Commissioned In White (Art of Love Series) (25 page)

Synar nodded as Dorian stood and walked to the door.

“As a celibate Siren, you are a male quite adept at avoiding his own destiny. How can you claim to know so much about mine? Are you ever going to claim your
own
mate, Dorian? I’m not the only one who’s been avoiding things for two years,” Synar reminded him.

“Have I killed the other males in her life yet? No I have not. I know precisely what I am rejecting, and yet I would not stand in the way of her finding happiness with other males. Can you say the same? What if Ania Looren one day finds another male who will not walk away from her in times of trouble?” Dorian asked, shrugging as he walked out of the room.

Synar frowned at his friend’s back. It had honestly never occurred to him that his Pleiadian mate might one day replace him. He assumed Ania’s fidelity was bred into her in a similar way as his. His body didn’t even long for another female. In fact, his desire was dormant until he thought of her.

Now Dorian’s words made him wonder if hosting Malachi could have changed Ania’s nature. Had she perhaps already found someone else?

Synar rose from the conference table and headed to his room to study the books of training again. His mind was now filled with dark thoughts about the only female that he’d ever wanted badly enough to bind her to him.

Chapter 2

“So what’s the plan, Synar? Are we slowing them down or just killing them outright?” Gwen asked calmly, rolling the power pack on her weapon until the charge indicator turned green.

“I don’t expect any problems, but if there are some, we just need to stop them temporarily. Some of them hold high offices in the Peace Alliance. This is not a population who would kill us without strong provocation,” Synar answered, adjusting all three of his weapons to the same setting.

After two years of helping rescue high-level Peace Alliance officials from their sticky planetary situations, Commander Gwen Jet had already known what her captain’s answer would be from the stance of his body. She was merely entertaining herself with forcing her non-communicative leader into polite conversation while she adjusted her weapons.

“You haven’t said much about this mission. Who are we saving today?” Gwen asked, keeping her voice as light as possible as she adjusted her other weapons.

In the two years she had served as Captain Liam Synar’s first mate, Gwen had never seen him so anxious for a recovery to get started. Nor had Gwen personally seen the Norblade warrior’s eyes glowing gold like a tiger’s until now either, even though the rest of the crew often reminisced about a past when Synar’s eyes were that color every day.

When Synar continued to ignore her question about the prisoner’s identity though, Gwen stopped her preparations.

“Captain, if I’m going to die today, I’d at least like to know why,” she said dryly. “Is the female Pleiadian someone special?”

“You will not die today, Commander Jet,” Synar said with laugh at his first mate’s dramatics. “Though Ambassador Looren’s detainers might not be so lucky. They should never have placed her in a situation where she is being threatened in any way.”

Gwen could hear how much it mattered to him in his voice. It only made the situation stranger and her more curious.

“You know the hostage personally?” she asked, figuring if true it might explain the strange vibes rolling off Synar.

Though she kept her human side on a tight rein in most ways, the natural curiosity in that part of her ruled her thoughts and tongue, making her question nearly everything. She had an insatiable desire to know the “why” of circumstances involving her. All those years of living with her mother on Earth had done that to her.

But even if the Earthling side of her hadn’t been curious, her Thelorian side could see Synar’s apprehension manifesting in his jagged energy waves. To say his nervousness alarmed her was putting it mildly. The normally stoic, unemotional male was suddenly vibrating with all kinds of emotions today.

“Yes, I know the hostage personally,” Synar reluctantly admitted, stopping his preparations to meet the probing gaze of his second in command but keeping his face as expressionless as he could make it. “In human terms, Ambassador Looren is my wife.”

“
Wife,
” Gwen exclaimed, fumbling with the news as she completed her weapon assembly. “That’s quite a revelation, Synar. You have a life mate that doesn’t travel with you? Nothing in the service contract bars her from coming along, or at least mine didn’t contain any anti-mate clauses.”

“There are good reasons Ambassador Looren does not travel with me,” Synar said flatly, turning away to make sure Gwen knew he was not willing to elaborate.

“I suppose that explains why you don’t indulge in recreational relationships like the rest of us,” Gwen grumbled softly, not really realizing she had spoken her thoughts aloud until Synar glared at her rudeness. “Sorry. My apologies, Captain. It’s none of my business, but I’ve always wondered why you kept to yourself so much.”

“How very human of you to assume all that from my revelation, Commander. Now if you’re satisfied with the explanation of risk for our mission, could we leave?” Synar asked coldly, walking away without waiting for her reply or acknowledging her comment about his personal choices.

“Sure. I’m ready when you are. You know I’ve always got your back,” Gwen said, purposely using the Earth slang she knew Synar hated to hear from crew members.

Gwen admitted to herself that she was trying to goad him into opening up a little more. Synar had just revealed that he had a secret wife. It made her wonder what else she didn’t know about him.

“Commander, make a note to remind me to schedule language protocol classes when we return,” Synar said, grinning at her over his shoulder as he stormed away.

Gwen bent her head and hid her smile.

The spoken English language had survived many millennia on Earth and found its way out into the universe as other planets were settled with humans and human hybrids. Since there were humans routinely now on most every ship in every galaxy, it was often the common work language, though Gwen conceded that many sentient beings hated using it. Even time was counted in Earth measurements among the crew, though the ship’s computer also logged time in the standard increments of the planet that programmed it.

Synar always spoke English to her despite the fact Gwen was quite fluent in his Norblade tongue. But ultimately the joke was on him because she enjoyed his insistence to use it. He always sounded like a stuffy academy professor. This was true even though Gwen knew Synar watched current Earth movies for entertainment. What they did for him, she could never decide, but they rarely failed to improve his mood.

Gwen actually envied Synar his ability to use vids to relax. Standard entertainment was not relaxing for her. Instead, she preferred enlisting one of the friendly and mostly human ship engineers for a few hours of rolling around in her bed. Her blood boiled with a restlessness that had never found an outlet that appeased her spirit for long.

Her father was similarly plagued and dealt with it by continuously working. It was one of the main reasons her parents had chosen to separate shortly after her birth. Gwen handled her restlessness by keeping her service contracts short and moving on to another ship after three years.

Honestly, she didn’t know how Synar could get by without some physical relief now and again. Both he and one other crew member lived like they had taken spiritual vows of purity or something. Gwen figured she would have gone completely mad in the last two years if she had tried to live like that. Only one year left and she was already anxious to move on.

Finding out Synar had a secret wife was a shocker, but it provided a solid reason for him never having asked her or the other single female on the ship for bonding. She would have refused Synar on principal of course. She didn’t bond with her commanding officers. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t noticed that Synar was a fine male of his species, and one that looked to be fully capable of satisfying even the pickiest of females.

Walking several steps behind her captain to literally cover his back, Gwen had a great view of just how prime he was. She shook her head to clear it of carnal thoughts, and when her vision cleared she saw energy spikes shooting out of Synar, reaching out like tentacles. That might explain her sudden awareness of Synar as a male even more than the realization that he had a serious bonding relationship.

Her thoughts cleared when they walked into the shuttle docking area where three other crew members waited for them, including the blazingly attractive but also celibate Lieutenant Dorian Zade. His height and breadth exceeded everyone else’s aboard ship. The male was stunningly attractive with his light brown skin, black hair to his shoulders, and the bluest eyes she had ever seen on any planet or off. When it was necessary for him to fight, Zade was also as fierce a warrior as Gwen had ever seen in her career, which now spanned five rescue ships in fifteen years.

But she had learned the hard way over the last two years of her service that if you talked to the beautiful male, you had to be prepared for an argument. It still made no sense to her that such a contrary person could serve as the ship’s spiritual counselor. Nor did it make any sense someone as attractive as Zade would opt to live such a barren existence. Though the latter probably explained the root cause of his perpetual bad mood where she was concerned.

Truthfully, she would never have touched Synar because he outranked her, but in her first year onboard she would have been glad to roll with Zade. In fact, for a time she’d been obsessed with the urge for him. Zade had refused her for reasons he still declined to explain, and it still occasionally smarted when she remembered how intensely she had desired him.

Now she kept her distance, dealt with Zade when she had to, and accepted the fact that the male in question just had no interest in bonding at all. Which was just as well, Gwen conceded, because her stomach had a tendency to do strange things when Lieutenant Zade looked directly at her. Not to mention the energy vibrations coming off him scared her Thelorian side as well as her Earthling one.

That kind of persistent gut awareness was nothing but a distraction in her opinion, and Gwen did not want any part of it. She had seen many female warriors like herself ruined by allowing a controlling male with too much physical power over them into their lives. Such a bonding commitment ended careers like hers.

She pulled her attention away from thoughts of Zade and heard Synar lecturing the mission crew.

“Do not fire at anyone unless ordered to do so by me,” Synar said tightly, looking at each of them. “And do not under any circumstances attempt to touch the hostage. You must leave that only to me. Ambassador Looren is exceedingly dangerous. If ordered, you will take cover until I tell you to come out. Do not attempt to assist me.”

“Wait,” Gwen said, grabbing Synar’s arm as he started to board. She was sure she had misunderstood his order. “Captain, I don’t think I heard you correctly. If something bad happens, you just want us to
run and hide
?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I want you to do, Commander Jet. It’s what you must do to survive this encounter,” Synar said flatly. “Ambassador Looren is a demon host. If she is threatened, the demon will protect her at all costs. I happen to know that the demon she carries is not discriminating of friends and foes. He will kill and drain the energy from anyone near her when he attacks.”

“Say that again. She’s a
what
?” Gwen asked, shocked, following Synar to her seat across from him and trying not to look at Lieutenant Zade taking the seat next to her. “I thought demon hosts were a myth.”

Synar fastened himself into the seat. “No. Neither are demon masters, though there are not many uses for them since the Peace Alliance came into being.”

“You’re telling me there’s a demon master we have to worry about as well as a demon in the hostage we’re rescuing?” Gwen asked, curious and concerned all at once. She tried to reign in her curiosity by reminding herself the situation was also dangerous to them all.

“The demon master is among our crew. And before you ask, yes I have been aware of the fact,” Synar said quickly, seeing Gwen’s increased shock at his answer.

Gwen narrowed her eyes at him. Rumor was that demons and masters were so powerful as a unit that their combined thoughts could become reality instantly. Legends said the two of them working together could wipe out a military force of thousands without engaging in any normal combat.

Gwen’s eyes perused each crew member, and she made herself look at her attractive seatmate long and hard, even though staring that long at Zade made her want to sigh like a lovesick teenager, something she had never been—thank God.

Eventually, her gaze returned to Synar when she couldn’t figure it out.

“Thelorian energy reading failing you on this one, Commander?” Synar challenged. “No worries. You’ll find out which one of us it is soon enough.”

Gwen snorted at his demeaning statements about her skills. Even if it was the closest to teasing her Synar had ever come, his words were still dripping with sarcasm. She decided to see if her captain could take teasing as well as he evidently could dish it out today.

“The only person’s energy that is strange today is yours, Synar,” Gwen challenged back, narrowing her eyes on his face as her gaze met his resistant one. “Since the hostage is your wife, why aren’t
you
more worried?”