He wasn’t a warrior. He was a predator.
“Impressive. Isn’t it?” Cam’s voice behind her almost made her jump out of her skin with fright. She’d being so intent on Cade’s routine that she completely missed him creeping up on her. For where they’d come from, who they were, that was an unforgivable lapse.
She half turned to glare at him. He raised an eyebrow and nodded toward Cade still in the circle. “Any idea why that one wasn’t on base yesterday evening?”
He knew. She knew he knew. How he knew she had no idea. But he knew.
Lying to Cameron Murphy was difficult, for some nigh on impossible. Rumor had it that he could see right down into your soul and pick up the lies your parents had told. But they’d both survived the same hellholes, and she’d played poker with the worst of the criminal underworld, so keeping her expression blank was second nature.
“No. Should I?”
Cam pursed his lips, leaning on the back of her chair as he rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. He’d been up all night like her and hadn’t yet had the chance to shave, a fact that was getting appreciative glances from some of the women around them.
She sighed to herself, wanting to snap at them to get themselves together. She knew half of the women on base had the hots for Cam, and really, they should. He was a good-looking guy. But she also knew her brother, and there wasn’t a woman here strong enough to take him on, not with his darkness.
“He wasn’t here. The others covered for him, but I know he wasn’t here. Thought you might have—”
“What?” she snapped. “Spirited him off base for hot and sweaty alien sex?”
She barked a laugh, leaning back in her chair to look over her shoulder at him. “Come on, Cam. You’ll be accusing me of snogging him in a broom cupboard next.”
“Do we even have those here?” He arched an eyebrow. “Look, I just worry about you. You have no idea what these aliens are capable of. I don’t want one of them spiriting you away.”
She sighed, her expression softening. “Cam, you’re important to me…” You’re my brother. “I would never leave you.”
“Once a warrior completes his daily diraanesh,” Risyn spoke again as Cade stalked out of the circle, “he will train with and against others…”
Cade stepped forward at the same time as the training group he’d been assigned to, gathering around the nearest circle marked on the floor. Two of the B’Kaar entered the circle to begin sparring while the others took their places around the edge.
“Please,” Risyn B’Kaar called out, motioning the humans forward. “Feel free to move between the circles to observe, but do not enter them. You may ask any of the warriors not currently fighting questions about their training methods.”
Cade tried to keep an eye out for Elise as the humans swarmed over to surround the circles, but it proved impossible. She was tall for a human female, but there were just so many of them and since he’d been assigned to a specific circle, he couldn’t leave it to search her down.
Instead, he stood in his assigned spot as he waited his turn to spar. He hadn’t been assigned to the same group as Rohn, thankfully. Not that he was scared of the arrogant princeling. He could easily wipe the floor with him, but he’d taken Berrick’s veiled warning seriously. It wasn’t just his life on the line if the empire found out what he was. Others would die as well and he wouldn’t have that on his conscience.
The group he was with was comprised of B’Kaar warriors, all of whom eyed him with barely disguised contempt. He was used to it. All Vorr were treated this way. The empire had never forgotten what they had been… What the first emperor had turned them into, even though he’d only done so to fight a great enemy and save them all before the empire had even been born.
Vorrtan.
It was a name from history. One that struck fear into the hearts of the Lathar’s enemies and made all of the clans twitchy. The Vorrtan had been created using the very first genetic engineering techniques of the empire to fight the Tanel, a savage, monstrous race who’d swept across the known galaxies like a plague. They destroyed everything in their path, conquering and burning planets that wouldn’t bow to their rule until they’d reached Latharian space. Kayan Vorr, the most powerful of the ancient Latharian princes, had drawn a line in the sand.
He’d used his own blood, his own kin, and mixed their DNA with that of their enemy to create a warrior that could stand against anything the Tanel could throw at them. Half Tanel themselves, they could match the monsters on the battlefield, but they were also Lathar, highly intelligent and adaptable. And they absolutely would not back down.
Cade saw some of that in humanity… In the way they refused to bow to the yoke of the Lathar, the way Cameron Murphy challenged the emperor at every turn yet somehow without sparking full-on war.
Science had turned the Vorrtan into the ultimate predators, the ultimate warriors, to stand against a threat that would have killed them all. But when that battle had been won and they were no longer needed, they’d been cast aside, reviled and looked down upon as less than Lathar. Sub-Lathar. Discriminated against until the bloodline and its abilities had all but died out.
Hatred of anything different had a long memory, though, and males like Rohn called the Vorr animals because of what they’d once been… Without any appreciation of how feared and dangerous the Vorrtan were. It was said even the Krin had run in fear.
His thoughts were interrupted as, within seconds, they were surrounded by twittering human females. None of them was the one he wanted to see, and he had to roll his eyes at the way the males around him reacted. They puffed themselves up, preening in the presence of the females. After all the assertions in the mess hall and barracks back on the ship that none of them would fall prey to the lure of human females—that they would be the ones making the choices and wouldn’t allow the females to lead them around by the noses. It was amusing to see them fall at the first hurdle and jump through hoops to get the females’ attention.
He looked past them. None of the females looked his way anyway. He wasn’t ignorant of the way he looked. In this form, he appeared younger than the other warriors and slighter of frame. His blood line meant that he didn’t scar easily, and growing a beard like Berrick’s was completely out of the question. He’d need to be over a hundred before anything like that happened.
He didn’t care that he hadn’t caught their attention, though. He knew the female he wanted, the female who had cleaved to his heart and enslaved his cock with her gentle but exciting touches.
His heart beat only for her, and his body quickened only in her presence. Not moving from his spot on the edge of the circle, he lifted on his toes to try and see over the warriors from the next one. She knew where he was, so why hadn’t she come to him? He knew she’d been watching him. Her eyes had not left him all the way through his diraanesh. With her there, he’d shown off more than he should, trying to impress her.
After last night, the way she’d touched him… He wanted to impress her. Wanted his female to be proud of him. To be the kind of male she would be happy to call her own.
Finally, the crowded humans parted a little and he spotted her over near one of the other circles. Rohn had stopped her, a big hand around her upper arm as he tried to drag her into the circle with him. Cade’s eyes widened, a snarl ripping from his throat, and he launched himself across the room.