m a size queen, but you are so much bigger than anyone I’ve ever been with.”
I don’t know what a size queen is, and I don’t understand the sensation fluttering through her arousal.
“Are you thinking about them now?”
Her eyes fly wide and she meets mine as her brows pinch.
“Why would—?”
Her face clears and then she laughs.
“God, no.” She shakes her head and makes the most delicious sound.
“What does that tickling sensation in my mind mean, my azhibka?”
“Amusement?” she says, laughing, and it is the same feeling. “How could I think of any other man when you fuck me so
Another random document with
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and, although their origin is undoubtedly Mongolian from Tibet, their
traditions vary very considerably from those of the other Shokas.
According to some authorities the Darma Shokas are the descendants
of a horde of Mughals who were endeavouring to take possession of
Kumaon during the time that Timur was occupying a portion of that
country. This horde, which is supposed to have entered Kumaon from
the plains and not over the mountains, was eventually reduced to very
small numbers, and driven to the mountains, where they finally settled,
practically undisturbed, in the Darma Valley. Darma, like the other Shoka
districts (Bias and Chaudas), formerly belonged to Tibet, and it was not
till the Gorkhali administration that Darma, with Bias and Chaudas, was
annexed to Kumaon.

Even now, as we have already seen, the Tibetans exercise a serious

influence upon those natives, the Shokas of all these districts, however
willing to be faithful and loyal to us, having never received protection nor
the meagrest justice from the British Government.
The Sacrifice of a Yak
 At the death of a tribesman the animal is precipitated from a high
cliff on which it has been driven.

Personally, I do not quite share the opinion that the Darma Shokas
came from the plains or from [223]Tibet by way of the plains. They
resemble quite closely the Kam-par or Tibetans from Kam, with whom
they are to this day in constant communication. In fact, it is chiefly with
the Kam-par tribe and Gyanema that the Darma Shokas do all their
trading. The more massive features and stronger facial characteristics of
the Darma Shokas have been acquired, I think, more through their
frequent intercourses with Jumlis and other tribes of Western Nepal,
which gives them a wilder appearance than the more purely Mongolian
stolid types, such as the Bias Shokas.

In many ways the Darma Shokas do not possess the refined and
gentlemanly feelings so strikingly common among Bias Shokas, nor are
they quite so honest and reliable. But they, too, possess good hearts,
are somewhat impetuous and excitable, and occasionally addicted to
murder. [224]
[Contents]
 CHAPTER XXI

From Khela on the Nepalese boundary, where I found my men and pony—the
latter had been safely taken back across the dangerous Nerpani road—I
proceeded in all haste to Almora. I varied my journey slightly, travelling by way of
Thal.

The roar of British officials had been very great while I was distant, so I halted
several days both in Almora and Naini-Tal, the summer seat of the Provincial
Government, in order to give them opportunity of carrying out some of their
threats. Nothing happened.

By way of Bombay I returned to England, and from there I sailed directly to

America, on my way to the Chinese War.

Goats carrying Loads of Borax

Perhaps the journey, requiring as it did more than ordinary endurance, did more
to strengthen my former theories about travelling attendants than any journey I
had taken before. I invariably [225]found that thoughtful and tactful kindness with
my men and with strangers always paid better than harsh treatment. It is all very
well for the leader of an expedition not to mind this, and not to feel that, and, if
anything, rather enjoy the fun of roughing it. The interest which he—if of even
moderate intelligence—must take in the study of the country, the natives,
recording his scientific observations, surveying, photographing, writing up his
notes, etc., leave him but little time to worry over climatic conditions or the
cooking. But not so with the native followers, who after their day’s work is
finished—and pretty tedious their day’s work is—have nothing to employ their
minds except the thought that another day of hardship is to follow. The mind
preys a good deal upon the entire system, and when to mental depression you
add every possible bodily inconvenience you can think of, it is not unnatural that
the men are inclined to break down.

First of all, naturally, I took great care to have my men well fed and clothed, then
the next and most important was to prevent them getting depressed when great
difficulties were facing them. Many evenings, when we did not make night
marches, I used to collect my men round my tent [226]and entertained them with
long descriptions of things in Europe they had never seen, such as ocean
steamers, “sky-scrapers,” railways, electric light, etc.

I am rather sorry that, this publication being illustrated entirely by drawings done
by hand, I am not able to give an interesting photograph of a group of my
followers whom I snapshotted as I was describing to them the wonders of
civilisation. The expressions of wonderment and keen interest were quite
intense, and show clearly in the photograph.

The men always looked for these nightly lectures, and no matter how tired they
were they generally collected round for me to tell them more. This, I think,
helped more to keep my men in good spirits—in very exasperating
circumstances—than anything I could think of. Every topic would lead to endless
discussions among them, and most amusing controversies, which enlivened
their spirits, anyhow till the next lecture.
 Yaks and Ponies conveying Wool across the Frontier

Natives always take the keenest interest in firearms and anything connected
with them. Also in telescopes, which they love. I happened to possess a little
camera which was not unlike a spy-glass. I had given it to one of my men to
carry—by the [227]way, to the fellow who saved my life on the top of Lumpa
Mountain. He could not get it out of his head that it was a glass, and once or
twice I caught him trying to survey the landscape with it.

One evening, on my way down to Almora, we had reached camp, and as I was
sitting outside my tent I perceived the fellow walking away with my camera
towards a cluster of trees some way off on the top of a hillock. I watched him
with the corner of my eye. When he got there he climbed right to the top of the
highest tree, and as he clung with his folded legs to the branch, swinging to and
fro in the wind, he unslung the camera and pulled it out of its case. Next, as I
expected, he brought it up to his eyes and proceeded to scan the landscape.
Unhappily for the camera, the branch, having swung rather too far beyond its
limit of elasticity, gave way, and down came the man and precious instrument,
bounding from branch to branch until they bumped with some might upon the
solid ground—the man, of course, on the top of the camera. The camera he
picked up in fragments, besides destroying eighteen excellent negatives it
contained.
“What on earth did you do that for?” I asked of the Shoka. [228]

“Sahib,” he said, rubbing his aching side, “I have longed for many a day to look
through the durbin; we Shokas are to leave you to-morrow, and I thought I would
have no other opportunity. You can kill me, sahib, because I deserve it!”

When I thought of the deep debt of gratitude I owed this man, I preferred to
spare him. I handed him a real and powerful telescope, properly focussed, for
him to have the treat he wished. When he gazed through it and saw the distant
snows and a village some miles off appear quite close, his excitement had no
bounds, and when he recognised people coming out of the houses his
amazement was very curious to watch.

We had many, many amusing incidents of this kind, and they served to pass
away the time.

I cannot end this book without paying a tribute to the faithfulness, endurance,
and bravery of all my men. A more devoted lot of fellows could nowhere have
been procured. I never had the slightest trouble in any way with them even, as
we have seen, under most trying circumstances. The work demanded of them
was of the most severe nature, and the constant strain and bodily sufferings so
great, that I rather doubt whether I know of any white man who could have stood
it—not as [229]they did, but even half as well. As it was, after the strain was over
—but not before—the poor fellows all broke down, except one. Most of them
were pitiably footsore and exhausted, and only their strong will carried them
through. The only exception was the young boy, frail and delicate, almost girlish-
looking—but with a determined little face—to whom I have referred at the
beginning of the book. As stipulated when I employed him, he always carried the
heaviest load, and when physically stronger men lay down tired at the end of a
march, he was ever ready to run about to collect fuel, took endless pleasure in
helping to pitch the tents, and assist in the cooking. The endurance and courage
of that little fellow were quite marvellous. He did more work than two men taken
together, and at the end of the journey he was the only one who returned in
excellent condition, and as fresh as possible.

So that, remember, it is not always the big, bulky, muscular fellows who can
stand more hardships,—the strongest and most muscular fellow I had was the
only one who succumbed; on the contrary, down to a certain limit, for very hard
work, the smaller the men you employ the better. Wiriness, suppleness, agility—
and intelligence—are [230]essential, and always to be preferred to brutal,
uncontrollable strength; but, above all, use your judgment, and never take with
you on expeditions of this sort a man who does not possess a strong will. [231]
[Contents]
 INDEX
Almora, 3, 11

Altitudes, measurements of, 8

Aneroids, 205

Api Mt., 63, 68, 86

Askote Valley, 30

Avalanches, 82, 112

Bahling, 219

Bedang, 212

Bhimden, 12

Cannibalism, 170

Cards and dice, 163

Cave-dwellings, 119

Caves, 13, 221

Channer, G. K., 61

Chela, the, 17

Chess, 163

Chinese passport, 40

Chokdens (or cairns), 199, 212

Chökti, 214

Chongur, 62, 64

Circumambulations, 143

Clothing for mountaineering, 9, 90

Clouds, 106–109
Crevasses, 73

Darma Shokas, 36, 197, 220, 221–223

supposed descent of, 222

Darma Valley, 197, 222

Debi Dhura Shrine, 11

Debi, Mahadeva Varahi, 12

Dholi River, 196, 219

Dongan, 188

Dukti, 219

Dunes, 97

Ear-piercing, 128

Flying prayers, 120

Ganges, sources of the, 186

Gankan, 198

Garbyang, 38

Glacier, the Armida Landor, 68

Charles Landor, 76, 80, 97, 101
Elfrida Landor, 63
Martia, 72

Glaciers, 196, 217, 219

conical pits in, 70
noises of, 65

Go, 213, 220

Gurkha district, 50

Gurkhas, 50, 52, 56

customs of, 55
marriages of, 56
recruiting of, 57
regiments of, 57
scouts, 57

Gyanema, 197, 223

Hallucinations, 26

Highest altitude reached by a human being on mountains, 86

Himahlyas, 1 [232]

Himahlyas, correct spelling of, 1

Horse-races, 150

Horsemanship, feats of, 153

House of Commons, 35

Jong Pen of Taklakot, 36

Jumlis, 54, 62, 223

Kam-par tribe, 170, 223

Katas, 144, 152

Katmandu, 50, 54

Kew Observatory, 7

Khela, 220

Kumaon, 50

Kumaonis, the, 24

Kuti, 193, 219

Valley, 189

Lamas, 145, 173, 178

Landor Glacier, Armida, 68

Charles, 76, 97
Elfrida, 63

Landslides, 102

Larkin, Mr. J., 36

Lebung Glacier, 196

Pass, 193, 194
observations on author’s followers on, 195

Legends, 12, 217

Lhassa Mission to the Czar, 146

Lippu Lekh, 43, 188

Lissar River, 197, 219

Little Tibet (Bhot), 30

Loads, 3

Lohagart, 25

Lumpa basin, 78
peaks, 48
ascent of, 80
River, 64, 72

Lumpiya Pass, 43

Lynching, 24

Magars and Gurungs, 52, 57

Mahatmas, 145

Mangti Glacier, 199

Matchlocks, 140, 154, 158

Mongolian origin, 51

Mountain sickness, 83, 195

Mountaineering, 4

Murmis, the, 54

Nagling, 219

Nanda Devi (highest mountain in British Empire), 217

Nattalì, 190

Nepal, aboriginal tribes of, 52

Brahmins of, 55
Buddhists of, 55
central zone of, 52
customs of, 55, 114
King of, 49
natural division of, 51
population of North-West, 48
 proper, 53
provinces of, 51
manners of, 55
religion, 55

Nepalese Agent, 117

fort, 28, 45
frontier, 30, 42, 45

Nepalese-Shoka half-castes, 48

Nepalese Shokas, 117

Nepalese soldiers, 45
women, 49

Nerpani, the, 32, 21

Newars, the, 53

Non-Gurkha tribes, 54

Nui Glacier, 109, 199, 202, 209

Pass, 204
observations on the, 204

Observations taken 23,490 feet above sea-level, 88, 91

Om mani padme hum, 144

Optical illusions, 109

Pachisi, 14

Persecution, 40

Photography, 74, 79

Pilgrimages, 16

Pithoragarh, 28

Polyandry, 133, 171

Prayer-wheels, 143

Preparations for author’s journey, 2 [233]

Processions, 17

Pungrung Glacier, 199

Rajiwar of Askote, 29

Rama Glacier, 197

Ransila, the, 13

Raots, the, 30

Sacred inscriptions, 183

swings, 12, 16

Sacrifices, 16

Sah-tal, 35, 37

Savage Pass, 104

ascent to, 102

Scientific instruments, 7

Sculptors, 183

Sela, 219

Selection of followers, 3, 224

Serju River, 25

Sheldon, Miss, 31

Shobla, 219, 220

Shooting at great elevations, 159

Shrines, 142, 172

Sirka, 31

Slings for stone-throwing, 160

Snakes, 23, 28

Spirits of the mountains, 24

Stars, 66

Stone fights, 18, 160

Stone-throwing, 161

Strawberries, wild, 65
Sturt, Mr., 36

Suiti Glacier, 199

Sutlej River, 50

Suttee, 50

Swiss Alpine guides, 4

Taklakot, 43, 119

Tampering of mails, 40

Tchukti, the, 168

Tents, 8

Terai district, 52, 54

Tibet, agriculturally, 147

commerce of, 148
development of, 147

Tibetan aggressiveness, 35, 48, 189

Tibetan art, 182

boots, 167
children, 124, 126
cloth, 184
clothing, 166, 181
dogs, 135
encampments, 140
etiquette, 178
food, 141, 157
forces, 43
fuel, 141
heaven, 179
hell, 179
influence, 222
men, 179
mode of carrying children, 129
riding, 156
ponies, 3, 21, 33, 135
saddles, 156
salutation, 178
shooting, 158
spies, 116, 174
tea, 141
 temples, 144
tents, 120, 140, 172
utensils, 141
women, 124, 155, 167, 171

Tibetans, anatomically, 166

cowardice of, 179
intermarriage of, 132

Tinker, 113, 114, 117

Glacier, 120
Pass, 121
region, 101

Tobogganing, 102, 209

Trade, 48, 110, 197, 198, 223

Vishnu, 218

War-dances, 164

Weaving-looms, 120

Wrestling, 161

Yaks, 116

[Contents]
 Sketch Map of Glaciers and Peaks in Nepal

Explored and surveyed by A. Henry Savage Landor.

 Table of Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii

CHAPTER I 1
CHAPTER II 11
CHAPTER III 20
CHAPTER IV 32
CHAPTER V 43
CHAPTER VI 55
CHAPTER VII 62
CHAPTER VIII 76
CHAPTER IX 91
CHAPTER X 101
CHAPTER XI 114
CHAPTER XII 124
CHAPTER XIII 135
CHAPTER XIV 150
CHAPTER XV 166
CHAPTER XVI 178
CHAPTER XVII 185
CHAPTER XVIII 193
CHAPTER XIX 207
CHAPTER XX 217
CHAPTER XXI 224
INDEX 231
MAP 233